Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Blowing Town

Rebecca Skloot leaves Memphis for Chicago

September 12, 2010 Rebecca Skloot, bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks recently gave up her position at the University of Memphis to move to Chicago. Today she speaks with the Commercial Appeal‘s Richard Morgan about her years in Memphis and their importance in the creation of a bestseller. Read the story here.

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"Look Away, Look Away"

September 10, 2010 Susan O’Dell Underwood is the director of creative writing at Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee, where she has taught Appalachian literature, modern poetry, and writing for than twenty years. She earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the PhD in English from Florida State University. In 2004, her novel-in-progress, Genesis Road, won the Tennessee Arts Commission grant for writing. Her first chapbook, From, about family and cultural influence in the mountain South, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Underwood is originally from Bristol, Tennessee.

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Democracy on Ice

James L. Dickerson investigates America’s long reliance on detention camps

September 9, 2010 Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans of Japanese descent were rounded up by the thousands and placed in primitive “relocation camps” in the interest of national security. With Inside America’s Concentration Camps, investigative journalist James L. Dickerson places that shameful episode inside a larger narrative. Adhering to the psychological theory that abuse begets abusers, Inside America’s Concentration Camps traces America’s ambivalent history of detention and torture, from its beginnings in old-world Europe through the Trail of Tears and World War II to the current internment camp at Guantánamo Bay. James Dickerson signs Inside America’s Concentration Camps at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on September 11 at 1 p.m. and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on September 25 at 2 p.m.

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Counting by Tens through the Civil War

Historian Thomas R. Flagel lists the best and worst of the War Between the States

September 8, 2010 If Thomas R. Flagel’s The History Buff’s Guide to the Civil War is any indication, the use of top-ten lists can be an effective way to teach history. Flagel, an instructor in the history department at Columbia State Community College, has developed a successful franchise in best-of lists, and the newly revised edition of the founding book of his series is a sound and entertaining guide to a world not as distant as the years might suggest. Thomas R. Flagel appears at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Brentwood on September 10 at 7 p.m.

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Not So Different After All

Jeannette Walls talks with Chapter 16 about writing a bestselling memoir and a bestselling novel

September 7, 2010 Jeannette Walls’s first bestselling memoir, The Glass Castle, the shocking chronicle of her own hardscrabble years as the child of frequently homeless parents, is considered by many to be a standard-bearer of the genre—and a tough act to follow. But Walls had an equally captivating tale nestled in her family tree. In 2009’s critically acclaimed Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, she channels her remarkable grandmother’s life in Arizona during the early twentieth century. Jeannette Walls appears at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on September 8 at 6 p.m. and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on September 9 at 7 p.m.

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"Duskdawn"

September 3, 2010 Clay Matthews has published work in The American Poetry Review, Spinning Jenny, Willow Springs, The JournalMuffler (H_NGM_N B_ _KS) and Western Reruns (available for free download online from End & Shelf Books). His first full-length collection, Superfecta, was released by Ghost Road Press in 2008, and a second, Runoff, was recently released from BlazeVOX Books. He teaches at Tusculum College in Greeneville, Tennessee, and edits poetry for The Tusculum Review.

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