Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Bringing up the Dead

Lorrie Moore discusses death, humor, and her sensational new novel

I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home braids the diary of a 19th-century spinster with a modern-day road trip story. With her signature dry humor and mastery of metaphor, Lorrie Moore leaves bodies in her wake.

Read more

An Enlightened Message

In Nature’s Messenger, Patrick Dean follows an 18th-century naturalist of the American South

Nature’s Messenger: Mark Catesby and His Adventures in a New World, the second book from Sewanee-based writer Patrick Dean, relates the history of a little-known man and his greatest achievement. 

Read more

Poetry of Goodbye

Linda Parsons’ Valediction gives form to final farewells.

In Valediction: Poems and Prose, Linda Parsons meditates on what is essential in life as she weeds the garden, weathers a pandemic, and weighs her personal losses. Parsons will read from her work at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on June 24.

Read more

Wonder Boy of the South

Author William Walker waves the final flag on the death of Indy racing legend Pete Kreis

In The Last Lap, William Walker offers an unforgettable look at Pete Kreis’ life and death on the Indy racing circuit and an engrossing history of the birth and rise of the sport.

Read more

The Sublime and the Ridiculous

Frank Bascombe returns for a final road trip in Richard Ford’s Be Mine

Richard Ford’s latest Frank Bascombe novel, Be Mine, marks Frank’s fifth and purportedly final curtain call as whimsical Everyman, shrewdly dissecting the shifting landscape of American life and his uncertain place in it.

Read more

A Vessel for the Story

Alice Faye Duncan’s books chronicle Black perseverance, past and present

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Two nonfiction books for children by Memphis writer Alice Faye Duncan illuminate “what it means to be free.” 

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