Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

A Liberation of Language and Lyric

A Beat Beyond collects a wealth of prose from poet Major Jackson

A Beat Beyond collects a wealth of notes, essays, reviews, and talks written by award-winning poet Major Jackson from 1993 to 2020. Jackson will appear in conversation with Destiny O. Birdsong at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 1 and at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

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Defenseless Against the Memory

Bobby C. Rogers brings depth and richness to his poetry’s West Tennessean setting

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In Shift Work, West Tennessee poet Bobby C. Rogers mines the small-town front rooms, farmers’ fields, glass-strewn roadsides, and neglected cityscapes that suffuse the lives and memories of his poems’ many Tennessean characters. Rogers will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

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Halfway Home

I connect with Memphis in a way maybe only outsiders can

Beautiful and brutal. Brash and fruitful. Memphis means something. I love it as a place, I love it as a people, and I love it as a promise.

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A Queerness Full of Appalachian Grit and Spirit

Zane McNeill discusses Y’all Means All, an anthology of emerging queer voices

 In the anthology Y’all Means All: The Emerging Voices Queering Appalachia, editor Z. Zane McNeill curates a collection “full of a very specific Appalachian grit and spirit.” McNeill will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

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Outwardly Fine, Inwardly Lost

Katie Kitamura’s international novel hits close to home

Katie Kitamura’s novel Intimacies takes us inside the mind of a multilingual narrator who leaves much unsaid. Kitamura will appear at Sewanee: The University of the South on August 30.

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Drawn into Conflict

Aram Goudsouzian talks with Chapter 16 about a new graphic history on James Meredith

Historian Aram Goudsouzian has partnered with artist Bill Murray and editor Vijay Shah to produce Man on a Mission, a graphic history chronicling James Meredith’s struggle to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962. Goudsouzian will discuss and the book at Novel in Memphis on September 27.

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