Chapter 16 - Part 580

Spreading the Wealth

Rebecca Skloot’s foundation provides its first scholarships to the descendants of Henrietta Lacks

By Margaret Renkl | August 13, 2010

August 13, 2010 In 1951, a medical researcher at Johns Hopkins took cells from the cervix of Henrietta Lacks, an impoverished Baltimore woman who subsequently died of cancer. It was an age that predated any notion of informed consent, and neither Henrietta nor any member of her family gave permission for doctors to perform research on her tissue sample, which ultimately yielded the first immortal cell line in human history and became the basis for a multibillion-dollar research industry.

Short-Listed

Adam Ross is nominated for the 2010 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize

By Margaret Renkl | August 12, 2010

August 12, 2010 When a debut novel gets this much media attention and inspires this kind of intense, high-level conversation among reviewers like Slate’s Hanna Rosin and The New Yorker’s Margaret Talbot, it was bound to happen: Adam Ross’s Mr. Peanut has made the short list for The Center for Fiction’s 2010 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize.

The Neglected Survivors

Kathleen Koch writes a hopeful account of Hurricane Katrina’s impact on the Mississippi coast

By Maria Browning | August 12, 2010

August 12, 2010The relentless news coverage of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina obscured the fact that the Mississippi Gulf coast was just as devastated by the storm. In Rising from Katrina, former CNN reporter Kathleen Koch, a one-time resident of the Mississippi coastal town of Bay St. Louis, writes about the destruction there and the residents’ heroic struggle to rebuild. Koch will discuss her book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on August 12 at 6 p.m.

In Shape

A new gallery show at the Nashville Public Library puts poetry on display

By Joe Nolan | August 11, 2010

August 11, 2010 People apparently started writing shaped poetry—in which words are arranged to create a picture—as soon as they began writing verse. An exhibit at the main Nashville Public Library includes examples of the practice dating from ancient times to the present. Boasting thirty prints of poems by E.E. Cummings, Lewis Carroll, Guillaume Apollinaire, Andre Breton, Gertrude Stein, and others, it’s a compelling collection of work that occupies a space where poetry and painting overlap.

Dooced No More

Proto-blogger Heather Armstrong writes a bestselling book

By Margaret Renkl | August 10, 2010

August 10, 2010 Memphis native Heather Armstrong didn’t invent the personal weblog any more than Al Gore invented the Internet, but she is definitely one reason the word blog has entered the English language. In fact, the very name of her own blog, Dooce, is cited in the Urban Dictionary as an intransitive verb: to be dooced is to lose your job because of something you wrote on your blog. But getting fired is not something Armstrong worries about any more: Dooce now gets more than six million page views a month, and last year Forbes magazine named Armstrong one of the thirty most influential women in media. She talks with Chapter 16 about her life, her enemies, and her bestselling book.

Into the Woods

Sometimes even Janis Joplin isn’t enough of an escape

By Anne Delana Reeves | August 6, 2010

August 6, 2010 It was 1972, and my parents had exiled the family to a farm south of Nashville; the nearest town featured a Minnie Pearl’s Fried Chicken restaurant, a dime store, and a dully-lit library in the courthouse basement. What else was a fifteen-year-old girl to do but hide out in her bedroom and scream along to Janis Joplin records, or recite, in dramatic hand-over-heart fashion, T.S. Eliot’s poetry, the perfumed smoke from strawberry incense swirling in the air? Then Mrs. Caruthers sent me searching for wildflowers.

Tias and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women Who Raise Us

By Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, illustrated by Josie Del Castillo
Seal Press
304 pages
$30

“Within these pages, I found my abuela, my tías and my primas — laughing, crying, and nodding alongside me. This book is a gift of understanding, and loving one’s family, even when our families are complicated and painful. It’s a beautiful reminder of the power of storytelling and the profound connection of kinship.”

~ Paola Mendoza, author, organizer and filmmaker