Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Peggy Burch

Stars of Southern Literature Arrive in Tennessee

The SouthWord Literary Feast will convene in Chattanooga November 3-4

SouthWord Literary Feast, a biennial book festival and reunion of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, will feature forty celebrated Southern authors, including Wendell Berry, Charles Frazier, Jill McCorkle, and Ron Rash. Seating is available for talks, readings, panel discussions, book signings, and meals November 3 and 4.

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Memphis Reads

Markus Zusak talks with Chapter 16 about his YA classic, The Book Thief

Australian author Markus Zusak, whose novel The Book Thief is the 2017 Memphis Reads selection, will speak at Christian Brothers University on September 11 at 7 p.m., and at Rhodes College on September 12 at 7 p.m. Both talks are free and open to the public.

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Channeling Restless Spirits

Jesmyn Ward returns to familiar Gulf Coast territory in Sing, Unburied, Sing

National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward will be in Nashville to talk about her third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, in which a Mississippi family grapples with drugs, grief, and ghosts. She’ll appear at Parnassus Books on September 12 at 6:30 p.m.

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Redefining the Story of the South

John T. Edge makes a case for food as the Rosetta Stone of Southern history

A cast of visionaries and eccentrics populates The Potlikker Papers, from Fannie Lou Hamer, founder of the Freedom Farm and Pig Bank, to Edna Lewis, who could tell when a cake was done by listening to it.

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Where Music and Sports Converge

Chuck Klosterman flexes his singular voice in a new nonfiction collection

Chuck Klosterman X collects some of the journalist’s writing about sports, music, and topics as disparate as zombies and steroids in a book the subtitle describes as “A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century.” Klosterman will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville at 6:30 p.m. on May 23.

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A Tragic Crossing

Michel Stone’s Border Child tracks the grim plight of fictional Mexican parents facing an unbearable loss

In her new novel, Border Child, Michel Stone tells the story of a young Mexican couple who gamble on a border crossing and lose their baby to a kidnapper in the process. Stone will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 10 at 6:30 p.m.

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