Chapter 16 - Part 461

Literary Olympians

Adam Ross’s “In the Basement” is shortlisted for the BBC International Short Story Award

By Margaret Renkl | September 18, 2012

September 17, 2012 To celebrate the 2012 Olympics. the BBC National Short Story Award has this year become the BBC International Short Story Award, and Nashville’s Adam Ross is the only U.S. author to make the shortlist. The finalists were announced in a live BBC broadcast on Friday. Ross’s story, “In the Basement,” appears in Ladies and Gentlemen, a short-story collection just released in paperback.

Writing Back to Charlotte Brontë

Margot Livesey talks with Chapter 16 about The Flight of Gemma Hardy, a novel inspired by Jane Eyre

By Maria Browning | September 17, 2012

September 17, 2012 Scottish-born writer Margot Livesey first read Jane Eyre at the age of nine, and the book has been a literary touchstone for her ever since. After publishing six acclaimed novels, Livesey has returned to Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece and re-created its archetypal heroine as a young woman in 1960s Scotland. The Flight of Gemma Hardy draws heavily on the spirit of Jane Eyre yet tells an original story of struggle, secrets, and love that stands beautifully on its own. Livesey recently answered questions from Chapter 16 about, as she puts it, “writing in the shadow” of a classic. She will discuss The Flight of Gemma Hardy at the twenty-fourth annual Southern Festival of Books, held October 12-14 at Legislative Plaza in Nashville. All events are free and open to the public.

The City of Lights—and Annoyances

For Rosecrans Baldwin, living in Paris wasn’t exactly everything he’d dreamed it would be

By Clay Risen | September 14, 2012

September 14, 2012 Rosecrans Baldwin was a budding writer in New York when, in 2007, he moved with his wife to Paris for a job in advertising. Like many Americans, Baldwin had a romantic vision of what his Paris life would be like; what it was actually like, from the bad coffee to the bad fashion to the bad manners—not to mention countless absurdly beautiful, and beautifully absurd, moments in between—forms the basis of his second book, Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down. He will at the twenty-fourth annual Southern Festival of Books, held October 12-14 at Legislative Plaza in Nashville. All events are free and open to the public.

“I Shall Never Have a Friend Like Her”

With a superbly edited collection of letters, Irene Goldman-Price offers fresh insight into the life of novelist Edith Wharton

By Maria Browning | September 12, 2012

September 12, 2012 In 1873, when Edith Wharton was eleven years old, her parents hired a young governess named Anna Bahlmann. The two developed a close relationship that lasted until Bahlmann’s death forty-two years later. In My Dear Governess: The Letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann, Irene Goldman-Price traces the disparate but intertwined lives of the two women through their correspondence, offering a new picture of Wharton’s early years. Goldman-Price will join novelist Jennie Fields, author of The Age of Desire, for “A Talk on Edith Wharton” on September 20 at 6:15 p.m. at the Nashville Public Library, as part of the Salon@615 series. The event is free and open to the public.

A New Editor for the Oxford American

Sewanee grad Roger D. Hodge is only the second editor in OA‘s twenty-year history

By Margaret Renkl | September 12, 2012

September 11, 2012 During its twenty-year history, the Oxford American has become famous for two things: brilliant writing and recurrent turmoil. Founded by editor Marc Smirnoff in 1992, the literary magazine has always struggled to maintain solvency, shutting down more than once, seemingly for good, only to be revived again months later when Smirnoff somehow managed, against all odds, to secure more funding.

Before, When We Were Young

The past is a nightmare in Peter Heller’s terrifying, funny, heart-breaking, and suspenseful debut novel

By Tina LoTufo | September 11, 2012

September 11, 2012 Imagine a decent, ordinary, hard-working guy who just wants to be a good husband and hang out with his dog and go trout fishing once in a while. Then imagine that guy in his 1956 Cessna 182 airplane, flying over the brutal, lawless rubble of civilization’s end. Where would he go? How would he survive? What would he become? That’s the premise of award-winning adventure writer Peter Heller’s wonderful debut novel, The Dog Stars. Heller will discuss the book at the twenty-fourth annual Southern Festival of Books, held October 12-14 at Legislative Plaza in Nashville. All events are free and open to the public.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher