Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

“Upon Waking”

Book Excerpt: The Headless Angel

Bill Brown is the author of 12 poetry collections. During the past 30 years, he has published hundreds of poems and articles in literary journals and anthologies. In 2011 the Tennessee Writers Alliance named him Tennessee Writer of the Year. He lives in Greenbrier.

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Chaotic, Mysterious, Unfathomable

Blue Marlin is a rollicking road trip through author Lee Smith’s own fictional history

The latest offering from iconic Southern writer Lee Smith is Blue Marlin, a sweet and funny novella loosely based on her family. Smith says in an afterword, “Of all the stories I’ve ever written, this one is dearest to me, capturing the essence of my own childhood.”

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“The Bridge”

Book Excerpt: Hidden Nature: Wild Southern Caves

Michael Ray Taylor’s Hidden Nature: Wild Southern Caves, a mixture of memoir and subterranean natural history, will be published in August 2020. He chairs the communication and theatre arts department at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas.

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A Heroine for Our Times

A determined girl saves lives in war-torn Poland

Sharon Cameron’s The Light in Hidden Places is a novelization of the true lifesaving deeds of Stefania Podgórska, who hid 13 Jews in a small attic during the Nazi occupation of Poland.

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The AIDS Years

In Carter Sickels’ The Prettiest Star, set in 1986, a young AIDS patient encounters bigotry when he returns to his hometown in Ohio

Set in 1986 during the height of the AIDS epidemic, Carter Sickels’ The Prettiest Star depicts a sick young man returning to his hometown in rural Ohio and confronting ignorance and prejudice, the worst of it coming from his own family.

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Death Is the Mother of Beauty

Poet Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum talks with Chapter 16 about grief, memory, and healing

Nashville poet Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum’s second collection, Visiting Hours, is an invitation to join him in communing with and grieving for the spirit of his longtime friend Mary Interlandi, who took her life in 2003. It is at once sweeping and focused, grand and intimate.

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