February 6, 2014 Aram Goudsouzian’s previous two books consider the lives of actor/director Sidney Poitier and basketball legend Bill Russell, both major cultural icons–and civil-rights activists– during the 1960s. In his new book, Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power and the Meredith March Against Fear, Goudsouzian (chair of the history department at the University of Memphis) looks at civil rights head-on.
January 22, 2014 Dead Eye, Memphian Mark Greaney’s fourth novel starring former CIA goon and current freelancer Court Gentry, has Gentry headed back to Europe after adventures in East Africa and among the Mexican drug cartels. Dead Eye also has Gentry getting closer to the answers of who burned him and why he is considered the number-one target for some in America’s intelligence services.
Ann Patchett talks about her new essay collection—and the beginnings of her next novel
October 30, 2013 Ann Patchett energetically resists all efforts to identify autobiographical elements in her fiction, but she has never been averse to personal writing in general: in fact, as she explains in her new book, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, she got her start as a writer by publishing essays and features for national magazines. Prior to her reading on November 4, 2013, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville , Patchett spoke with Chapter 16 about how opening a bookstore gave her the courage to publish this book. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.
October 30, 2013 Ann Patchett’s 2011 novel, State of Wonder, tells the story of a Minnesota scientist who travels to the Amazon to get to the bottom of a colleague’s mysterious death and in the process finally comes to terms with a mentor she’s tried for years to forget.
July 15, 2013 Books by comedians in the 1980s and 1990s were often little more than retooled versions of their stand-up routines, but in recent years, memoirs and essay collections from the likes of Sarah Silverman and Patton Oswalt have shown that comedians have more than the next laugh on their minds.
June 24, 2013 Today, Memphis native Dana Sachs talks with Chapter 16 about her second novel, The Secret of Nightingale Palace. Sachs is a former journalist and the author of five books, including the nonfiction titles like The House on Dream Street and The Life We Were Given. The Secret of Nightingale Palace follows the struggles of thirty-five-year-old Anna.
