Chapter 16 - Part 40

A Lifelong Task

Poet Alicia Ostriker talks to Chapter 16 about wrestling with literary and cultural tradition

By Maria Browning | March 17, 2023

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: An author of both groundbreaking criticism and acclaimed poetry, Alicia Ostriker has devoted much of her work to a feminist transformation of literary and cultural tradition. Whether arguing for recognition of women’s poetry as a genre in its own right or recasting the stories of the Bible from a feminist perspective, Ostriker is a radical with a deep respect for her roots.

Overtime

On Saturdays, we play with their children and pour the tea

By Summer Awad | March 16, 2023

I arrange the clementines on the table next to the store-bought croissants and juice boxes; this has now become a ritual, though not a meditative one.

Affrilachia from A to Z

Frank X Walker’s new picture book pays tribute to Black life in Appalachia

By Julie Danielson | March 15, 2023

Frank X Walker’s A Is for Affrilachia, illustrated by upfromsumdirt, is a picture book for all ages.

A Breath of Fresh Air

John Seigenthaler promoted thoughtful discourse one book at a time

By Tina Chambers | March 14, 2023

A Word on Words: The Best of John Seigenthaler’s Interviews celebrates the significant contribution to the American literary landscape made by Nashville’s John Seigenthaler, a legendary journalist and First Amendment advocate.

Wounded Eagle

Matthew Desmond’s new book dispels myths about poverty in America

By Liz Garrigan | March 13, 2023

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, By America offers a persuasive case that we should all become “poverty abolitionists” who refuse to live as “unwitting enemies of the poor.” Desmond will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 20.

“Daffodils”

Book Excerpt: What Bends Us Blue

By Tom Lombardo | March 10, 2023

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Former Knoxvillian Tom Lombardo is a poet, essayist, and freelance medical writer who lives in Midtown Atlanta. His poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Ambit, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and New York Quarterly, among others. He is the editor of an anthology, After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life Shattering Events, and is the poetry series editor for Press 53. His M.F.A. is from Queens University of Charlotte.

Distant Sons

Tim Johnston
Algonquin Books
400 pages
$29

“Tim Johnston has once again raised the bar for the literary thriller. Distant Sons is elegant and edgy, refined and complex. It excavates the truth from the darkest recesses of the past and shines a light towards the possibility of a redemptive future.”

~ Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women and Sing Her Down