Chapter 16 - Part 550

Beyond Domestic Fiction

There’s much more to Holly Goddard Jones’s stories than kitchen-sink realism

By Susannah Felts | February 22, 2011

February 22, 2011 Like Bobbie Ann Mason before her, Holly Goddard Jones entered the literary scene with a much-praised debut collection of stories set in her home state. Jones is no Mason redux, but in Girl Trouble she does look carefully at the Kentucky in which she was raised, tapping into veins similar to those explored by Mason. Set in the fictional small town of Roma, these stories portray with deep sensitivity the emotional injuries of men and women whose lives are etched there. On February 24 at 7 p.m., Holly Goddard Jones will read from her work in Buttrick Hall, Room 102, on the Vanderbilt University campus.

Memphis in LA

Richard Bausch and Rebecca Skloot are both on the short list for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize awards

By Margaret Renkl | February 22, 2011

February 22, 2011 For several years novelist Richard Bausch and science writer Rebecca Skloot were colleagues at the University of Memphis (though Skloot recently left the program to move to Chicago); now they’ve each been nominated for the 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in their respective categories: Bausch is on the short list for fiction; Skloot’s nomination is in Science and Technology writing.

A Sinister Beauty

Madison Smartt Bell talks to Chapter 16 about his provocative new novel

By Maria Browning | February 21, 2011

February 21, 2011 In his new novel, The Color of Night, Madison Smartt Bell takes readers into the mind of a woman who has channeled her own suffering into a terrible obsession with violence and death. Today at Chapter 16, read an interview with Bell and an excerpt from the book, which hits shelves April 5.

Book Excerpt: Madison Smartt Bell's The Color of Night

In the aftermath of 9/11, not everyone is weeping

By Madison Smartt Bell | February 21, 2011

February 21, 2011 In his new novel, The Color of Night, Madison Smartt Bell takes readers into the mind of Mae, a woman who has channeled the incestuous abuse of her childhood into a mystical, eroticized obsession with violence and death. Televised images of the 9/11 attacks thrill her, spurring memories of a sojourn with a Manson-like cult and of a woman, Laurel, who was her lover and ally there. What follows is an excerpt from the book, which hits shelves April 5.

Book Excerpt: Madison Smartt Bell’s The Color of Night

In the aftermath of 9/11, not everyone is weeping

By Madison Smartt Bell | February 21, 2011

R.A., the Other Dickey

Make room, James Dickey; there will soon be a new book on the shelf

By Margaret Renkl | February 21, 2011

February 21, 2011 When they hear the name “Dickey,” literary types in Tennessee automatically think of the brilliant poet James Dickey (though he’s perhaps more famous as the author of the novel Deliverance than as the author of many oft-anthologized poems like “The Heaven of Animals,” “The Lifeguard,” and “Falling”), who was a student at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

I Gotta Sing!

By Alice Faye Duncan
WaterBrook
40 pages
$14.99

“A whole barnyard makes noise ‘in the Spirit of joy’ throughout this raucous picture book, a sweetly heartwarming sing-along by Duncan. Kellam conveys comfort and happiness as the loved ones reflect sunny enthusiasm in this gladdening rendition of the Black American religious folk song ‘I’m Goin’a Sing When the Spirit Says Sing.’”

~Publishers Weekly