Chapter 16 - Part 352

Scared and Ashamed and Full of Hope

In The Heaven of Animals, David James Poissant limns the lives of the thwarted

By Ed Tarkington | November 13, 2014

November 13, 2014 David James Poissant’s delicately crafted stories of human longing and loss have earned him comparisons to Richard Ford and Anton Chekhov. In his debut collection, The Heaven of Animals, Poissant paints a broad canvas populated by a memorable cast of hard-luck cases. He will appear at the University of Tennessee’s Hodges Library in Knoxville on November 17, 2014, at 7 p.m.

Alone in the Locker Room, Bleeding

Andrew Maraniss’s Strong Inside is a superb biography of SEC basketball pioneer Perry Wallace

By Clay Risen | November 12, 2014

November 12, 2014 Like any great biography, Andrew Maraniss’s Strong Inside concerns more than just its subject. It is also a history of Vanderbilt, of Nashville, of the SEC; a history of basketball and Southern sports culture and how they clashed with the civil-rights movement. Above all it is a meditation on the personal price of progress, about what happens to the people we ask to be racial pioneers, and what we—as whites, as blacks—owe them in return. Maraniss will discuss Strong Inside at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 19, 2014, at 6:30 p.m. The discussion will be moderated by Mayor Karl Dean.

On the Record

In Sound Man, Glyn Johns recalls his many encounters with rock’n’roll royalty

By Randy Fox | November 11, 2014

November 11, 2014 As a successful recording engineer, producer, and sound mixer, Glyn Johns has spent more than five decades in the music business. In Sound Man, he offers a string of entertaining anecdotes about rock’n’roll royalty. Johns will appear at the Nashville Public Library on November 18, 2014, at 6:15 p.m. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.

A Little Back-Up from the Dead

With A Sudden Light, Garth Stein delves into a ghost story with historical and ecological ripples

By Emily Choate | November 10, 2014

November 10, 2014 In Garth Stein’s new novel, A Sudden Light, fourteen-year-old Trevor and his father head west during a time of family crisis. In a fight over the fate of Riddell House, the crumbling mansion built from their family’s timber fortune, conflicting agendas of both the dead and the living come to light. Stein, the bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain, will discuss A Sudden Light at the Nashville Public Library on November 14, 2014, at 6:15 p.m.

“Elemental”

By Bill Brown | November 7, 2014

November 7, 2014 Bill Brown grew up in West Tennessee ten miles from the Mississippi River. He is the author of nine poetry collections and a creative-writing textbook. His new book of poems, Elemental, has just been released. He will read from it at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 8, 2014, at 2 p.m.

The Hamster Express

Legendary author-illustrator Chris Van Allsburg talks with Chapter 16 about his newest picture book

By Julie Danielson | November 5, 2014

November 5, 2014 Chris Van Allsburg’s newest picture book, The Misadventures of Sweetie Pie, tells the story of one hamster’s journey from pet shop to freedom—with stops at various cages along the way. Van Allsburg will appear at the Nashville Public Library on November 12, 2014, at 6:15 p.m. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.

Tender Headed (National Poetry Series)

By Olatunde Osinaike
Akashic Books
80 pages
17.95

“In Tender Headed, Olatunde Osinaike asks the question, what makes a man, and what makes a man like me? As he interrogates the inner and outer workings of masculinity in all its sharp and tender parts, and the way a Black man meets the world, his poems strut and duck and weave across their pages. These poems unpack the ingredients of being and make a meal of language.”

~ Camille Rankine, author of Incorrect Merciful Impulses