Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Alexander van der Pool

Book Excerpt: Edge of the Wind

Set in a West Tennessee town, James E. Cherry’s Edge of the Wind explores the connection between jazz and poetry — and between racism and mental illness. The novel, originally published in 2016, has been reissued in a new edition with a foreword by Charles Dodd White.

Read more

Ball of Fire

Book Excerpt: Walk Through Fire

Yasmine S. Ali’s Walk Through Fire: The Train Disaster that Changed America recounts the 1978 derailment and explosion in Waverly, Tennessee, that killed 16 people and led to the creation of FEMA. Dr. Ali will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 27, the Humphreys County Public Library in Waverly on March 3, and the Tennessee State Museum on April 8.

Read more

“Statues in the Park”

Book Excerpt: Intimacies in Borrowed Light

Intimacies in Borrowed Light is the first full-length poetry collection by Knoxville native Darius Stewart, who is also the author of three chapbooks. He received the 2021 Emerging Writer Award from the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame and is currently a Lulu “Merle” Johnson Doctoral Fellow in English Literary Studies at the University of Iowa. He lives in Iowa City with his dog, Fry.

Read more

“Sleeping Over on Highway 78”

Book Excerpt: My Back Pages: The Teresa Poems

“Sleeping Over on Highway 78” is included in Floyd Collins’ 2022 collection, My Back Pages: The Teresa Poems, published by Stephen F. Austin University Press.

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