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.
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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.
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Novelist and scholar Richard Marius hauntingly recalls the farm where he grew up in East Tennessee
This essay originally appeared in Touchstone, a publication of Humanities Tennessee, in 1986.
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Jane Hirshfield talks with Chapter 16 about poetry’s timelessness, camouflage in nature, and why she doesn’t need to be “pop-culture hip”
Celebrated poet Jane Hirshfield talks with Chapter 16 about her new poetry collection, The Beauty, and her new essay collection, Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World.
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Vince Vawter takes young readers on a road trip to the Mississippi Delta
Copyboy, the new middle-grade novel by Vince Vawter, is a sequel worthy of its exceptional predecessor, Paperboy, a 2014 Newbery Honor Book. Vawter will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on July 31 and at East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville on August 7.
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Book Excerpt: Speak, My Tongue
Chattanooga poet Carrie Meadows grew up around leather workers, doll makers, quilters, and tall-tale tellers who taught her the importance of straight stitches and good stories. On July 15 Meadows will give a reading at the Hexagon Brewing Company in Knoxville as part of the SAFTA Reading Series.
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