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.
Set in Detroit, Angela Flournoy’s critically celebrated first novel follows the struggles—with relationships, addiction, finances, even a ghost—of thirteen siblings and their parents. Flournoy discussed The Turner House with Chapter 16 prior to her 2016 appearances at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville and the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville.
Tiana Clark’s debut chapbook, Equilibrium, won the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition sponsored by Bull City Press. She is the winner of the 2016 Academy of American Poets Prize and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. Her debut collection, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, was published in 2018.
Reporter Daniel Connolly spent the 2012-2013 school year at Kingsbury High School in Memphis, where Latino teenagers make up nearly fifty percent of the student population. The Book of Isaias is his account of that year.
Whether you missed the festival, or just want a chance to remember the fun, here’s a quick look back at the 28th annual Southern Festival of Books
“I’ve missed the Southern Festival of Books only twice since its founding twenty-eight years ago, and I carry with me many of the voices I first heard there. They are a witness to the shared lives of so many who’ve gone before us, and their voices—their testimonies—remind us as writers and readers to carry on, to keep adding new voices to this celebration.” Poet Jeff Hardin kicks off the Southern Festival of Books, which runs today through Sunday at Nashville’s Legislative Plaza. Festival events are free and open to the public.
