Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Shadowlands

Patrick Radden Keefe’s Rogues draws back the curtain on secret worlds

Rogues, a new collection of Patrick Radden Keefe’s magazine features, opens a curtain to reveal secret worlds. Keefe will discuss Rogues at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

Read more

So Many Stories to Be Told

Ruta Sepetys on her passion for sharing underrepresented history

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: With her latest novel, I Must Betray You, award-winning YA author Ruta Sepetys returns to the difficult task of telling an unfamiliar story from history: the struggles of people living under the brutal Ceaușescu regime in Romania in the late 1980s. Sepetys will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

Read more

A Demand for Justice

Activist Justin Jones recounts the 2020 occupation of Nashville’s Legislative Plaza

A rising star in the fight for racial justice, Nashvillian Justin Jones chronicles his activism in a new memoir, The People’s Plaza: Sixty-Two Days of Nonviolent Resistance. Jones will appear at Fisk University on August 11 and at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

Read more

Welcome to Your New Eden

Bruce Holsinger discusses The Displacements, a novel of natural disaster

Bruce Holsinger’s new novel, The Displacements, imagines America’s first Category Six hurricane hitting South Florida and East Texas, uprooting millions of people. He answered questions from Chapter 16 about the way natural disasters exacerbate cultural divides but reveal everyday heroism. Holsinger will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 14-16.

Read more

Seventy-Six Pounds of Wet Hair and Poor Decisions

Rick Bragg’s canine love story about the worst dog in the world

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Rick Bragg’s The Speckled Beauty is about finding the heart to love the most wayward and aggravating dog imaginable, who also turns out to be smart, tenacious, loyal, fearless, full of life, and just what the doctor ordered for a man who is learning new lessons about losing and letting go. Bragg will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 14-16.

Read more

Sitting in the Memories

Kendra Allen’s unconventional memoir reckons with trauma and personhood 

The stories in Kendra Allen’s memoir Fruit Punch are delivered in a lyrical mix of poetry and prose that can make you forget the story she’s telling is her own. Allen will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 14-16.

Read more
TAKE THE SHORT READER SURVEY! CHAPTER 16 SURVEYOR SURVEYING