Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Memphis, A City of Timelessness and Transition

New book considers the effects of globalization on a great Southern city … and vice versa

In Memphis and the Paradox of Place, Wanda Rushing explores the cultural, geographic, and economic influences of a city that holds a unique place in Tennessee and the world. Rushing’s nuanced investigation has real-world implications for Memphis’s future — and for cities such as New Orleans, which seem in a perpetual state of limbo.

Read more

Biography

A. Manette Ansay was born in 1964 in Michigan and raised in Port Washington, Wisconsin, among 67 cousins and over 200 second cousins. She is the author of six novels, including Good Things I Wish You (July, 2009), Vinegar Hill, an Oprah Book Club Selection, and Midnight Champagne, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as a short story collection, Read This and Tell Me What It Says, and a memoir, Limbo. Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Pushcart Prize, the Nelson Algren Prize, and two Great Lakes Book Awards.

Read more

Beyond Belles

Cathy Holton’s novel delivers another sharp look at the interior lives of aging debutantes

Four college roommates reunite some twenty years later for a beach trip where old wounds resurface, secrets are revealed, and decisions get made that will change their lives. Sound familiar? It should. This is not remotely a new plotline for so-called “women’s novels,” but Chattanooga resident Cathy Holton brings a depth, humor, and warmth to Beach Trip that make this novel more than just a beach read.

Read more

Never Can Say Goodbye

Becca Stevens explains why hearts are meant to be broken

On the topic of grief, Becca Stevens is wise, ruthless, mystified, and tender. Story after story supports the arc of her impossibly simple message: we are never alone. Love beats death every time.

Read more

Hot Popcorn, Cold War

Ronald Kidd’s new Young Adult novel takes kids to the movies during the red scare

The 1950s was a scary time, full of drop drills, McCarthyism, and Soviet boasts. It was also the golden age of horror movies. Aliens, mutants, zombies, and werewolves filled theater screens. Coincidence? Not in Ronald Kidd‘s The Year of the Bomb, a young-adult novel that explores the angst of growing up surrounded by real and imagined horror.

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