Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

I Am a Narrative

Novelist Jacqueline Woodson explores myriad facets of identity in Red at the Bone

In Red at the Bone, with characteristic lyricism and insight, Jacqueline Woodson delivers an astonishingly rich and resonant portrait of 21st-century American identity. Woodson will discuss the novel at Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 10.

Read more

The Cold Can Teach Us Many Things

Novelist Brock Clarke sharpens his absurdist comic edge in Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?

In Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? Brock Clarke sends a repressed middle-aged loner on a madcap journey toward a peculiar sort of enlightenment. Brock Clarke will discuss Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? at the 2019 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 11-13.

Read more

Louisiana Man

Doug Kershaw’s memoir is as wild as they come

The Ragin’ Cajun: Memoir of a Louisiana Man tells Doug Kershaw’s life story from his birth on a houseboat in southern Louisiana to international stardom. The legendary musician and his co-author, novelist Cathie Pelletier, will appear at the 2019 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 11-13.

Read more

Inside the Ivory Tower

Paul Tough reveals how American colleges try (and fail) to redress social inequality

In The Years That Matter Most, journalist Paul Tough offers a bracing assessment of the state of higher education in America, focusing on the ways colleges replicate social divisions. Tough will discuss The Years That Matter Most at the 2019 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 11-13.  

Read more

Are We Supposed To Be Here?

In The Affairs of the Falcóns, Melissa Rivero explores the plight of an undocumented mother in 1990s New York

In her debut novel, The Affairs of the Falcóns, Melissa Rivero creates an indelible protagonist in undocumented, Peruvian-born Ana, whose life as a mother and wife in mid-1990s New York is a constant, tenuous gauntlet. Melissa Rivero will discuss The Affairs of the Falcóns at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, held on October 11-13.

Read more

Siblings in Exile

A brother and sister wrestle with the past in Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House

Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House traces the complex and often torturous history of a pair of siblings and the alluring mansion they called home, once upon a time. 

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