The Joy of Cookbooks
Betrayal and Justice
Not Quite a New Day
Punching Hitler in the Mouth
Do-It-Yourself Spirit
Chapter 16
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Rebel, Rebel

Poet Reid Ward contemplates life, love, and responsibility from the confines of his “cage”

By Paul V. Griffith |

October 19, 2010 Reid Ward is a preacher’s kid, and like of lot of “PK”s, he’s a natural-born insurgent. During high school, Ward was bright and likeable but not exactly focused on academics. More than anything, he hated his English classes—“I don’t remember ever reading a book all the way through until after high school,” he says. When he was eighteen, Ward fell from the roof of his family home and broke his neck. Paralyzed from the chest down, he ultimately discovered a lifeline in literature. Reid Ward reads from his new poetry collection, The Atrophy of the Sun, at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on October 19 at 7 p.m.

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Fantine's Folly

The protagonist of Susan Straight’s new novel can’t escape the past until she understands it

By Susannah Felts |

October 18, 2010 Traversing both the gentrified pockets and gangstaland of Los Angeles, as well as the sugar-cane fields and sweltering swampland of Louisiana, Susan Straight’s new novel is a complex work of art. Take One Candle Light a Room offers exquisitely rendered settings, lyrical prose, and a formidably large cast of characters. Its narrator, Fantine Antoine, an African American of Louisiana Creole descent and California birth, is an accomplished travel writer, but in this book she undertakes a journey unlike any she has experienced before—one that stands to alter her path permanently. Straight will read from the book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on October 18 at 6 p.m.

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Still in Mourning

For ten years, Ann Patchett had a sweet gig with the now-defunct Gourmet magazine

By Margaret Renkl |

October 18, 2010 In an essay for The Wall Street Journal, Ann Patchett remembers the decade she spent freelancing for Gourmet magazine, when “Magazine work was a beautiful party and we all just figured it would go on forever.” For Patchett, the party featured assignments to exotic destinations, a generous expense account (which once reimbursed her for a soup turtle she had set free), and– perhaps most luxurious of all– an editor who valued her work: “For 10 golden years they picked up the tab while I ate at the best restaurants and laid down my head

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Booklisted

Amy Greene’s Bloodroot is in the Top Ten

By Margaret Renkl |

October 15, 2010 The year isn’t out yet, but Booklist, a pre-publication review site, has already posted its Top Ten list for the best debut novels of 2010, and Morristown’s Amy Greene is one of the celebrated authors. Read the Booklist citation here and a Q&A with Amy Green here.

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Citizens of the World

Marge Piercy talks with Chapter 16 about poetry, fiction, memoir, and writing as a political act

By Charlotte Pence |

October 15, 2010 Marge Piercy’s productivity and accomplishments are nothing short of astounding. She has published seventeen novels in genres as diverse as science fiction and historical fiction, including The New York Times bestseller, Gone to Soldiers. As if that weren’t enough, she has also published seventeen volumes of poetry and a memoir. She answered questions from Chapter 16 in advance of her public appearances in Knoxville on October 17 and 18.

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