Chapter 16 - Part 396

Because It Makes our Hearts Glad

Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Janis Ian talks of mice and music

By Tina LoTufo | October 2, 2013

October 2, 2013 Janis Ian’s new picture book, The Tiny Mouse, marks the singer-songwriter’s first foray into children’s literature, although the two-time Grammy Award-winner is the author of a well-received 2008 autobiography, Society’s Child. Janis Ian will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.

The Joy of Difficult Love

For Andrew Solomon, the real goal of love is to embrace difference

By Beth Waltemath | October 1, 2013

October 1, 2013 In Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity, National Book Award winner Andrew Solomon explores the depths of love as he researches the connection between parents and exceptional children. Today he talks with Chapter 16 about his own journey to parenthood and “the epic narratives of resilience” that shaped his book. Andrew Solomon will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013.

A Flood of Emotion

The Tilted World, a novel by Beth Ann Fennelly and Tom Franklin, sets romance and suspense against the great Mississippi flood of 1927

By Michael Ray Taylor | September 30, 2013

September 30, 2013 The Tilted World, by poet Beth Ann Fennelly and novelist Tom Franklin, is a novel set against the great Mississippi flood of 1927. In the book, their first literary collaboration, male and female protagonists speak in alternating chapters to create a story of both brutal action and satisfying romance. Fennelly and Franklin will appear at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on October 4, 2013, at 5 p.m., and at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013.

Borrow or Buy

Hosted by the Memphis Public Library, the third annual Bookstock festival features forty local authors of books for adults and children

By Sarah Norris | September 27, 2013

September 27, 2013 The third annual Bookstock festival will showcase forty Memphis-area authors representing multiple genres: fiction, poetry, current affairs, children’s books, and more. This free, family-friendly event, which features talks, book signings, live music, cooking demonstrations, and assorted activities for children, will be held at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library in Memphis on October 5, 2013, from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The keynote speech will be delivered by counterterrorism expert Philip Mudd, author of Takedown: Inside the Hunt for Al Qaeda.

Pursuing Ghosts

John Searles’s Help for the Haunted features a teen determined to solve the mystery of her parents’ murders

By Sarah Norris | September 26, 2013

September 26, 2013 Sylvie, the teenaged narrator of John Searles’s searing third novel, Help for the Haunted, awakes to the sound of the gunshots that killed her parents. Left in the care of her older sister, she works to piece together what happened that night—endangering her own life along the way. Searles, author of the bestselling mysteries Boy Still Missing and Strange but True, will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.

Troubled Bones

In a Southern Gothic memoir, Brent Hendricks writes of his pilgrimage to the Tri-State Crematory

By Sarah Norris | September 25, 2013

September 25, 2013 In his debut memoir, A Long Day at the End of the World: A Story of Desecration and Revelation in the Deep South, Brent Hendricks writes about the “largest mass desecration in modern American history” and of learning that his own father’s corpse lay among hundreds of bodies discarded outside at Georgia’s Tri-State Crematory. Hendricks will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.