September 24, 2010 Bill Brown is a part-time lecturer at Vanderbilt University. He has written four poetry collections, three chapbooks, and a textbook. The recipient of many awards and fellowships, Brown lives in the hills of Robertson County with his wife, Suzanne, and a tribe of cats. “The Melting” originally appeared in The Texas Poetry Review.
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Salvatore Scibona, one of The New Yorker‘s new “20 Under 40” writers, talks with Chapter 16
September 23, 2010 In 2008, Salvatore Scibona’s first novel, The End, was a finalist for the National Book Award—a coup for its author and for its publisher, the tiny, nonprofit Gray Wolf Press. The NBA distinction helped propel sales of the novel, which has become a favorite of book clubs. Scibona’s burgeoning career received another boost in June, when The New Yorker named Scibona to its “20 Under 40” list of young writers who are bringing fresh voices to American fiction. Scibona will read from his work at 7 p.m. on September 23 in Buttrick Hall, Room 102, on the Vanderbilt University campus.
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Scholar Sam B. Girgus considers the cinema of redemption
September 22, 2010 What do Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, and Michaelangelo Antonini’s L’avventura have in common—apart from being uncontestable classics of the cinema? For Sam B. Girgus, a professor of English at Vanderbilt University, these films come together under an umbrella he calls the “cinema of redemption.” In his new work of criticism, Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption: Time, Ethics, and the Feminine, Girgus explores how many of the ideas illustrated by these films resonate with those of French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Girgus will discuss the book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on September 22 at 7 p.m.
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Priest, activist, and author Becca Stevens talks with Chapter 16
September 21, 2010 Priest and author Becca Stevens is justly celebrated for her social-justice activism: she is the founder of Magdalene, a five-house residential recovery program for prostitutes, and of Thistle Farms, a cottage industry which provides work for women in the Magdalene program. Stevens also helped to replicate the Magdalene formula in cities throughout the South, launch a business for women in Rwanda, found a school in Equador, and establish a nursing program for an AIDS hospice in Botswana. Prior to launching her new books, The Path of Peace, The Path of Justice, and The Path of Love, she talks with Chapter 16 about the intersection of faith, activism, and art. She will discuss her work at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on September 21 at 7 p.m.
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For Matt Dellinger, Interstate 69 is paved with beautiful dreams and ugly politics
September 20, 2010 In Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway, Matt Dellinger writes about an unlikely subject: a highway linking Canada to Mexico that may never be completed. (In Tennessee, for example, I-69 remains nothing more than a page of maps and studies on the state Department of Transportation website.) Touted as the “NAFTA Highway” after the North American Free Trade Agreement, the highway is, like the trade deal, controversial, and in that conflict Dellinger has found a story. Matt Dellinger will discuss Interstate 69 at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on September 23 at 6 p.m. and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on September 24 at 2 p.m.
Read moreNovelist Silas House introduces Appalachia Rising
September 18, 2010 Silas House– the novelist, poet, and playwright who recently resigned his position at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate to head to Berea College in his native Kentucky– has long been an outspoken regional advocate for environmental preservation in the Appalachian Mountains. Today, in an op-ed piece for the Lexington Herald-Leader, House lays out an airtight case against the form of mining known as mountaintop removal and explains why “Appalachia Rising, a mass mobilization in Washington, D.C. Sept.
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