Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

"Not Just Politics and Arts and Athletics"

Nashville novelist Alice Randall considers Black History Month through the literature of the kitchen

February 29, 2012 “Black history is not just politics and arts and athletics,” writes Nashville novelist Alice Randall in a new essay for The Huffington Post; it’s also “sweet potatoes and peanuts. It’s taste and bellies and bodies. It’s all the recipes for survival that appear in cookbooks written by Black American authors.”

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No Pretense

With William Gay, there was a real sense that he had survived this life by the skin of his teeth

February 29, 2012 It all began with a Christmas gift of Provinces of Night from my neighbors, Diana and Gary Fisketjon. I’m not sure which of them told me it was an important book, but coming from either of them it was high praise. Whatever I was already reading that Christmas, I soon put it aside as I began to lose myself in William Gay’s powerful novel.

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Artist, Activist, Icon

In his memoir, The Last Holiday, musician/poet Gil Scott-Heron traces his path from budding artist to pop culture prophet

February 27, 2012 Musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron, who died in 2011, became a pop culture icon thanks to his classic spoken-word recording “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” and he is widely regarded as the father of rap and hip-hop. His posthumously published book, The Last Holiday: A Memoir, traces his life as an artist and activist.

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Trying Out a New Voice

John Jeremiah Sullivan is growing weary of the first-person voice that made him famous

February 27, 2012 John Jeremiah Sullivan, a Sewanee grad and the author of critically acclaimed essay collection Pulphead, writes nonfiction of the variety generally classified as New Journalism. In reporting on a subject, he also interacts with it—talking with the locals and describing the landscape, of course, but also remembering episodes in his own life which bear on the telling of the new tale at hand.

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William Gay, 1943-2012

Tennessee writers and readers mourn the loss of William Gay, legendary novelist from Hohenwald

February 24, 2012 Novelist William Gay died at his home in Hohenwald, Tennessee, last night, at age sixty-eight. Among the most critically acclaimed of his generation of Southern writers, Gay began his public writing career famously late, when, at age fifty-five, his first short story was published in The Georgia Review. His first novel, The Long Home, won the James A. Michener Memorial Prize and was named a New York Times Notable Book for 1999. He followed that success with another novel, Provinces of Night, a short-story collection, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, and a third novel, Twilight.

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Out of the Valley

Josh Weil, author of the Sue Kauffman Prize-winning The New Valley, talks with Chapter 16 about the art of the novella

February 24, 2012 Josh Weil’s fearless introspection and his gift for creating layers of complexity in his characters permeate the pages of his award-winning first collection of novellas, The New Valley. Set in the rural environs of the New River Valley between Virginia and West Virginia, Weil’s stories are written in graceful, haunting prose that masterfully evokes the beautiful but isolated and unforgiving nature of rural AppalachiaOn February 27 at 7 p.m., Weil will give a reading in the Hodges Library Auditorium on the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee. Click here for more details.

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