October 20, 2010 Novelist and anthologist Sonny Brewer may have hit upon the best-ever idea for an essay collection. Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit contains accounts by Pat Conroy, John Grisham, Winston Groom, and a score of other Southern writers on the sorts of work they did on their way to becoming professional writers.
September 20, 2010 In Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway, Matt Dellinger writes about an unlikely subject: a highway linking Canada to Mexico that may never be completed. (In Tennessee, for example, I-69 remains nothing more than a page of maps and studies on the state Department of Transportation website.) Touted as the “NAFTA Highway” after the North American Free Trade Agreement, the highway is, like the trade deal, controversial, and in that conflict Dellinger has found a story. Matt Dellinger will discuss Interstate 69 at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on September 23 at 6 p.m. and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on September 24 at 2 p.m.
June 23, 2010 David Baldacci. Stuart Woods. Lisa Gardner. Besides churning out at least one thriller a year, all have created a series featuring a particular set of characters, only to move on to a whole new series at the height of their bestselling success. Once the second series wins fans, the writers merge the two worlds, with new books in which protagonist A meets protagonist B, sidekick C competes with sidekick D, and the bad guys are all over the place. Plots and past histories weave together like the final season of Lost, and only dedicated fans can follow the nuances. But with a crime writer as sophisticated as Karin Slaughter, the collision of two worlds can blossom into something as complex as a Bach fugue—something that is ultimately just as beautiful and satisfying. Slaughter will sign copies of her new book, Broken, at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on June 23 at 7 p.m.
June 14, 2010 On Monday, June 7, the war in Afghanistan became the longest in U.S. history, surpassing the eight and a half years the nation officially spent in Vietnam. As in that seemingly endless conflict, American troops in Afghanistan face a determined guerilla resistance that exploits hostile terrain to maximum advantage. Combat casualties have been heavy, and nowhere heavier than in the Korengal Valley, which sits about fifty miles due north of the Khyber Pass. Hellishly hot in the summer, bitterly cold in the winter, it is a place where foreign fighters infiltrate from the high peaks of Pakistan, paying local herdsman five dollars a day to take pot-shots at Americans crouched in tiny outposts. Sebastian Junger, author of the nonfiction bestsellers The Perfect Storm and A Death in Belmont, traveled to the Korengal Valley in 2007 and 2008 on assignment for Vanity Fair, to produce a series of articles on the most active combat unit within the U.S. Army. His reporting became the basis for War, a fascinating book that chronicles the daily practice of war. He will be in Memphis to discuss the book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on June 15 at 6 p.m.
May 17, 2010 If anyone ever had a finger on the pulse of Southern literature, that person is Sonny Brewer. The Alabama native is the author of four acclaimed novels and editor of the series Stories from the Blue Moon Café: Anthologies of Southern Writers. But perhaps his closest connections to the living literature of the South are Over the Transom Bookstore in Fairhope, Alabama, which he owns, and the nonprofit Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts, which he chairs. All of this connectivity to working Southern writers has led Brewer to a new kind of anthology: one about Southern writers at work. As in working at actual, sweaty jobs. Chapter 16 recently spoke with Brewer about the new book, The Railroad as Art: Southern Writers and Day Jobs, to be published in October by M.P. Publishing.
April 26, 2010 In summer 2008, Ace Atkins, author of three previous thrillers based on historical events, was in Memphis researching a new book. While he was at the courthouse one day, a clerk mentioned having stumbled across the file of George “Machine Gun” Kelly, who was arrested in South Memphis in 1933 after a nation-wide manhunt by the fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigation. Atkins was intrigued and asked for a copy of the file. By the time he was finished reading, he had set aside the novel he was working on in favor of what would become Infamous, a cinematic true story that reads like classic film noir with a dash of Coen brothers. Atkins will read from the book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on April 26 at 6 p.m.
