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.

April 18, 2012 Chris Scott, who has written book reviews and conducted author interviews for Chapter 16 since the site was launched in 2009, and who reviewed books for the Nashville Scene for years before that, is also both a geologist by day and an aspiring novelist by night (and by weekends, and by vacation days). The book Scott has recently finished revising, Written in Stone, is a novel of suspense that combines the science he conducts by day and the writing he does by night. It is also a quarterfinalist for the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

April 16, 2012 Amid the many books and articles commemorating the anniversary of the date the “unsinkable” Titanic sank to the floor of the Atlantic ocean a hundred years ago, Memphis native Hampton sides got perhaps the most visually arresting assignment of the bunch: in a cover story for the April issue of National Geographic, Sides describes the way technology has changed what we know about the ship.