Chapter 16 talks with James McBride, author of the 2016 Nashville Reads selection, The Color of Water
Nearly twenty years have passed since the publication of James McBride’s first book, The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother. The memoir spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list and continues to be a regular selection for city-wide programs.
Read more
Daniel Connolly looks at challenges facing the children of immigrants
Reporter Daniel Connolly spent the 2012-2013 school year at Kingsbury High School in Memphis, where Latino teenagers make up nearly fifty percent of the student population. The Book of Isaias is his account of that year.
Read more
When a judge stopped the presses on Alice Randall’s first novel, Shelby Foote came to her aid
In 2001, when Shelby Foote was one of the writers who wrote to a Georgia judge on my behalf, I was surprised. Having Shelby Foote take my side against the Margaret Mitchell estate was a little like having Ashley take sides against Scarlett with an unacknowledged but not unborn daughter of Mammy’s. Of all the writers who stood with me—Toni Morrison, Pat Conroy, Harper Lee, Ishmael Reed, John Egerton, Tony Earley, Michael Kreyling, Larry McMurtry, and Arthur Schlesinger among them—no one had more to lose than Shelby Foote.
Read more
John Prine talks about songwriting, Nashville, Paradise, and his new book, Beyond Words
John Prine’s first official songbook, Beyond Words, collects sixty of his influential songs. It also offers a treasure trove of family photographs, song manuscripts, and short commentaries that highlight the singer’s incisive wit.
Read more
Ibram X. Kendi discusses Stamped From the Beginning, winner of the National Book Award
In Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, Ibram Kendi offers a panoramic, penetrating vision of a disturbing theme in the nation’s past.
Read more
Lee Smith discusses the challenges and pleasures of writing—and living—over the long haul
Fueled by empathy, precision, and wit, Lee Smith’s fiction opens up the interior worlds of characters whose depths we might least expect, given the everyday circumstances of their Southern lives. Smith spoke with Chapter 16 about her lifelong pursuit of stories that thrive on healthy doses of surprise, conflict, and mischief.
Read more
