Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

One for the Road

Emily Wallace’s Road Sides serves up a philosophy of adventurous eating and exploration.

In Road Sides, author and illustrator Emily Wallace offers roadtrippers a fanciful guide to the back roads of the American South. But at a deeper level, the book is a meditation on Wallace’s ethos of exploration. Wallace will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on 10/22 and The Bookshop in Nashville on 10/23.

Read more

The Challenge of Antiracism

Historian Ibram X. Kendi confronts our racist culture — and looks inward

In How to Be an Antiracist, historian Ibram Kendi argues that defeating racism is a conscious choice that requires thoughtfulness and discipline. Kendi will discuss the book at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis on October 23 and at the University of Memphis on October 24.

Read more

The Homeplace on the Plaza

A writer measures her life by October weekends at the Southern Festival of Books

The Southern Festival of Books is the place I came from and the place I return to, and it is the place where my literary forebears live on through the miraculous immortality of books.

Read more

Older Ways of Doing Things

John Coykendall recounts a life’s work safeguarding rare heritage crops and traditional farming methods

In Preserving Our Roots, John Coykendall documents his decades-long quest to save heritage seeds and preserve a record of a rural way of life that he fears will be lost forever. Coykendall will appear at the 2019 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 11-13.

Read more

A Great Experiment

The disruptive early days of the TVA become compelling fiction in Watershed  

Mark Barr’s debut novel, Watershed, considers the early TVA era from the ground up, focusing on character and place, and the intimate stories of lives impacted by the agency. Barr will appear at the 2019 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 11-13; at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on October 14; and at Novel in Memphis on October 21.

Read more

Great Expectations

Former UN ambassador Samantha Power considers the reality of imperfect outcomes

Part captivating study in modern foreign affairs and part working mother tell-all, former U.N. ambassador Samantha Power’s The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir should be required reading for anyone who wants to make a difference in a complicated world. Power will appear at the 2019 Southern Festival of books, held in Nashville on October 11-13.

Read more
TAKE THE SHORT READER SURVEY! CHAPTER 16 SURVEYOR SURVEYING