Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Fans Take to the Roadshow

Family treasures and a shot at TV stardom

Antiques Roadshow, the PBS TV series that for 25 years has revealed the history and occasionally breathtaking value of collectibles was coming to Nashville, and I had tickets. From there to stardom seemed what Bertie Wooster would have called a stone-dead cert, if ever there was one.

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Flight to Balad

We pushed it way too far but miraculously escaped with our lives

Medics flung open the cargo doors and deposited an Iraqi man whose drawn and lined face exposed a life well acquainted with war and hardship. Shouted instructions to “Get him to Balad!” — the site of the big American trauma hospital — sent us on our way.

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Brushing the Divine

For novelist Amy Greene, a haunted town hidden on the Cumberland Plateau is the perfect place to write

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: The Celts believed heaven and earth are three feet apart but even shorter in these thin places. Are such locations where we’re able to brush up against the divine? Sometimes writing feels to me like a brush with the divine. Maybe that’s why places like Rugby call out to those of us who write, putting stories into our heads and almost demanding that we set them down on paper.

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We’re Back, Baby!

A booklover’s guide to the Southern Festival of Books

The festival is about love. Love for the beautiful words that move and delight us, love for the authors who put those words on paper and screen, and love for the culture and community of the book.

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Halfway Home

I connect with Memphis in a way maybe only outsiders can

Beautiful and brutal. Brash and fruitful. Memphis means something. I love it as a place, I love it as a people, and I love it as a promise.

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