Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Erica Ciccarone

Gut Reaction

Weike Wang’s Chemistry is a coming-of-age novel set in a science lab

A young scientist navigates the big questions of career, family, and self in the luminous debut novel, Chemistry, by Weike Wang. On June 1 at Parnassus Books in Nashville, Wang will join Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers, in a conversation moderated by Ann Patchett.

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God’s Gonna Trouble the Water

In Midnight Without a Moon, Linda Williams Jackson considers the civil-rights movement through the eyes of a feisty teenage girl

Thirteen-year-old Rose Lee Carter knows that the Jim Crow South has to change, but she’s not sure she wants to be the one to do it. Linda Williams Jackson makes a stunning debut with her middle-grade historical novel, Midnight Without a Moon.

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Murder in the Yogurt Shop

A cold case warms up as Beverly Lowry disentangles a web of accusations and false confessions

whokilledthesegirlsBeverly Lowry’s Who Killed These Girls? chronicles the cold case of the Yogurt Shop Murders, from crime to false confessions, that left Austin a changed city. Lowry will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 14-15.

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Four Brooklyn Girls

Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn meditates on the nature of friendship, love, and loss

AnotherBrooklyn HC CWith Another Brooklyn, celebrated children’s author Jacqueline Woodson has written her first novel for adult readers in twenty years—the coming-of-age story of four Brooklyn girls determined not to be defined by their family’s tragedies. Woodson will speak at the Nashville Public Library on September 7, 2016, and at Crosstown Arts in Memphis on September 8. Both events are free and open to the public.

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More than “Stormy Weather”

Gail Lumet Buckley’s family history provides a window into the long movement for black liberation

The Black CalhounsGail Lumet Buckley, daughter of Lena Horne, tells her family’s story from emancipation through the civil-rights era in The Black Calhouns. This sharply epic family saga is interwoven with the history of black American intellectuals and their movements for racial justice. Buckley will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 14-16, 2016. All festival events are free and open to the public.

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Topical, Not Timeless

Rhodes College professor David McCarthy writes a history of protest art in America

April 25, 2016 In American Artists Against War, Rhodes College professor David McCarthy serves up a history of protest with artists at its center.

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