Chapter 16 - Part 500

American Library Association Honors McKissack Once Again

Children’s author Patricia McKissack takes home her ninth Coretta Scott King honor

By Margaret Renkl | January 24, 2012

January 24, 2012 Yesterday at a ceremony in Dallas, the American Library Association announced the winners of the Caldecott, Newbery, and Coretta Scott King awards for children’s literature. Nashville native Patricia C. McKissack has won a prestigious Corretta Scott King Honor Book Award for her children’s picture book, Never Forgotten,” illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. The awards were announced here.

An NBCC Nod for Sullivan

John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead in on the shortlist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction

By Margaret Renkl | January 23, 2012

January 23, 2012 At a gala Saturday night, the National Book Critics Circle announced the names of finalists for the 2011 NBCC Awards. Representing Tennessee n the shortlist is John Jeremiah Sullivan, whose collection of essays, Pulphead, was published in November and continues to be reviewed in rhapsodic terms. Read the full list of finalists here. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on March 8 at 6 p.m.

Finding a Place in the Light

Novelist Marianne Wiggins talks with Chapter 16 about her Oak Ridge novel—and how the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was part of its genesis

By Sarah Norris | January 20, 2012

January 20, 2012 Marianne Wiggins spent five years researching Evidence of Things Unseen. Set in East Tennessee, the novel is an epic love story, a mystery, a passionate argument against technological advances made at the cost of human lives—and the reason the Friends of Knox County Public Library will host an Evening with Marianne Wiggins on January 24. Wiggins will give a free public talk at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville in a celebration of the joint 125th anniversary of the Knox County Public Library and the Knoxville News Sentinel. In an interview prior to the event, she talked about history, causality, and how the time she spent in hiding with her then-husband Salman Rushdie in the 1980s influenced her book about East Tennessee between the world wars.

Not of This Place

Pamela Schoenewaldt talks with Chapter 16 about immigrants’ stories and the art of historical fiction

By Faye Jones | January 19, 2012

January 19, 2012 When We Were Strangers, the debut novel of Knoxvillian Pamela Schoenewaldt, captures the risk and struggle of nineteenth-century immigration through the experience of a young Italian woman, Irma Vitale. Schoenewaldt will read from When We Were Strangers on January 23 at the Hodges Library on the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee. She will be joined by Marina Maccari-Clayton of the UT History Department, whose specialty is Italian-American immigration history.

In Praise of Making Things Up

The Night Circus might be set in the nineteenth century, but Erin Morgenstern is no one’s historical novelist

By Sarah Norris | January 18, 2012

January 18, 2012 Despite being turned down by dozens of agents, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus went on to become a bestseller and was published in more than thirty countries. Summit Entertainment, the production company behind the Twilight series, bought film rights, as Morgenstern found herself the star of a real-life fairy tale. Erin Morgenstern will discuss and sign copies of The Night Circus on January 26 at 6:15 p.m. at the Nashville Public Library, as part of the Salon@615 series.

An Original Take on an American Original

Prize-winning historian Sean Wilentz provides a fresh perspective on Bob Dylan

By Paul McCoy | January 17, 2012

January 17, 2012 Few musical artists in the last century are as revered and reviled, discussed and dissected as Bob Dylan. With an eclectic career spanning fifty years, Dylan provides an astonishingly deep well of material for writers and critics to explore—and explore they have, though rarely to such critical acclaim as the work of Sean Wilentz has received. With The New York Times bestseller Bob Dylan in America, now out in paperback, Wilentz provides a unique series of takes on specific periods in Dylan’s life and work, including his time in Nashville. He answered questions from Chapter 16 by email.

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