Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

(Not) Between the Sheets

On book tour for Between Shades of Gray, YA novelist Ruta Sepetys is attracting some bewildered guests

May 17, 2012 Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on whether you’re referring to literary artistry or raw book sales—Between Shades of Gray by Nashville novelist Ruta Sepetys is frequently being confused with a novel by a similar name: Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James. Both authors are on book tour this spring. Sepety’s book is a YA novel about a young girl’s incarceration in Stalin’s death camps. James’s is about… something else.

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Where the Wild Things Are

In connection with a show at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Mark W. Scala considers the unsettling side of human imagination

May 14, 2012 Mark W. Scala’s Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination, a beautiful catalog for an art exhibition, is both invigorating and disturbing. It’s invigorating because it isn’t another business-as-usual record of a museum playing it safe with crowd-pleasers like the Impressionists but rather a lively demonstration of a museum engaged with the primordial dark side of the human psyche. It’s disturbing for the same reason, and it’s meant to be. “Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination” runs through May 28 at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville.

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Fighting the Summer Slide

At the Children’s Festival of Reading, Knoxville hosts a star-studded lineup of authors that will turn kids on to books

May 11, 2012 A celebration of children’s literature held annually in downtown Knoxville, the Children’s Festival of Reading is the Knox County Public Library’s way of rallying interest in summer reading. Founded eight years ago, the festival combats the too-common notion among kids that reading is a chore or punishment, something they do only when a teacher makes them. But even while reminding kids of the pleasures of reading, the festival also speaks to something teachers see as a critical problem: the “summer slide,” a loss of academic skills that often happens when students are out of the classroom for weeks in a row. The Children’s Festival of Reading will take place on May 19 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at World’s Fair Park in Knoxville. All events are free and open to the public.

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The Music of Suffering

In The Cove, acclaimed novelist Ron Rash returns to the mountains of Western North Carolina to deliver a haunting story of doomed love in the shadow of World War I

May 10, 2012 “If you haven’t already found a woman who will break your heart, find one,” writes Ron Rash in his new novel. “The suffering will be good for you.” A spare, lyrical novel, The Cove juxtaposes the legendarily haunted and severe environs of the Blue Ridge Mountains with the simmering anxiety of the Great War. Rash will read from and discuss The Cove at Nashville Public Library on May 16, as part of the Salon@615 series . The event will begin with a reception at 6:15 p.m., followed by a reading at 6:45. Both are free and open to the public.

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Hit City

In a new memoir, Loretta Lynn recalls her own life through the lyrics of her songs

May 9, 2012 Loretta Lynn’s rise to fame epitomizes the quintessential American dream, but with a uniquely Appalachian slant. A coal miner’s daughter who was, as her number-one hit explains, “born in a cabin on a hill in Butcher Hollow,” Lynn married at thirteen and had four children by eighteen. Despite this far-from-glamorous beginning, she has recorded sixteen number-one hits and sent seventy songs up the country charts. And at age seventy-seven, she continues to write and record crafted, heartfelt songs. It’s only fitting that Loretta Lynn’s newest memoir tells the story of her life through the medium that made her famous: her songs. In Honky Tonk Girl: My Life in Lyrics, Lynn collects 300 of her lyrics, glossing many of them with anecdotes that explain their genesis. Loretta Lynn will appear at the Ryman Auditorium on May 10 at as part of Opry Country Classics.

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