Fiction | Chapter 16

The Constancy of Goodness

Robert Goolrick, author of the bestseller A Reliable Wife, talks with Chapter 16 about writing as the path to something resembling peace

By Tina LoTufo | March 8, 2012

March 8, 2012 Robert Goolrick’s forthcoming second novel, Heading Out to Wonderful, begins with the arrival of a mysterious stranger, Charlie Beale, in a quiet Virginia town during the summer of 1948. Beale brings with him two suitcases—the first filled with knives and the second with money—and a powerful desire that “things would finally turn out better, and that this would be the place he could feel at home.” The book isn’t due in stores until June, but Goolrick will read from it on March 15 at 6 p.m. as part of Algonquin Book Club Night at Parnassus Books in Nashville.

Deciding Who Gets to Be God

In When the Killing’s Done, T.C. Boyle asks if humans can, or should, control nature

By Chris Scott | March 7, 2012

March 7, 2012 In his novel When the Killing’s Done, T.C. Boyle sets conservationists against animal-rights activists in a battle royal over the ecosystem of the Channel Islands off the coast of California. It’s a fight both philosophical and physical, and it leaves no one unscathed. Boyle will discuss and sign When the Killing’s Done on March 16 at the Nashville Public Library as part of the Salon@615 series. A free public reception begins at 6:15 p.m. and will be followed by a reading at 7. Click here for details.

Feeling a Sacred Trust

Novelist and activist Silas House talks with novelist and activist Barbara Kingsolver about the need to end mountaintop-removal mining—and preserve the mountains they love

By Silas House | March 1, 2012

March 1, 2012 Silas House, the former writer-in-residence at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, has long been an activist on behalf of Appalachian environmental causes. Today he talks with novelist Barbara Kingsolver about a benefit appearance she’s making in Knoxville next week to support the Scenic Vistas Protection Act, a bill proposed by the Lindquist Environmental Appalachian Fellowship (LEAF), that would protect ridges above 2,000 feet from being removed by surface coal mining. Barbara Kingsolver and Kathy Mattea present “A View from the Mountaintop” at the Bijou Theatre in Knoxville on March 11. Click here for event details and here for more information, including videos, about mountain-top removal mining.

Celebrating William Gay

A host of novelists, poets, teachers, and editors from around the country recall the genius of William Gay

February 29, 2012

February 29, 2012 William Gay’s death last week of heart failure sent tremors through the community of writers and readers in Tennessee and beyond, people who loved him as a friend and as a writer. We have asked some of those who knew Gay, in ways large and small, to send us their stories. They come from New York City and from Wyoming, from Maine and from Virginia, and, of course, they come from Tennessee. Together, we hope their recollections present a portrait of a man who will be greatly missed.

Saying Something Deeper

William Gay didn’t care about the trivial, either in life or in art

By Steve Yarbrough | February 29, 2012

February 29, 2012 Every conversation I ever had with William Gay was intense, in the same way that the stories in his brilliant collection I Hate to See that Evening Sun Go Down are intense. He once called me in California to discuss marriage, and the conversation lasted three hours.

Four Visions of William

At conferences and festivals, I liked to think of William Gay as Home Base in a strange childhood game of tag; we could always find each other and lose all the discomfort of trying to remain cordial to strangers

By George Singleton | February 29, 2012

February 29, 2012 The first words William Gay ever said to me occurred inside the public library in Nashville, at the annual Southern Festival of Books. I stood uneasily near the beer station—scared, really—and William sidled up and said, “Tommy Franklin says you’ll help me beat up ____,” a writer who’d reamed William’s fine novel Provinces of Night in a book review. I had just met Tom Franklin and didn’t recall ever saying I’d help anyone fight a critic, but I said, “Okay,” and started laughing.

Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

By Tore C. Olsson
St. Martin's Press
288 pages
$30

“I recommend Red Dead’s History unreservedly not only to fans of the iconic video game, but also to anyone who wants to understand the riotousness — from Wild West gunslingers to Jim Crow to lynching — that darkened our past, and which continues to influence our culture. Olsson’s prose is graceful, his analysis profound. This is history at its most accessible and exciting.”

~Peter Cozzens, award-winning author of A Brutal Reckoning