A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Round Two

By Margaret Renkl

June 9, 2011 Last June, Adam Ross’s debut novel, Mr. Peanut, inspired critical assessments like “ingenious,” “brilliant,” “riveting,” “audacious,” “arresting,” “forceful,” “involving,” “stirring,” “original,” “harrowing,” “bleakly convincing,” “unflinching,” and “mesmerizing.” A year later, the Nashville author is back with Ladies and Gentlemen, a new collection of short stories. Due on shelves June 28, it considers many of the same questions raised in Mr. Peanut: the human temptation to cruelty, the simultaneously redemptive and damning nature of passion, the difficulty in forging an integrated and identifiable self from disparate and sometimes self-contradictory impulses and desires. Today Ross offers Chapter 16 readers a sneak peak at the collection and answers questions about the book.

Dudes, Locked in a Dudely Power Struggle

By Margaret Renkl

June 3, 2011 “Anything So Utterly Destroyed” by Elizabeth McClellan, a Gallatin-based poet and University of Memphis law student, has been nominated for a 2011 Rhysling Award by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. The Rhysling is a prize given to the best science-fiction, fantasy, or horror poem published during the previous year.

Rock the Revolution

By Margaret Renkl

June 1, 2011 At thirteen, an age when many kids are developing the musical preferences they will carry with them for a lifetime, Khaled Mattawa emigrated to the U.S., eventually graduating from the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga and going on to graduate studies in creative writing at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Now an acclaimed poet, Mattawa left his native Libya after Muammar Qaddafi seized power, but he carried Libya’s music with him.

For the Fallen

By Margaret Renkl

May 31, 2011 Last night in commemoration of Memorial Day, PBS closed The News Hour with a feature on Sewanee poet Wyatt Prunty, whose poem “The Returning Dead” was inspired by the program’s nightly “honor roll” of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The program first aired in 2006.) Prunty is no stranger to combat—he served in Vietnam—though he claims no heroics: “I was a nearsighted gunnery officer, and I don’t think I hurt anyone,” he explains in an introduction to his reading of the poem. It begins this way:

A Gentleman Goes to Hollywood

By Margaret Renkl

May 27, 2011 Last February, Chapter 16 reported that David Hornsby, writer and executive producer of the FX series It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, was producing a comedy pilot based on the bestselling etiquette guides by Nashville-based writer John Bridges. Now CBS has announced that How to Be a Gentleman will be its lead sitcom this fall.

BEA Swag

By Margaret Renkl

May 25, 2011 Many literary awards ceremonies are held in connection with BookExpo America, the annual trade show of the North American publishing industry, and this year Tennessee made a strong showing at both the Audies, which honors a variety of titles in audiobook format, and at the Children’s Book and Author Breakfast, hosted by the Women’s National Book Association, where this year’s Pannell Awards—one to a general bookstore and one to a children’s specialty store—are announced.

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