Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Writeous

Online auction “Do the Write Thing” brings in $75,000 for Tennessee flood relief

May 25, 2010 The waters finally receded, but as the news reports got grimmer and grimmer and the photographs got more and more heartbreaking, three Nashville novelists decided to do something about the flood. As thousands of citizens fanned out across the region to help their neighbors drag saturated carpet and drywall to the street, Myra McEntire, Amanda Morgan, and Victoria Schwab tried to think of a way to use their connections as writers to help.

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The Good Books

What if all you ever wanted was a kid who loves books, and your daughter turns out to have bad taste in literature?

May 24, 2010 My daughter was born, grew, sat up, ate mush, and all the while I was happy with the books I’d carefully selected for her. Thalia, however, seemed not so terribly interested. I began to wonder if, horror of horrors, my squirmy kid was not going to like reading. But she grew some more, and I watched her reading enthusiasm grow, too. Only it was growing for books I didn’t choose—books I considered problematic.

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Meet Kenyon's Minions

Mega-bestselling novelist Sherrilyn Kenyon hosts an international book-launch event—at a hotel in Franklin

May 24, 2010 The numbers are astonishing: ten times in the past two years, Hohenwald novelist Sherrilyn Kenyon has landed in the number-one slot of The New York Times bestseller list. Kenyon already has twenty-two million copies in print of her paranormal books for adults, and those titles have been printed in more than thirty different countries. Tonight she launches a new series of books, this time for teen readers, called The Chronicles of Nick.

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All Stories Considered

Ann Patchett picks a winner in NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction contest

May 21, 2010 From a field of more than 4,000 entrants, Ann Patchett has awarded the first-place prize in National Public Radio’s Three-Minute Fiction contest to Yoav Ben Yosef’s “Not Calling Attention to Ourselves.” Listen to Patchett read the story—and offer some priceless advice about what makes a short-story work—here.

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"Shadow Sampler"

May 21, 2010 Ashley McWaters grew up in Memphis. Her work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Painted Bride Quarterly, Hunger Mountain, and Northwest Review, among others. Her debut book of poetry, Whitework, twice a finalist for the National Poetry Series, explores sewing as synecdoche for the whole of women’s work. McWaters teaches at the University of Alabama, where she directs the undergraduate creative writing program. She will read from Whitework at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on May 22 at 1 p.m.

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Out of the Fire

In Glenn Taylor’s sophomore novel, a rural marble factory is home to an oddball army intent on advancing the cause of civil rights—and exorcizing its own demons.

May 20, 2010 An ex-Marine, Loyal Ledford has seen things that will forever haunt his dreams. After serving in World War II, he returns to his job at a West Virginia glass factory. Increasingly restless, he marries the boss’s daughter and quits work with no other plan than to forge a better life for his young family. Aided by a crew of misfits, Ledford builds the Marrowbone Marble Company on ancient family land. In addition to manufacturing the decorative glass orbs, the Marrowbone “commune,” as it’s pejoratively known, becomes a hotbed of civil-rights activism. As Ledford and his diverse band resort to increasingly forceful tactics to unseat the status quo and preserve their lifestyle, author Glenn Taylor schools his readers on the complexity of violence and the nature of good and evil. Taylor will read from his book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on May 21 at 6 p.m.

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