On this Indonesian slum tour, an American novelist discovers more than he expected
December 1, 2011 The pigeon races are going to be a scene in the novel I’ve come to Jakarta to research. Thematic resonance is what I’ve told Ronny. It took me half an hour to explain. His English isn’t perfect, but I don’t think that was really the problem. It was more that he just didn’t see the point.
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With an international prize and a new six-figure book deal, the good news just keeps coming for Ruta Sepetys
November 30, 2011 Published in twenty-nine countries to rave reviews around the world, Between Shades of Gray, the bestselling debut novel by Ruta Sepetys, is a writer’s wildest dream come true. Now the Nashville author has signed a six-figure book deal and become the first American to win the prestigious Prix RTL-Lire, a French prize for the best novel for young people published in the last year. Fresh from the gala at the Petit Palais in Paris, Sepetys answered questions from Chapter 16 about her literary influences, the connections she’s forged with the descendants of Baltic refugees or deportees, and the much-discussed “darkness” of literature pitched to an adolescent audience.
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An award-winning poem in seventeen sections by Chapter 16‘s Charlotte Pence
November 29, 2011 Set in modern-day Appalachia, Charlotte Pence’s new chapbook—Weaves a Clear Night, winner of the 2011 Flying Trout Press Chapbook Prize—recasts the myths surrounding Penelope’s fidelity to Odysseus. Lyrical, meditative, and deeply sensual, the poems follow the emotional isolation of a woman poised between two men, neither of whom can be a part of her daily life. Despite the absence of the lover and the husband, their presence surrounds her.
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In Hillary Jordan’s provocative new thriller, “A” is for more than adultery
November 28, 2011 As When She Woke opens, Hannah Payne is Hawthorne’s scarlet “A” incarnate: “When she woke, she was red. Not flushed, not sunburned, but the solid, declarative red of a stop sign.” In Hillary Jordan’s imaginary near-future, criminals are “chromed”—genetically modified to make their skin colors match their transgressions—and Hannah Payne’s crime begins with the letter A. Jordan will read from and sign copies of When She Woke on November 30 at 6 p.m. at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis.
Read moreAccording to an op-ed piece in The New York Times, James Agee’s nobody’s hero in Hale County, Alabama
November 28, 2011 From the beginning, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men–the masterpiece of poetry, photography, and reporting by Knoxville-born writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans–was controversial. During the summer of 1936, the two men book spent four weeks with three families of tenant farmers in Hale County, Alabama, researching and photographing their subsistence-level scramble to survive the Great Depression.
Read moreMatraca Berg, Marshall Chapman, Jill McCorkle, and Lee Smith talk with Chapter 16 about their off-Off-Broadway show to benefit Nashville’s Center for Contemplative Justice
November 22, 2011 On December 1, Matraca Berg, Marshall Chapman, Jill McCorkle, and Lee Smith will present “An Evening of Story and Song”—a more intimate, more improvisational version of their off-Broadway show, Good Ol’ Girls—to Nashville’s Belcourt Theatre. The show is a benefit for The Center for Contemplative Justice at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Chapel at Vanderbilt University, the newest initiative of St. Augustine’s chaplain, Becca Stevens. Last month Stevens was named a “Champion for Change” by the White House for her work with Magdalene and Thistle Farms. Chapter 16 recently interviewed all four Good Ol’ Girls creators about their unique collaboration—and their support for Stevens:
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