Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Pre-Tennessee

A new essay collection edited by Kristopher Ray provides a scholarly look at Tennessee’s origins

March 26, 2014 In Before the Volunteer State, Kristofer Ray has gathered essays from eight scholars that add layers of complexity to the superficial story Tennesseans learn in school. The real story of Tennessee begins much earlier, in the anthropological records left by Native Americans as they adapted to European contacts. Then came the influx of settlers and frontier fortune hunters, and then the wars. The birth of Tennessee was not as simple, painless, or edifying as we may have thought.

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Leon’s Dog

A Chapter 16 writer considers the complications of kindness

March 25, 2015 One day in early January the weather reports were full of breathless predictions about a brutal cold snap on its way. When I drove by Leon’s house that afternoon I saw the dog out there, and knowing it would soon shiver in a sub-zero wind chill, I suddenly couldn’t take it anymore. It was unbearable to continue doing nothing.

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A Literary Reunion

The Celebration of Southern Literature brings many of the South’s finest writers to Chattanooga

March 23, 2015 The Fellowship of Southern Writers—a group that includes luminaries like Bobbie Ann Mason, Ron Rash, and Natasha Trethewey—will gather in Chattanooga April 16-18, 2015, for the Celebration of Southern Literature, an event that is part writers’ conference, part book festival, and part homecoming for a diverse group of authors who share a connection to the region. Tickets to the biennial event are available now.

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Light, Community, and Motion

Charlotte Pence’s poetry collection examines the parallels between ecology and mental illness

March 20, 2015 In her new poetry collection, Many Small Fires, Charlotte Pence writes about her father’s schizophrenia through the lens of ecology. Pence will read with Adam Prince on March 26, 2015, at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville; with Adam Day on March 27, 2015, at Belmont University in Nashville; and with Bradford Tice on March 30, 2015, at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. All events are free and open to the public.

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"Cast-Offs"

March 20, 2015Charlotte Pence is a poet and critic who received her Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Tennessee. The author of two chapbooks, she has just published her first full-length collection, Many Small Fires. Pence will read with Adam Prince on March 26, 2015, at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville; with Adam Day on March 27, 2015, at Belmont University in Nashville; and with Bradford Tice on March 30, 2015, at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. All events are free and open to the public.

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