Chapter 16 - Part 462

A Writer’s Influence

As Richard Bausch prepares to leave Memphis, Chapter 16 pays tribute to the generosity of a beloved author and teacher

By Maria Browning | April 24, 2012

April 24, 2012 Acclaimed writer Richard Bausch has taught at the University of Memphis since 2005. Over the years, he’s also given great time and energy to mentoring writers in the wider community. As he prepares to leave for a new job in California, Chapter 16 considers his legacy of inspiration and support. Richard Bausch will give his farewell reading at the University of Memphis on April 25 at 8 p.m. in the University Center Theater, Room 145.

Gone but Not Forgotten

Rheta Grimsley Johnson looks back on a life entwined with the music of Hank Williams

By Lyda Phillips | April 23, 2012

April 23, 2012 If any singer/songwriter nailed the deep pain and loneliness in the American heart, it’s Hank Williams. He also personified another American artistic tradition: live hard and die young. In Hank Hung the Moon … and Warmed Our Cold, Cold Hearts, former Memphis writer Rheta Grimsley Johnson pays tribute to the artist who wrote the soundtrack of her life.

Charlotte, Sixty Years Later

In an essay for The New York Times Book Review, Michael Sims describes the barn where Charlotte hung her web

By Margaret Renkl | April 23, 2012

April 23, 2012 Michael Sims is a curious—but not a nosy—biographer, as Chapter 16‘s Serenity Gerbman pointed out in her review of Sims’s bestselling 2011 book, The Story of Charlotte’s Web: “White was famously reclusive and—strange as it may seem for a biographer—Sims understands and respects that need for privacy. Allowing White’s words and experiences to speak for themselves, he offers readers a deeper understanding not only of the life and mind that created Charlotte’s Web, but of the creative process that led to the book and of the sheer work it entailed. The Story of Charlotte’s Web is quite literally that: a biography of the book itself. How did it come to be? What forces and experiences throughout White’s life shaped him and converged to bring his timeless classic into being?”

What E-Books Really Cost

If no one’s paying for paper and ink—or binding and shipping and storing—why should a download cost more than a buck? Chapter 16 counts the reasons

By Margaret Renkl | April 20, 2012

April 20, 2012 The Justice Department rode in on a white charger last week to defend the American consumer from predatory pricing in the e-book market. The hitch? Justice wasn’t aiming for Amazon, the online goliath that’s selling e-books at a loss to drive sales of its Kindle e-reader (and, not coincidentally, create a de facto monopoly of the e-book market). Instead, the target is Apple and five U.S. publishers destined for extinction if Amazon realizes what increasingly looks like its ultimate goal: to become an entirely self-contained, in-house publishing industry—Amazon the agent, publisher, distributor, and bookstore. It’s not entirely unreasonable to wonder if, somewhere deep in the bowels of its corporate megalopolis, Amazon is preparing to beta-test an e-author, too.

“The Law is Skinny with Hunger for Us”

Why novelist Kevin Wilson waited for more than a decade to use a single line

By Kevin Wilson | April 19, 2012

April 19, 2012 In my book The Family Fang, one of the main characters listens to a tape recording of his father saying this line: “We live on the edge…a shantytown filled with gold-seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.” It serves as inspiration for the character, Buster, a writer, to begin a new novel. It’s a weird line, a wonderful line, and it’s a line I did not write.

Ann Patchett Is On Another Roll

Ann Pachett lands on the Orange Prize shortlist, publishes an op-ed piece in The New York Times, makes Time magazine’s list of the most influential people in the world, and appears on the PBS NewsHour—and that’s just this week

By Margaret Renkl | April 19, 2012

April 19, 2012 Since last May, when she published a bestselling novel (State of Wonder) and simultaneously announced that she and Karen Hayes were opening a bookstore in Nashville (Parnassus Books, now the most famous independent bookstore in the country), Ann Patchett has been having what she calls “a media-heavy moment.” In fact it’s been a media-heavy year, and the spotlight shows no sign of dimming. Patchett has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize, written an op-ed piece for The New York Times, made Time magazine’s list of the hundred most influential people in the world, and appeared on the PBS NewsHour—all in less than thirty-six hours.

Isabel and the Invisible World

By Alan Lightman, illustrated by Ramona Kaulitzki
MIT Kids Press
40 pages
$18.99

“In simple, engaging language, complemented by luminous artwork from best-selling illustrator Ramona Kaulitzki, author and physicist Alan Lightman unveils the hidden world of light waves—the ones you can see and the ones you can’t.”

~ the publisher