Chapter 16 - Part 23

Laugh Lines

Poet Andrew Hudgins dives into the deep end of humor with his memoir, The Joker

By Maria Browning | July 24, 2013

July 24, 2013 Andrew Hudgins is a distinguished poet and scholar, and he’s also a lifelong, inveterate teller of jokes. In his memoir, The Joker, he tells the story of his life through the jokes that marked its passages. Today he talks with Chapter 16 about what makes a great joke and why we need to look at the ugly side of humor. Hudgins will appear on July 27, 2013, at 4:15 p.m. at the Bairnwick Women’s Center on the campus of The University of the South in Sewanee. The event, part of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, is free and open to the public.

The Original

James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men grew from a 1936 magazine article that was never published—until now

By Maria Browning | June 25, 2013

June 25, 2013 In 1936, James Agee wrote an article for Fortune that was never published in the magazine but eventually became his landmark book with photographer Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Presumed lost until it was uncovered in Agee’s papers in 2003, the original article—with a new selection of Evans’s photos—has just been released as Cotton Tenants: Three Families, a graceful and impassioned piece of journalism that powerfully conveys the human cost of a cruel economic system.

Taking the Prize

Ann Patchett, David Haskell, Adam Ross, and Margaret Lazarus Dean are among the many Tennessee writers who have taken honors this year

By Maria Browning | June 21, 2013

June 21, 2013 Tennessee writers have garnered a host of awards and honors in recent months. Chapter 16 runs down the list of prizewinners: Richard Bausch, Kate Daniels, Margaret Lazarus Dean, David Haskell, Silas House, Kristen Iversen, Jane Landers, Ann Patchett, Katherine Paterson, and Daniel Sharfstein.

Hymns to Passion

Marilyn Kallet’s new poems explore the lighter and darker sides of love

By Maria Browning | April 8, 2013

April 8, 2013 Dante, Beatrice, and Baudelaire help Marilyn Kallet explore modern love in her new poetry collection, The Love That Moves Me. In connection with the book’s launch, Kallet will give several readings in Knoxville: on April 10 in the Goins Buidling Auditorium at Pellissippi State Community College, on April 15 at the Hodges Library Auditorium on the University of Tennessee campus, and on April 21 at Union Ave. Books. Kallet will share the PSCC and UT readings with poet Arthur Smith. Click here for event details.

Diverse Voices

Debut collections from poets Will Schutt and Joshua Robbins strike distinctly different tones

By Maria Browning | April 5, 2013

April 5, 2013 Debut collections from two acclaimed Tennessee poets display a healthy diversity of sensibilities in contemporary American poetry. Will Schutt’s Westerly and Joshua Robbins’s Praise Nothing deliver elegantly crafted verse and moving insight, but their perspectives are vastly different. Joshua Robbins will appear at Union Ave Books in Knoxville on April 7 at 3 p.m. He and Will Schutt will appear together at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 13 at 2 p.m.

A Living Being

Poet Richard Tillinghast has written a lively, insightful guide to the ancient city of Istanbul

By Maria Browning | March 25, 2013

March 25, 2013 Richard Tillinghast is a Memphis native and dedicated wanderer who has been visiting the city of Istanbul for nearly five decades. A veteran travel writer as well as an acclaimed poet, he has penned an insightful and entertaining guide to this ancient city. An Armchair Traveller’s History of Istanbul: City of Forgetting and Remembering combines a survey of Istanbul’s past with an insider’s tour of the city today to create a fascinating book for travelers and homebodies alike.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher