Chapter 16 - Part 475

Bright Beads on a Thread

For May Justus, the late children’s author from East Tennessee, folksongs were inextricably linked to storytelling

By Susannah Felts | June 28, 2012

June 28, 2012 A devoted teacher of Appalachian children and the author of more than sixty books for children, May Justus rarely traveled from her home in East Tennessee. But her books, written over half a century, were read widely and reviewed in the major media, awarded prizes, and collected in libraries. Now the Tennessee Folklore Society and Jubilee Community Arts of Knoxville have released May Justus: The Carawan Recordings, a collection of traditional mountain ballads sung by Justus. The recordings help cement Justus’s legacy as an Appalachian folk hero, and they highlight her connection to the famous Highlander Folk School and its contribution to the protest movements of the 1960s.

An Ever-Growing Complexity

Alan Lightman’s most recent novel sparks lofty debates on tough questions

By Tom Markham | June 27, 2012

June 27, 2012 A Memphis native known for both literature (he’s a novelist, poet, and essayist) and science (he’s a physics professor at MIT), Alan Lightman has a penchant for tackling tough philosophical questions, and his new book, Mr g: A Novel About the Creation. is no exception. A mythical novel that tells the story of the universe and of God’s—a.k.a. Mr g’s—hand in its creation, the book addresses some hotly-debated questions about the nature of a creator god.

Grief

In the aftermath of tragedy, what can a friend really say?

By Anne Delana Reeves | June 27, 2012

June 27, 2012 Two years ago, at 9:30 on Thanksgiving morning, my best friend’s husband was shot to death in his home. My friend had spent the previous evening watching classic movies late into the night and was still sleeping when she heard two shots. She remembers praying, as she wrapped a robe around her, slid into her slippers, and ran down the hallway, that she had heard only the sound of slamming doors.

“You Are Where You Come From”

Poet, translator, and editor Don Share talks with Chapter 16 about his new book, the centennial year of Poetry magazine, and his Memphis roots

By Charlotte Pence | June 26, 2012

June 26, 2012 Memphis native Don Share, poet and senior editor of Poetry magazine, has recently released his third poetry collection. In Wishbone, Share energizes his well-crafted lines with wit and hard-wrestled emotional truths. Many of the poems in Wishbone reflect on the transient nature of life and our attempts to muddle our way through loss. As Share explains in an interview with Chapter 16, “We’re always using whatever strength we have to grasp things, to hold on, and sometimes to wave goodbye.”

The Cost of Silence

In her new memoir, Full Body Burden, Memphis writer Kristen Iversen recounts a childhood haunted by secrets

By Tina LoTufo | June 25, 2012

June 25, 2012 “My childhood has been shadowed by two enormous fears: my father’s alcoholism and Rocky Flats,” writes Kristen Iversen, director of the M.F.A. program in creative writing at the University of Memphis. With honesty and dignity, Iversen explains how her increasingly troubled father and ineffectual mother created a fragile home life that depended on silence and secrets—an atmosphere not unlike that of the mismanaged and deadly dangerous nuclear-weapons facility at Rocky Flats, located near their suburban Colorado home. In Full Body Burden, Iversen illuminates the beauty of her childhood memories, but she does not flinch from uncovering the damage simultaneously inflicted upon her and her family, upon the land, and ultimately upon us all.

A Solitary Being

Benjamin Busch’s memoir, Dust to Dust, examines life through an elemental lens

By Maria Browning | June 22, 2012

June 22, 2012 In Dust to Dust, Benjamin Busch recounts his life through a series of meditations on the physical world. This unorthodox memoir, which concerns itself quite literally with the stuff of a life, puts the reader in touch with the elemental struggle we all share. Busch will discuss and sign Dust to Dust at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on June 24 at 3 p.m., and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on July 11 at 6:30 p.m.

Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

By Tore C. Olsson
St. Martin's Press
288 pages
$30

“I recommend Red Dead’s History unreservedly not only to fans of the iconic video game, but also to anyone who wants to understand the riotousness — from Wild West gunslingers to Jim Crow to lynching — that darkened our past, and which continues to influence our culture. Olsson’s prose is graceful, his analysis profound. This is history at its most accessible and exciting.”

~Peter Cozzens, award-winning author of A Brutal Reckoning