A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Fiction

Waking to Racism in 1958

By Ralph Bowden

March 19, 2013 In 1958, institutional racism infected all life in the deep South. Because of distant threats—court decisions, freedom riders, and the like—its influence was perhaps more entrenched than ever. Yet many whites seemed oblivious to its pernicious effects. In James Williamson’s novel, The Ravine, a thirteen-year-old boy from a privileged white family in Memphis spends the summer in a small Mississippi community, where a violent tragedy changes his life profoundly.

Paradise Lost

By Susannah Felts

March 14, 2013 Included on countless “best of” lists in 2012, Lauren Groff’s Arcadia tells the loving and lyrical story of a commune’s rise and fall from the late 1960s through the end of the twentieth century, and of the coming of age of one of its members, a boy known as Bit. Groff’s lush, figurative prose channels the natural world that envelops the community of Arcadia, as well as the magical realm of the Grimm fairy tales that fuel Bit’s imagination. Groff will read from her work in Nashville on March 22 at 4 p.m. in Buttrick Hall Room 101 on the Vanderbilt University campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Paradise Lost

The Many Guises of Cowardice and Courage

By Tina LoTufo

March 13, 2013 Cary Holladay’s lyrical new collection of linked stories, Horse People, follows various members of a prosperous family in Orange County, Virginia, from the Civil War through World War II and beyond. Holladay crafts small, intimate portraits of her characters as they confront timeless themes of birth and death, compassion and cruelty, memory and loss, and the many guises of both cowardice and courage. She will read from and sign copies of Horse People at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on March 22 at 5:30 p.m., and in Buttrick Hall, Room 101, on the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville on March 28 at 7 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.

Life After Pi

By Fernanda Moore

February 26, 2013 Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi, was a blockbuster in every sense of the word: it spent fifty-seven weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, won the 2002 Man Booker Prize as well as a host of other international literary prizes, was translated into forty languages, and has sold more than seven million copies. Martel will give a lecture at the Nashville Public Library on March 2 at 3 p.m. as the kickoff event for Nashville Reads, a partnership between the library, the office of Mayor Karl Dean, Humanities Tennessee, Parnassus Books, Friends of the Library, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and the Nashville Public Library Foundation. Martel’s reading is the first event in a series of activities, including a screening of the film Life of Pi, in a citywide reading campaign that extends through April 13. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are available in advance by clicking here.

Life After Pi

Starring Gary Cooper

By William Gay

February 22, 2013 Novelist William Gay died suddenly on February 23, 2012, but he left behind a body of work that will surely long outlive all of us who loved him and loved the work he did, in near isolation, from his home in Hohenwald, Tennessee. “William Gay was born a writer,” Chapter 16’s Serenity Gerbman wrote at the time. “As a late-life literary success who didn’t attend creative-writing programs or pay for professional workshops, Gay symbolized the hopes of struggling writers, especially rural ones. He was good, and he found a way to let the world know he was good—those are facts we cling to as evidence of what is possible. Throughout history, people have made long pilgrimages to witness lesser miracles.” To commemorate the anniversary of Gay’s death, Chapter 16 is proud to publish a new story that Gay’s family found among his papers. The story was discovered in manuscript form and is faithfully reproduced here without significant editing.

Somewhere I Have Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond

By Adam Ross

February 21, 2013 In the first installment of Chapter 16’s new series of essays by writers on writing, Nashville novelist Adam Ross, author of Mr. Peanut and Ladies and Gentlemen, considers that most common exhortation to new writers: write what you know. Ross will give a free public reading on February 21 at 7 p.m. in Buttrick Hall, Room 101, on the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville.

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