FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Cathie Pelletier, a native of Maine, fell in love with Tennessee when she and a friend hitch-hiked down South over thirty years ago. After moving to Nashville in 1976, Pelletier found inspiration in almost everything, from the bars frequented by songwriters to the smell of springtime wisteria. Today, she talks about her time in Tennessee and the way it has shaped her writing.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: A former crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Connelly discusses with Chapter 16 the slow death of local newspapers; his latest Harry Bosch installment, Nine Dragons; electronic books; and his popular legal-series protagonist, Mickey Haller.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Nashville’s Room in the Inn serves individuals experiencing homelessness by providing a winter shelter program, recuperative care, education and workforce development, and solutions for permanent housing. In the summer of 2012, novelist Ann Patchett made the rounds with Room in the Inn’s founder, Father Charles Strobel, and wrote an essay about the experience, which appears in Not Less Than Everything: Catholic Writers on Heroes of Conscience, From Joan of Arc to Oscar Romero, edited by Catherine Wolff.
From the Chapter 16 archive: “Doubt is essential to the writing life,” Andrew Sean Greer says. “If you only had arrogance, you’d write a book that’s all ego.”
From the Chapter 16 archive: In Balm, Dolen Perkins-Valdez investigates the possibilities of healing the personal and national trauma caused by the Civil War.
From the Chapter 16 archive: Chattanooga-area novelist Tim Gautreaux talks about the pitfalls of regionalism, the influence of James Dickey and Flannery O’Connor, the challenges of writing short fiction, and the imperatives of religious faith.
