Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Hamilton Cain

Bonds Across Time and Space

Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water braids stories over generations

Abraham Verghese mines the history of Kerala’s St. Thomas Christians — and larger debates about faith and science — in his sprawling second novel, The Covenant of Water. Verghese will discuss the book at a ticketed event at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 18.

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Life of Two

Margaret Verble weaves the real and imagined in When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In her beguiling When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky, novelist Margaret Verble, a 2016 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, reimagines, for her own wily aims, the Nashville of a century ago, with allusions to Jim Crow, W.E.B. Du Bois’ Talented Tenth, and the city’s white gentry.

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Candlelit Suspense

A gripping story set in the waning days of the Italian Renaissance

In The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O’Farrell spins a tale that flows like quicksilver beneath heavy gowns and gilt pageantry. O’Farrell will appear in conversation with Ann Patchett at Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 12.

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The Whole of a Life

Bobbie Ann Mason gives her heroine a second life in Dear Ann

In her vibrant new novel, Dear Ann, Bobbie Ann Mason imagines the life that might have been for Ann Workman, a graduate student who pursues love and English literature against the turbulent backdrop of the 1960s. Bobbie Ann Mason will appear at the online 2021 Southern Festival of Books on October 9.

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Limning the Condition of Loneliness

Kristen Radtke’s Seek You considers our solitary era

Kristen Radtke’s Seek You explores the pain and pleasure of solitude in a time of isolation. Radtke will appear at the online 2021 Southern Festival of Books.

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A Brief Life

Motherhood is the beating heart of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet

Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning novel Hamnet follows the brief life of William Shakespeare’s son and offers a backstory for his wife, Agnes, as woman, mother, and muse. O’Farrell will discuss the book at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 22.

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