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How Country Grew Up
‘When You’re Dead We’ll Cherish You Again’
Infinite Little Island
Chapter 16
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This Doll Can Talk

Rheta Grimsley Johnson talks with Chapter 16 about literature, newspapers, and her new memoir, Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming

By Liz Garrigan |

May 4, 2010 A journalist who’s been writing about the South and its characters for more than three decades, Rheta Grimsley Johnson turns the probe on her herself in her second memoir, Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming. With both humor and poignancy, she writes about growing up among Southern Baptists, her college years at Auburn University, and a never-dull journalistic career that took her from a failed weekly startup with her then-husband Jimmy Johnson (who went on to create the Arlo & Janis comic strip) to big metro dailies such as the Memphis Commercial Appeal and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She will sign copies of her book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on May 4 at 6 p.m.

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Only Connect

A yearning to be known drives the characters in Holly LeCraw’s The Swimming Pool

By Galyn Glick Martin |

May 3, 2010 The ideal beach read is often no more than the literary equivalent of an umbrella drink: light, frothy, and sweet. Although Holly LeCraw’s ambitious debut novel, The Swimming Pool, is none of those things, it’s worth packing with the beach towels and sunscreen anyway. LeCraw has a keen eye for details, her writing is compelling enough to keep readers engrossed, even on vacation. LeCraw will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on May 4.

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King Cotton and His Victims

Financial historian Gene Dattel looks at the human impact of the cotton trade

By Maria Browning |

April 30, 2010 Financial historian Gene Dattel literally follows the money in his account of America’s cotton trade. In this compelling analysis, he argues that King Cotton was critical to the economic interests of both the North and the South, and that an “amoral” quest for wealth consistently trumped the nation’s qualms about slavery.

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Home-Town Heartache

Lee Smith’s new story collection captures the pathos of life outside the big city

By Lacey Galbraith |

April 29, 2010 Lee Smith wrote her first novel, 1968’s The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed while still an undergraduate at Hollins College. Since then she’s written eleven more, plus three collections of short stories. A playwright as well, Smith’s Good Ol’ Girls—written with fellow author Jill McCorkle and featuring music courtesy of Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman—made its off-Broadway debut last winter. With her latest effort, Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger: New and Selected Stories, Smith only adds to her successes. As the narrator of “Folk Art” says, “Once you get something going, it takes on a life of its own.” Smith will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on April 30 at 6 p.m., and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on May 1 at 2 p.m.

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In the Zone

Austin Peay’s literary magazine celebrates twenty-five years

By Margaret Renkl |

April 28, 2010 In 1985 at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, professors David Till and Malcolm Glass founded a literary magazine which they called Zone 3, in honor of the temperate growing zone of middle Tennessee. This was a staggeringly hopeful endeavor. Even twenty-five years ago, it was not clear that poetry itself—let alone literary magazines devoted to it—would survive the twentieth century. If cable television hadn’t swamped the little boat of lyric poetry, the coming tsunami not yet known as the Internet surely would.

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Writing the Body

Award-winning poet Beth Bachmann discusses her work—and the way her sister’s violent death affects it

By Maria Browning |

April 28, 2010 In her first collection, Temper, poet Beth Bachmann grapples with the horror and mystery of violent death. The book’s powerful, carefully crafted poems earned her critical raves and the 2008 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. This spring, Bachmann also won the prestigious Kate Tufts Discovery Award, given each year to “a first book by a poet of genuine promise.” Bachmann answered questions from Chapter 16 in anticipation of the award ceremony in Pasadena on April 28.

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