Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Bless This Home

Chapter 16 is proud to present the winning story in the Nashville Reads fiction contest

March 27, 2014 Rosie Forrest holds an M.F.A. from the University of New Hampshire, and her stories have appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Whiskey Island, Ampersand Review, and Bite: An Anthology of Flash Fiction. The 2013 writer-in-residence at Interlochen Arts Academy, she now serves as an academic and residential coordinator with Vanderbilt Programs for Talented Youth. Along with other winners of the Nashville Reads story contest, Rosie Forrest will read “Bless This Home” at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 30, 2014, at 2 p.m.

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Finding a Bigger Mirror

Karen Joy Fowler talks about We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, the Nashville Reads book selection for 2014

March 26, 2013 Hilarious and heartbreaking, poignant and absurd, Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is the Nashville Reads book selection for 2014. The novel asks readers to consider the ways in which all creatures are connected and responsible to one another. Fowler answered questions from Chapter 16 in advance of her appearance at the Nashville Public Library on April 1, 2014, at 6:15 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

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A Voice of Exile

In Patrick O’Keeffe’s The Visitors, an Irish immigrant finds that home is inescapable

March 25, 2014 In his debut novel, The Visitors, Patrick O’Keeffe tells the story of a modern-day Irish immigrant who finds that the secrets and conflicts of his home village follow him to America, haunting his thoughts and pulling him toward a troubling encounter with a boyhood nemesis. Patrick O’Keeffe will discuss The Visitors at the University of Tennessee’s Hodges Library in Knoxville on March 31, 2014, at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

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Lambs Among Wolves

Susan Minot’s vivid new novel imagines a Ugandan rebel group’s abduction of thirty adolescent girls

March 24, 2014 Susan Minot’s new novel, Thirty Girls, is based on the 1996 kidnapping of Ugandan schoolgirls by warlord Joseph Kony and his army. Minot will join fiction writer Lorrie Moore in a joint reading at Nashville’s Montgomery Bell Academy on March 29, 2014, at 4 p.m. This event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.

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Profound Activities of the Mind

Prior to her Memphis appearance, Shakespearean scholar Marjorie Garber talks with Chapter 16 about the pleasures of reading and the value of the humanities

March 20, 2014 Marjorie Garber believes that the way we read Shakespeare’s plays tells us as much about ourselves as it does about the Bard himself. In an interview with Chapter 16, Garber discusses her approach to Shakespeare, her love of literature, and her commitment to intellectual speculation. She will speak at Rhodes College in Memphis on March 27, 2014, at 7 p.m. Her talk, “Occupy Shakespeare: Shakespeare and/in the Humanities,” is free and open to the public.

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Giving Gifts to Keep As Long as You Live

Stephen Wade discusses the stories behind the classic folk recordings in his book, The Beautiful Music All Around Us

March 18, 2014 In The Beautiful Music All Around Us: Field Recordings and the American Experience, Stephen Wade unearths the stories behind classic Library of Congress folk recordings. In thirteen involving narratives, he demonstrates how cultural forces and personal experiences combined in a few brief moments behind a microphone to create powerful musical legacies.

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