Chapter 16 - Part 406

From Libya to the Academy of American Poets—By Way of Tennessee

Khaled Mattawa has been named co-chancellor of the nation’s largest nonprofit poetry organization

By Margaret Renkl | January 17, 2014

January 17, 2014 Poet and translator Khlaled Mattawa left Libya when when he was fourteen, the year after Muammar Gaddafi’s forces began hanging “traitors” in the public square of Benghazi, Mattawa’s home city. Mattawa settled in Chattanooga, where he later graduated from UTC before going on to study creative writing at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. In the years since, his commitment to both his homeland and to poetry has not waned.

“Watching a Woman on the M101 Express”

By Kamilah Aisha Moon | January 16, 2014

January 16, 2014 Nashville native Kamilah Aisha Moon has earned fellowships to the Prague Summer Writing Institute; the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts; Cave Canem; and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has appeared in the Harvard Review, jubilat, and the Oxford American, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Moon will appear—along with TJ Jarrett and Beth Bachman —at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 21 at 6:30 p.m.

Whose God Will Prevail?

In Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods, Inc., African deities become pawns in the global market

By Sean Kinch | January 15, 2014

January 15, 2014 In Okey Ndibe’s new novel, Foreign Gods, Inc., a Nigerian-American on the brink of bankruptcy decides to steal the war god from his African village and sell it to a Manhattan art dealer. This scheme leads him into the middle of religious and political conflicts that force him to decide where his deepest loyalties lie. Ndibe will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 19, 2014, at 2 p.m.

In The Name of Love

Eric Dahl traces B.B. King’s everlasting affair with Lucille

By Stephen Trageser | January 14, 2014

January 14, 2014 In B.B. King’s Lucille and the Loves Before Her, lifelong blues fan and guitar collector Eric Dahl pays tribute to the regal bluesman and the close relationship he shares with Lucille, his guitar and trusted sidekick of more than sixty years. Dahl will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 16, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.

Like Taking a Writer’s Yearbook Picture

Dwight Garner talks with Chapter 16 about being one of the last full-time book critics in the country

By Margaret Renkl | January 13, 2014

January 13, 2014 It’s not easy to find a silver lining in the decline of local literary coverage across the country, but if there must be only a handful of full-time book critics working today, it’s good news, at least, that one of them is Dwight Garner, who writes for the daily New York Times. Prior to his appearance at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on January 16, 2014, at 7 p.m. in Buttrick Hall, Room 101, Garner answered questions from Chapter 16. The event is free and open to the public.

Social Death and Its Afterlives

Lisa Guenther contemplates solitary confinement—historically, socially, and philosophically

By Ralph Bowden | January 9, 2014

January 9, 2014 Nashville author Lisa Guenther, an associate professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, describes solitary confinement as “one of the simplest and most devastating” ways to destroy a person. In her exhaustive new book, Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives, Guenther gives an historical overview of solitary confinement in the U.S., discusses theories concerning its use, and examines the role of race in its application.

I Gotta Sing!

By Alice Faye Duncan
WaterBrook
40 pages
$14.99

“A whole barnyard makes noise ‘in the Spirit of joy’ throughout this raucous picture book, a sweetly heartwarming sing-along by Duncan. Kellam conveys comfort and happiness as the loved ones reflect sunny enthusiasm in this gladdening rendition of the Black American religious folk song ‘I’m Goin’a Sing When the Spirit Says Sing.’”

~Publishers Weekly