Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Flight to Balad

We pushed it way too far but miraculously escaped with our lives

Medics flung open the cargo doors and deposited an Iraqi man whose drawn and lined face exposed a life well acquainted with war and hardship. Shouted instructions to “Get him to Balad!” — the site of the big American trauma hospital — sent us on our way.

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Souled Out

Thomas Healy chronicles the creation of a planned Black city in 1970s North Carolina 

In Soul City, Thomas Healy tells the epic, tragic, and potent story of founding a new, Black-oriented community in 1970s North Carolina. Healy will discuss Soul City at a virtual event held on Facebook Live, on the page of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, on November 15.

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The Rainbow Connection

Lydia Conklin’s debut collection delivers complex stories of queer and trans experiences

In Rainbow Rainbow, a collection of 10 stories depicting trans and queer experiences, writer Lydia Conklin deftly portrays people and relationships, revealing how both survive the despair and joy of change. Conklin will discuss the book at The Porch in Nashville on November 16.

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True Feeling, Not Magic

An appreciation of Louise Erdrich, recipient of the 2022 Nashville Public Library Literary Award

Louise Erdrich, the 2022 Nashville Public Library Literary Award honoree, will give a free public lecture at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Nashville on November 12 at 10:00.

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Rye Wit

Clay Risen talks about death, history, and the rebirth of America’s first spirit

Clay Risen’s American Rye presents a comprehensive guide to a uniquely American spirit. As with his previous books on bourbon and scotch, Risen explains the evolution and making of rye whiskey before offering reviews and tasting notes on 225 contemporary expressions of the spirit.

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Life of Two

Margaret Verble weaves the real and imagined in When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In her beguiling When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky, novelist Margaret Verble, a 2016 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, reimagines, for her own wily aims, the Nashville of a century ago, with allusions to Jim Crow, W.E.B. Du Bois’ Talented Tenth, and the city’s white gentry.

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