Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Randall Kenan Could Fly

A posthumous collection captures a beloved writer’s brilliance

Black Folk Could Fly, a volume of selected writings by the late Randall Kenan, explores the many aspects of African American life in the South.

Read more

She Loved Baseball

Andrea Williams tells the story of Effa Manley in Baseball’s Leading Lady

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Nashville author Andrea Williams formerly worked in marketing and development for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. Her wide knowledge of the subject is evident in her first book for young readers, Baseball’s Leading Lady: Effa Manley and the Rise and Fall of the Negro Leagues, an account of the only woman in the Baseball Hall of Fame. 

Read more

One Mississippi, Two

I can’t forget my client’s final phone call

Thirty-six hours after my client was executed, I drove along the highway in the direction opposite the prison for my wisdom teeth extraction. The throb ballooning at the back of my gums had become a rhythmic, welcome distraction from the grief scratching my throat ragged.

Read more

Pack Man

Michael Nelson analyzes FDR’s ill-fated court-packing plan of 1937

In Vaulting Ambition, Michael Nelson explains the flawed decisions that led to one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s greatest missteps: his 1937 plan to add new justices to the Supreme Court. Nelson will appear in conversation with Joe Birch at Novel in Memphis on March 5.

Read more

A Disaster and a Dauntless Town

Meet the heroes and martyrs of the Waverly Train Disaster in Walk Through Fire

Dr. Yasmine S. Ali’s Walk Through Fire: The Train Disaster That Changed America creates a gripping drama about dark days in her hometown’s history. Ali will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 27, the Humphreys County Public Library in Waverly on March 3, the Dickson County Public Library on March 9, and the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville on April 8.

Read more

A March to the Mountaintop

Alice Faye Duncan’s picture book tells the story of MLK’s last days in Memphis

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Alice Faye Duncan’s award-winning 2018 picture book, Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop, offers children an account of the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Read more
TAKE THE SHORT READER SURVEY! CHAPTER 16 SURVEYOR SURVEYING