Chapter 16 - Part 426

Be Reconciled

Remembering Will D. Campbell, author, preacher, and civil-rights activist

By John Egerton | June 28, 2013

June 28, 2013 Two of Tennessee’s most senior nonfiction authors, Will D. Campbell and John Egerton, reached the close of a half-century of companionship this month when Campbell died from complications of a stroke on June 3, 2013. At a memorial service on June 22 at St. Stephen Catholic Community in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, Egerton eulogized his friend and “fellow writer of rare books” with this remembrance.

“Like Loss Big”

It’s hard to translate the need to leave an Indonesian village for a grandmother’s deathbed half the world away

By Sophie Sanders | June 27, 2013

June 27, 2013 It’s wonderful to know that one can mean so much to so many in such a small place. Later, looking out the plane window, I think of all the little villages past the lights of Surabaya, each little school just a dot on an island just a dot on the world. So many dots, so much love to offer. Plop a Peace Corps volunteer in the dot and watch the love tumble in.

“Summer’s End”

By Janice Hornburg | June 26, 2013

June 26, 2013 Janice Hornburg is a native Texan who moved to East Tennessee in 1993. A graduate of Houston Baptist University, she is employed as a clinical research scientist involved in the FDA approval of new drugs. Her poems have won first-place awards from the Poetry Society of Tennessee, The Poetry Society of Texas, the Poetry Society of Virginia, the Watauga Branch of the National League of American Pen Women, and Green River Writers; and her work has appeared in a number of anthologies and literary journals . “Summer’s End” is an excerpt from Perspectives, which has just been released.

The Original

James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men grew from a 1936 magazine article that was never published—until now

By Maria Browning | June 25, 2013

June 25, 2013 In 1936, James Agee wrote an article for Fortune that was never published in the magazine but eventually became his landmark book with photographer Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Presumed lost until it was uncovered in Agee’s papers in 2003, the original article—with a new selection of Evans’s photos—has just been released as Cotton Tenants: Three Families, a graceful and impassioned piece of journalism that powerfully conveys the human cost of a cruel economic system.

At the Intersection of Luxury and Simplicity

By Stephen Usery | June 24, 2013

June 24, 2013 Today, Memphis native Dana Sachs talks with Chapter 16 about her second novel, The Secret of Nightingale Palace. Sachs is a former journalist and the author of five books, including the nonfiction titles like The House on Dream Street and The Life We Were Given. The Secret of Nightingale Palace follows the struggles of thirty-five-year-old Anna.

Road Trip with Grandma

In her new novel, Memphis native Dana Sachs explores the quirks of memory

By Faye Jones | June 24, 2013

June 24, 2013 Anna Rosenthal is a thirty-five-year-old widow who can’t seem to move on with her life. Enter her estranged grandmother, Goldie, who demands that Anna drive her across country to return a set of Japanese prints that have been in her possession since World War II. The resulting journey could take the form of either farce or tragedy, but Dana Sachs makes The Secret of the Nightingale Palace a much more nuanced look at love, loss, and the secrets every life holds.

Tias and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women Who Raise Us

By Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, illustrated by Josie Del Castillo
Seal Press
304 pages
$30

“Within these pages, I found my abuela, my tías and my primas — laughing, crying, and nodding alongside me. This book is a gift of understanding, and loving one’s family, even when our families are complicated and painful. It’s a beautiful reminder of the power of storytelling and the profound connection of kinship.”

~ Paola Mendoza, author, organizer and filmmaker