June 10, 2011 Next month aspiring young writers will come from across the state—and beyond—to explore their creativity and hone their passion for writing at the thirteenth annual Tennessee Young Writers Workshop. TYWW, held on the campus of Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, is a week-long residential workshop for students in grades seven through twelve. The faculty, all established writers in their own right, foster creative and literary skills through exposure to real-life professional situations, effective writing exercises, and open discussions. Students also gain a network of peer support that offers encouragement and often persists long after the workshop is over. “Children Playing with My Skeleton” was written at last year’s conference by Lauren Moore, a twelfth grader at Cary Academy in Cary, North Carolina. Lauren has attended the TYWW since 2009. Applications for this year’s workshop are due June 27. Click here to learn more. You can also support young writers with the gift of a full or partial scholarship; click here for details.
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Round Two
On the cusp of publishing his second book in a year, Adam Ross talks with Chapter 16 about women, men, and life since Mr. Peanut
June 9, 2011 Last June, Adam Ross’s debut novel, Mr. Peanut, inspired critical assessments like “ingenious,” “brilliant,” “riveting,” “audacious,” “arresting,” “forceful,” “involving,” “stirring,” “original,” “harrowing,” “bleakly convincing,” “unflinching,” and “mesmerizing.” A year later, the Nashville author is back with Ladies and Gentlemen, a new collection of short stories. Due on shelves June 28, it considers many of the same questions raised in Mr. Peanut: the human temptation to cruelty, the simultaneously redemptive and damning nature of passion, the difficulty in forging an integrated and identifiable self from disparate and sometimes self-contradictory impulses and desires. Today Ross offers Chapter 16 readers a sneak peak at the collection and answers questions about the book.
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Book Excerpt: Adam Ross’s Ladies and Gentlemen
With the opening pages of “Middlemen,” Adam Ross gives Chapter 16 readers an early look at his forthcoming story collection
June 9, 2011 In the fall of 1980, my parents enrolled me in seventh grade at the Trinity School—a tony, Episcopal private school in Manhattan that was all boys until ninth grade. So my two best new friends, Abe Herman and Kyle Duckworth, were thirteen- year- olds on the cusp of, among other things, coeducation.
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Book Excerpt: Adam Ross's Ladies and Gentlemen
With the opening pages of “Middlemen,” Adam Ross gives Chapter 16 readers an early look at his forthcoming story collection
June 9, 2011 In the fall of 1980, my parents enrolled me in seventh grade at the Trinity School—a tony, Episcopal private school in Manhattan that was all boys until ninth grade. So my two best new friends, Abe Herman and Kyle Duckworth, were thirteen- year- olds on the cusp of, among other things, coeducation.
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Living in Eternity
It took a cancer diagnosis to cure poet Wilmer Mills of discouragement and malaise
June 8, 2011 For the past ten years or so it seems that all I think about and write about is Time, but something about learning that I have a form of liver cancer that is ultimately incurable has given me an amazing sense of clarity about the subject. I find myself standing on the back porch taking deep breaths, intoxicated by air and light and hope. Despite my bleak prognosis, I now see everything in front of me as a space of infinite possibility, within certain limitations, with a full and nourishing sense of Time.
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What Endures
Charles Wright’s career has yielded a body of work that will long outlive its creator
June 7, 2011 In a career that spans forty-five years and includes twenty-some books of poetry and every major poetry prize, from the Pulitzer to the National Book Award, Charles Wright has kept his thematic lens remarkably focused. A typical poem begins with the speaker in his backyard, describing the landscape or the memory of a landscape, and the resulting metaphor then ignites a philosophical meditation, often concerning theological matters. For most poets, such thematic or stylistic repetition over the course of half a century would lead to unbearably boring poems. But Wright is in a class almost alone for his ability to make fresh, wildly inventive metaphors from the stuff of the everyday, natural world.
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