FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: When he died in January 2022, historian John Rice Irwin was described as the “guardian of Appalachia’s past.” In a 2008 interview, he talked with poet Jesse Graves about his family and his life’s work.
Lorrie Moore’s work has been celebrated since her 1985 debut, the short story collection Self-Help. Her 1994 novel, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, had Nick Hornby naming her “the best American writer of her generation,” and her latest, I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Moore will be the featured author for this year’s Writers@Work in Chattanooga, April 22-24.
In Complete Poetry of James Agee, editors Michael A. Lofaro and Jesse Graves present hundreds of never-before-seen writings.
Memphis-born storyteller Alice Faye Duncan has made it her life’s mission further the message of Martin Luther King Jr. through her transcendent work as a children’s author, educator, and librarian. Her recent picture books celebrate African American music as a source of joy and a form of resistance.
From haunting novels to true tales of kitchen ghosts, explorations of grief to celebrations of song, the Southern Festival of Books brings it all. The festival will take place in Nashville at Bicentennial Mall, the Tennessee State Museum, and the Tennessee State Library & Archives, October 26-27.
In Jayne Anne Phillips’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Night Watch, a group of women from the hills of West Virginia survive the horrors of the Civil War and find safety in a humane mental hospital. Phillips will discuss Night Watch at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.
