Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Ed Tarkington

Soul Survivor

In Every Night’s a Saturday Night, legendary rock ‘n’ roll saxophonist Bobby Keys, best known for his adventures with the Rolling Stones, shines a light on the life of a career sideman

March 14, 2012 Legendary Rolling Stones sideman Bobby Keys has just produced a surprisingly lucid and detailed account of his hazy whirlwind life on the road and in the studio with many of modern music’s greats. Written with the assistance of former Nashville Lifestyles editor Bill Ditenhafer, Every Night’s a Saturday Night meticulously traces Keys’s extraordinary rise from the dusty outskirts of Lubbock, Texas, to bear witness to the glory years of rock ‘n’ roll. Bobby Keys will discuss Every Night’s a Saturday Night at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 19 at 7 p.m., and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on March 21 at 6 p.m.

Read more

Out of the Valley

Josh Weil, author of the Sue Kauffman Prize-winning The New Valley, talks with Chapter 16 about the art of the novella

February 24, 2012 Josh Weil’s fearless introspection and his gift for creating layers of complexity in his characters permeate the pages of his award-winning first collection of novellas, The New Valley. Set in the rural environs of the New River Valley between Virginia and West Virginia, Weil’s stories are written in graceful, haunting prose that masterfully evokes the beautiful but isolated and unforgiving nature of rural AppalachiaOn February 27 at 7 p.m., Weil will give a reading in the Hodges Library Auditorium on the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee. Click here for more details.

Read more

Ecstasy and Perversion

Tales of the New World, the new short-story collection by PEN-Faulkner Award winner Sabina Murray, finds the sublime and the beautiful in the legendary ventures of history’s great explorers

February 1, 2012 In her new collection, Tales of the New World, Sabina Murray imagines the minds and hearts of a broad variety of legendary explorers and adventurers, investigating the complex and problematic nature of the urge “to go where no man has gone before.” In prose that is at once fearlessly blunt and stylishly ethereal, Murray recreates the triumphs and tragedies of a cast ranging from Ferdinand Magellan to cult leader Jim Jones. Murray will read from and discuss her work on February 6 at 7 p.m. in the Hodges Library auditorium of the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Read more

Still Discovering

Lorrie Moore talks with Chapter 16 about the “excitements and difficulties” of writing fiction

January 12, 2012 Since her auspicious debut at age twenty-eight with the short-story collection Self-Help, Lorrie Moore has become one of America’s most revered and imitated authors of literary fiction. The recipient of countless awards and honors, including the International Fiction Prize for Birds of America, Moore is among the most influential practitioners of the short-story form. Her most recent novel, A Gate at the Stairs (2009), was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Lorrie Moore will appear at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on January 19 at 4:30 p.m. She answered questions from Chapter 16 via email prior to the event.

Read more

Savage Lunacy, Comical Rage

Wells Tower talks with Chapter 16 about the tensions between fiction and journalism, his recent collaboration with painter John Currin, and his real opinion of chitlins

January 5, 2012 In 2009, Wells Tower exploded onto the American literary landscape with Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, one of the most widely acclaimed debut short-story collections in recent memory. With quirky characters ranging from downtrodden real-estate speculators and Gulf Coast aquarium enthusiasts to lovelorn carnival hands and pillaging medieval Vikings, Everything Ravaged dazzles with the delightful oddity of its settings and especially with Tower’s relentlessly inventive prose. His most recent work includes a series of scathingly satirical short-short stories written for a new coffee-table book of paintings by John Currin. Wells Tower will read from his work at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on January 12, 2012.

Read more

Ribbons of Light

Anthony Doerr’s acclaimed Memory Wall is a graceful meditation on the power of the past

November 15, 2011 Anthony Doerr’s theme is not subtle. His newest story collection, Memory Wall, opens with an epigraph: “Life without memory is no life at all.” The questions raised by the book—How can experience and emotion be preserved for the millions of anonymous, outwardly unremarkable souls who nevertheless strive to live meaningfully? Are we doomed to be erased? What makes memory, and where does it reside?—loom over this haunting and entrancing collection of tales. On November 17 at 7 p.m., Anthony Doerr will read from his work in Buttrick Hall on the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville. The event is free and open to the public.

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