Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

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Chris Offutt delivers another intense Kentucky thriller in Shifty’s Boys

Chris Offutt’s latest novel, Shifty’s Boys, returns to rural eastern Kentucky and sets protagonist Mick Hardin on the trail of a killer.

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Deconstructing a Dog

Bronwen Dickey talks with Chapter 16 about Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Whether you’re the adoring owner of a pittie or a person who thinks pit-bull bans make perfect sense, you are likely to find some of your assumptions overturned by Bronwen Dickey’s Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon. Dickey sifts through a great deal of history, science, and popular culture to uncover the truth about the dogs and the source of our extreme ideas about them. 

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“Poem for a Chattanooga Night Club”

Book Excerpt: Him or Her or Whatever

Tyler Friend was grown — and is still growing — in Tennessee and received their MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Friend is the author of a poetry chapbook, BUNKER, and Him or Her or Whatever is their first full-length collection.

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My Favorite Chapter

A writer reflects on her long relationship with Chapter 16

It’s been more than 10 years since I took those tentative and unwitting steps toward a part-time career as a “professional writer,” a label I never would have dared apply to myself until Margaret Renkl gave me permission.

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Finding Her Place in the Sun

Jamie Sumner brings readers a 12-year-old girl who finds her courage

Jamie Sumner’s middle-grade novel The Summer of June tells the story of one 12-year-old’s struggle to manage her anxiety. Sumner will sign the book at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 4.  

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A Southern Ramble

Reporter Dan Chapman retraces John Muir’s 1867 trek through the South

John Muir’s A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf chronicles the famed conservationist’s trek through the South in 1867. In A Road Running Southward, Dan Chapman, a Georgia-based environmental reporter, follows Muir’s path on foot and by Subaru, observing nature at risk from mountain forests to coastal estuaries. 

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