Chapter 16 - Part 359

"Cast-Offs"

By Charlotte Pence | March 20, 2015

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.

Marching On

The graphic trilogy March, Congressman John Lewis’s memoir of the American civil-rights movement, continues with a focus on Nashville’s Freedom Riders

By Michael Ray Taylor | March 19, 2015

March 19, 2015 Impressive artwork by Nate Powell, a gripping story by Andrew Aydin, and an eyewitness view of history from U.S. Representative John Lewis combine flawlessly in March: Book Two, the second volume of Lewis’s graphic memoir of the American civil-rights movement. This installment highlights Lewis’s Nashville-based efforts to launch Freedom Riders onto segregated bus lines throughout the South.

Coal Noir

Jason Miller explores the bleak wilds of coal country in Down Don’t Bother Me, a darkly comic take on the hardboiled detective genre

By Ed Tarkington | March 18, 2015

March 18, 2015 Jason Miller’s debut crime novel, Down Don’t Bother Me, is a clever variation on Raymond Chandler-style noir with the blue-collar soul of Chris Offutt and the wry black humor of Tom Waits. Miller will give a reading at Parnassus Books in Nashville at 6:30 p.m. on March 24, 2015, and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis at 6:30 p.m. on March 31.

Love, Survival, and the Power of the Press

LaShonda Katrice Barnett’s Jam on the Vine tells the story of a young black journalist in the Jim Crow era

By Maria Browning | March 17, 2015

March 17, 2014 Ivoe Williams, the heroine of LaShonda Katrice Barnett’s debut novel, Jam on the Vine, is an African-American girl born in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Texas to poor, hardworking parents. The story of Ivoe’s trials and triumphs as an aspiring journalist provides a vivid depiction of the black experience during one of the ugliest periods in American history. Barnett will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 23, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

Making a Necessity of Memory

Poet Natasha Trethewey talks about history, her work, her biracial identity, and the violence in her past

By Maria Browning | March 16, 2015

March 16, 2015 Natasha Trethewey won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2007 for her third book, Native Guard, which explores the complex interplay of personal and collective history. Natasha Trethewey will give a reading at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on March 19, 2015, at 7 p.m. The event, which will be held in Wilson Hall Room 126, is free and open to the public.

Poetry in the Air

On the weekly radio show “Difficult Listening,” David M. Harris shares poetry, music, world news, advice, and memories

By Sarah Norris | March 13, 2015

March 13, 2014 Broadcast on Sunday mornings from 10 a.m. to noon, Radio Free Nashville’s “Difficult Listening” program is hosted by David M. Harris. The show centers on poetry: Harris, a writer himself, reads poems on the air and offers his own interpretations.

Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

By Tore C. Olsson
St. Martin's Press
288 pages
$30

“I recommend Red Dead’s History unreservedly not only to fans of the iconic video game, but also to anyone who wants to understand the riotousness — from Wild West gunslingers to Jim Crow to lynching — that darkened our past, and which continues to influence our culture. Olsson’s prose is graceful, his analysis profound. This is history at its most accessible and exciting.”

~Peter Cozzens, award-winning author of A Brutal Reckoning