Fiction | Chapter 16

Behind Those Glorious Books

Suzanne Kingsbury inventories a few little-known facts about William Gay

By Suzanne Kingsbury | February 29, 2012

February 29, 2012 I met William Gay during a reading of The Long Home in 2000, and we became very close friends. As a literary demi-god, he often seemed not quite of this world, and yet the complexity and genius of his work matched equally who he was as a man. Because he was quiet and often introverted, I wrote a list of little-known (and a few widely-known) facts I learned about him to share with those who would like to have known the man behind those glorious books.

Artist, Activist, Icon

In his memoir, The Last Holiday, musician/poet Gil Scott-Heron traces his path from budding artist to pop culture prophet

By Maria Browning | February 27, 2012

February 27, 2012 Musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron, who died in 2011, became a pop culture icon thanks to his classic spoken-word recording “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” and he is widely regarded as the father of rap and hip-hop. His posthumously published book, The Last Holiday: A Memoir, traces his life as an artist and activist.

William Gay, 1943-2012

Tennessee writers and readers mourn the loss of William Gay, legendary novelist from Hohenwald

By Serenity Gerbman | February 24, 2012

February 24, 2012 Novelist William Gay died at his home in Hohenwald, Tennessee, last night, at age sixty-eight. Among the most critically acclaimed of his generation of Southern writers, Gay began his public writing career famously late, when, at age fifty-five, his first short story was published in The Georgia Review. His first novel, The Long Home, won the James A. Michener Memorial Prize and was named a New York Times Notable Book for 1999. He followed that success with another novel, Provinces of Night, a short-story collection, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, and a third novel, Twilight.

Out of the Valley

Josh Weil, author of the Sue Kauffman Prize-winning The New Valley, talks with Chapter 16 about the art of the novella

By Ed Tarkington | February 24, 2012

February 24, 2012 Josh Weil’s fearless introspection and his gift for creating layers of complexity in his characters permeate the pages of his award-winning first collection of novellas, The New Valley. Set in the rural environs of the New River Valley between Virginia and West Virginia, Weil’s stories are written in graceful, haunting prose that masterfully evokes the beautiful but isolated and unforgiving nature of rural AppalachiaOn February 27 at 7 p.m., Weil will give a reading in the Hodges Library Auditorium on the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee. Click here for more details.

The Royal Navy Confronts the Privateer Problem

In Dewey Lambdin’s latest installment of the Alan Lewrie series, it’s 1805, and Captain Lewrie prowls the coastline of the American Southeast in search of French and Spanish privateers

By Ralph Bowden | February 13, 2012

February 13, 2012 In Reefs and Shoals, Dewey Lambdin’s eighteenth Alan Lewrie adventure, Great Britain is at war again with France and Spain. With privateers attacking British shipping in the Caribbean and Florida Straits, the Admiralty orders Captain Lewrie to take his frigate southwest, via Bermuda, to the Bahamas. Once there he is to assemble a squadron and put a stop to the depredations, whatever it takes. In telling his tale, Lambdin recreates the context, the technology, and the swashbucklers of that time and place.

The River Rose

In Once Upon a River, Bonnie Jo Campbell introduces a fearless young heroine whose escape on the water brings her close to both danger and desperation, but also to courage

By Susannah Felts | February 8, 2012

February 8, 2012 At age fourteen, Margo Crane, a quiet and beautiful girl, learns to shoot a rifle. A natural with the weapon, she feels “the guidance of the gun itself,” writes Bonnie Jo Campbell in Once Upon a River. “It held her steady, and then sadness perfected her aim.” Absorbing, exotic, and relentlessly heartbreaking, this second novel from the National Book Award finalist is a transcendent example of a journey narrative, centered on a singular, complex protagonist who refuses to be contained or forgotten. Campbell will read from her work February 9 at 7 p.m. in Buttrick Hall, Room 101, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The event is free and open to the public.

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