Chapter 16 - Part 608

Danger, Demolition, and Desire

Jennie Bentley talks about her third Do-It-Yourself mystery, Plaster and Poison, as well as the lure of “a hot guy with power tools”

By Lyda Phillips | March 3, 2010

As both a licensed real estate agent and someone who has ripped out drywall herself, Jennie Bentley writes about what she knows, decorating it in a palate of romantic colors with just enough dark accents to provide tension. She spoke with Chapter 16 about her third romantic Do-It-Yourself mystery, Plaster and Poison, as well as her upcoming real-estate mystery series set in Nashville, before launching a multi-stop book tour around the state.

Entranced

Coleman Barks talks about his thirty-year fascination with the Sufi poet Rumi

By Maria Browning | March 3, 2010

Chattanooga native Coleman Barks has devoted more than three decades to translating the poems of Rumi, and in the process has turned the thirteenth-century mystic into one of the most popular poets in America. Prior to his visit to Austin Peay State University on March 4, Barks spoke with Chapter 16 about why so many contemporary American readers are entranced with an ancient Persian poet.

Queen of Heartbreak

Jimmy McDonough delivers the first full-scale biography of Tammy Wynette

By Paul McCoy | March 3, 2010

Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen, is the first full-scale biography of the “First Lady of Country Music.” A paradoxical public figure, complex in every way, Wynette’s life mirrored her art—dramatic, spectacular, absurd, and tragic. Jimmy McDonough, bestselling author of Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography, takes the reader as far into Wynette’s world as we can possibly go: from her restless childhood in Mississippi, through her tumultuous years with George Jones, to the botched—and some say, faked—kidnapping in 1978, and finally to her tragic and mysterious final days. McDonough spoke with Chapter 16 in advance of his appearance at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on March 9, and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on March 10.

A Visit to the Blues

Photographer Michael Loyd Young documents Delta music

By Maria Browning | March 3, 2010

Photographer Michael Loyd Young has documented cultural practices around the world, but in Blues, Booze & BBQ he turns his camera on a community a little closer to home, capturing the raucous, passionate culture of the Delta blues in more than seventy photographs of musicians, audiences, music festivals, juke joints—and, yes, barbecue.

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.

Camilla and the Caterpillars

By Frances Figart, illustrated by Matt Brass
Smokies Life
68 pages
$14.95

A young girl’s encounter with an extraordinary caterpillar in the Great Smoky Mountains leads her and her family on a quest to plant a national park right in their own backyard.

This environmentally themed chapter book for ages 6 through 11 introduces young readers to important ecological concepts including habitat loss and the interdependence of native species and offers a compelling grassroots solution through native-plant gardening that invites anyone to take part in addressing the growing biodiversity crisis.

~the publisher