A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Fiction

The Worthless Servant

By Ann Patchett

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.

The Comedy of Empathy

By Lee Conell

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.” 

The Comedy of Empathy

One Cure to Heal Them All

By Stephen Usery

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. 

One Cure to Heal Them All

The Choice Either to Wail or Smile

By Ed Tarkington

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.

The Choice Either to Wail or Smile

A Long, Strange Trip

By Kim Green

My Year Abroad, Chang-rae Lee’s sixth novel, is an exuberant — and strange — coming-of-age tale. Lee will discuss the book with Ann Patchett at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 19.

Anything So Dangerous and Painful as Hope

By Tina Chambers

In Ground Zero, possibly his most heart-wrenching middle-grade book yet, Knoxville native Alan Gratz weaves the terror of 9/11 and the pain of the ongoing war in Afghanistan into a story whose relentless pace and nonstop suspense ensure readers feel every bit of it. Gratz will discuss Ground Zero at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 12.

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