Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Be Not Afraid

Mystery and mayhem at a summer theater camp in the Berkshires

“The play’s the thing” in Twelfth, Janet Key’s debut novel for middle-grade readers. It was not 12-year-old Maren Sands’ idea to attend Charlotte Goodman Theater Camp. Now she’s stuck in the middle of the woods with a bunch of theater kids she doesn’t know — and, as it turns out, possibly a ghost. Janet Key will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

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A Body in Need of a Home

Shawna Kay Rodenberg reveals the complicated lives of rural-born women in Kin

Raised for several years in a religious commune known as The Body, Shawna Kay Rodenberg delves into the complex intersection of religion, femininity, familial expectations, and personal agency in her memoir Kin. Rodenberg will appear with Robert Gipe at the Johnson City Public Library on September 10 and at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

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A Liberation of Language and Lyric

A Beat Beyond collects a wealth of prose from poet Major Jackson

A Beat Beyond collects a wealth of notes, essays, reviews, and talks written by award-winning poet Major Jackson from 1993 to 2020. Jackson will appear in conversation with Destiny O. Birdsong at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 1 and at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

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Defenseless Against the Memory

Bobby C. Rogers brings depth and richness to his poetry’s West Tennessean setting

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In Shift Work, West Tennessee poet Bobby C. Rogers mines the small-town front rooms, farmers’ fields, glass-strewn roadsides, and neglected cityscapes that suffuse the lives and memories of his poems’ many Tennessean characters. Rogers will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

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A Queerness Full of Appalachian Grit and Spirit

Zane McNeill discusses Y’all Means All, an anthology of emerging queer voices

 In the anthology Y’all Means All: The Emerging Voices Queering Appalachia, editor Z. Zane McNeill curates a collection “full of a very specific Appalachian grit and spirit.” McNeill will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

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The Story Beneath the Sprawl

Mastodons to Mississippians explores ancient Nashville

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In Mastodons to Mississipians: Adventures in Nashville’s Deep Past, Aaron Deter-Wolf and Tanya M. Peres offer a brief, fascinating survey of the Nashville region’s rich archaeological record and a primer on the human communities that thrived there thousands of years before Timothy Demonbreun arrived. The book is also a plea for preservation of sites under threat from the city’s raging development boom, as well as a sobering acknowledgment of what has already been lost. Aaron Deter-Wolf and Tanya M. Peres will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

 
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