Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Not Your Father's Fugitive

Vanderbilt MFA candidates launch a new literary magazine

April 7, 2010 Graduate students in Vanderbilt University's nationally ranked MFA program have launched a national literary magazine, Nashville Review. The online journal, which went live on April 1, is a daunting project the students "conceived of, pursued, and brought into being all by themselves," says poet—and Vanderbilt professor of creative writing—Kate Daniels.

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Duking It Out

Amanda Little, author of Power Trip, takes on climate-change skeptic Phelim McAleer in a debate moderated by the inimitable Sarah Silverman

April 7, 2010 If your idea of a multimedia presentation on global warming begins and ends with the somber pronouncements of An Inconvenient Truth, check out the debate between Nashvillian Amanda Little, author of Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells—A Ride to Our Renewable Future, and independent filmmaker Phelim McAleer, a global-warming denier. The debate, sponsored by Lexus to call attention to its new hybrid vehicle, was held in New York City on March 30 and proved to be a raucous event.

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Birth of a Giant

Roy Morris, Jr. tells the story of how Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain

Mark Twain‘s influence on American culture has not been in doubt since his death a hundred years ago, and Chattanooga writer Roy Morris, Jr. does not propose any revision of that position in his new book. What Morris does in Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain is explore the influence of America itself on a young man named Samuel Clemens. Morris explains how the great adventure that was the winning of the West changed Clemens, molding him into not just a teller of humorous tales but also a worldwide literary phenomenon. Morris will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on April 8 at 7 p.m.

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Strange Fruit

Batt Humphreys fleshes out the story of Nealy Duncan, the last man hanged by the state of South Carolina

In the summer of 1910, the Charleston police arrested Daniel Cornelius “Nealy” Duncan, a black man, for the murder of a Jewish merchant. In spite of his court-appointed attorney’s Atticus Finch-like efforts, Duncan was found guilty by a kangaroo court and was hanged. By all accounts an upright citizen, Duncan was to be married five days after his alleged crime. He went to his grave calmly declaring his innocence. In Dead Weight, former CBS News producer Batt Humphreys fills the gaps in Duncan’s story. By turns a romance, mystery, courtroom drama, and history lesson, Dead Weight makes the most of its exhaustive research and Humphreys’ seemingly natural ability to spin a nail-biting yarn.

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Henrietta, Across the Pond

The Guardian introduces British readers to Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

April 6, 2010 After being welcomed by the American media as literary royalty—featured three times in one week by The New York Times and appearing on that high throne of media success, The Daily Show, just for starters—Rebecca Skloot is now getting attention overseas as well.

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Loving Norman, and Having the Final Word

With her new memoir, Norris Church Mailer emerges from her husband’s long literary shadow

The plot could have come straight from a bodice-ripper: she was a stunning young art teacher from Arkansas; he was a notoriously macho New York author twice her age. Hoping for an autograph, she cadged an introduction, and sparks flew. In A Ticket to the Circus, Norris Church Mailer tells the story of her thirty-two-year love affair with and marriage to Norman Mailer, the American writer as famous for his peccadilloes (six wives, eight children, and dozens of mistresses) as for his Pulitzers (two). Norris Mailer spoke with Chapter 16 in advance of her appearance at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on April 6 at 6 p.m.

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