Chapter 16 - Part 594

Vandy on a Roll

What’s new in Tennessee books—and at Chapter 16—on February 25, 2010

By Margaret Renkl | February 25, 2010

Last fall, Poets & Writers named Vanderbilt University one of the top twenty creative-writing programs in the nation. Two weeks ago Beth Bachmann, a poet in the creative-writing program at Vanderbilt, learned she had won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award for her book, Temper. Last week, the Blues Foundation announced that Vanderbilt nonfiction writer-in-residence Peter Guralnick would be inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. This week the PEN/Faulkner Foundation named five fiction finalists for 2010, and Lorraine Lopez, author of the story collection Homicide Survivors Picnic, was on the short list. Care to guess where she teaches?

Writ Large

Intrepid adventurer and National Book Award winner Bob Shacochis talks with Chapter 16

By Ed Tarkington | February 24, 2010

National Book Award winner Bob Shacochis is a breed apart, one of the last survivors of the glory days of magazine fiction and feature writing, the age when writers were bold and swaggering and confident and even a little dangerous—a ruddy, bearded wild man of the mountains, an intrepid travel writer and war correspondent, and a consummate prose stylist. He speaks with Chapter 16 in advance of his Nashville appearance at Montgomery Bell Academy on March 1.

Uncovering a Forgotten Epidemic

A bizarre disease that drives some victims into fatal sleep and leaves others languishing in mental illness proves a fascinating subject for Memphis author Molly Caldwell Crosby

By Michael Ray Taylor | February 23, 2010

Epidemics of encephalitis lethargica—sleeping sickness—have long inspired literature, writes Memphis-based science author Molly Caldwell Crosby in Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains one of Medicine’s Greatest Mysteries. “Sleeping Beauty,” “Rip Van Winkle,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” are but three well-known stories written after separate outbreaks of the mysterious illness, which can cause patients to sleep for months or years, if they ever awaken at all. In Asleep, Crosby, author of the 2006 nonfiction bestseller The American Plague, has written a tale as timeless and disturbing as its fictional predecessors. Crosby will read from and sign copies of Asleep at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on March 2, and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on March 16.

Debunking Revolutionary War Myths

Gary Paulsen, the wildly popular and prolific children’s author, talks with Chapter 16 about his latest novel, Woods Runner

By Lyda Phillips | February 23, 2010

In Woods Runner, Gary Paulsen creates a tale that returns to the wilderness of his beloved Hatchet but takes it back in time to the Revolutionary War. “I wanted to dispute the mythic, clean, even antiseptic qualities in many histories, because war is never, not ever, clean,” he writes. He will read at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville on March 2. Prior to the visit, he took some time to correspond by email with Chapter 16.

A Valentine for Some Good Ol' Girls

What’s new in Tennessee books—and at Chapter 16—on February 18, 2010

By Margaret Renkl | February 18, 2010

Marshall Chapman and Lee Smith make it to New York for the opening of Good Ol’ Girls, Killer Nashville scores a big-name keynoter in Jeffery Deaver, Rebecca Skloot is on the third leg of her fifty-three-city book tour, Clay Risen is installed at the op-ed page of The New York Times—and on the cover of The Atlantic—and Michael Sims gives Chapter 16 a peek at his new collection of vampire stories (and there’s not a lovelorn teenager in sight).

Diving Into Civil War History

Historian Tom Chaffin raises the H.L. Hunley and chronicles the birth of submarine warfare

By Chris Scott | February 17, 2010

Among the technological firsts of the American Civil War was an odd little boat, built by a group of dedicated entrepreneurs, that heralded the age of underwater exploration and warfare. In The H.L. Hunley: The Secret Hope of the Confederacy, Knoxville historian Tom Chaffin details the remarkable story of the first submarine to sink an enemy ship.

Be Not Afraid of My Body: A Lyrical Memoir

Darius Stewart
Belt Publishing
276 pages
$19.99

“Through a mix of straightforward memoir, brilliantly surreal reveries, and moments of startling imagery and insight, Stewart’s explorations of love, illness, chemical dependency, desire, family, joy, shame, loneliness, and beauty coalesce into a wrenching, musical whole.”

~the publisher