Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Sing, O Muse, of the Concrete Parthenon

Mary Norris’s hilarious new memoir, Greek to Me, celebrates all things Hellenic

In her new memoir, Greek to Me, Mary Norris proves to be a fantastic companion and guide—the perfect person to breathe life into a dead language. Norris will discuss the book in a conversation with Ann Patchett at The Parthenon in Nashville on April 28.

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A Protection Against Oblivion

Lindsey A. Freeman’s unconventional memoir recreates a childhood in the atomic city

A frequent visitor to her grandparents’ Oak Ridge home as a child, sociologist Lindsey A. Freeman grew up under the shadow of an atomic cloud, an experience she explores in a new memoir, This Atom Bomb in Me.

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Mother is a Circle

Absence haunts Sophia Shalmiyev’s captivating memoir, Mother Winter

In her debut memoir, Mother Winter, Sophia Shalmiyev creates a haunting, lyrical meditation on her troubled mother, an alcoholic whom Shalmiyev and her father left behind when they emigrated to the United States from Russia. Shalmiyev will discuss Mother Winter at Third Man Records in Nashville on April 28.

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Revisiting the Movement

Robert Penn Warren’s 1964 interviews with civil-rights activists get an updated look

With Free All Along: The Robert Penn Warren Civil Rights Interviews, editors Stephen Drury Smith and Catherine Ellis encourage a new community of readers to revisit the ideas and experiences of civil-rights activists and thinkers during the movement’s height.

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Secret Lives

Mania meets narcissism—and murder—in R.J. Jacobs’s debut thriller

In And Then You Were Gone, Nashville debut novelist R.J. Jacobs creates an unlikely heroine in a child psychologist with an unstable past. Jacobs, a practicing psychologist, will appear at Star Line Books in Chattanooga on April 27.

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The Ball is Your Heart

Kwame Alexander talks with Chapter 16 about basketball, family, and the rules of life

In this interview, which first appeared at Chapter 16 in 2015, Kwame Alexander reflects on basketball, music, political consciousness, and the challenges and rewards of writing. Alexander will appear at the Benjamin L. Hooks Library in Memphis on April 22 and at Lipscomb University in Nashville on April 23. 

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