Worrying for years about a question with no answer is more than a little neurotic. It can also provide fertile soil for plot development.
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A Friend from Chile
The seeds of a novel are sown in a friend’s disappearance
Fiction
Love Is Not Enough
In Joan Silber’s Improvement, women cope with the aftermath of self-made catastrophes
Joan Silber’s Improvement follows a dozen characters over four decades on three continents, but all the stories revolve around a single question: how to keep living after your plans have crumbled to dust. Silber will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 30 at 6:30 p.m.
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The Mind Is Its Own Place
Lee Conell’s debut story collection, Subcortical, explores the brain’s strange connections
In her debut story collection, Subcortical, Lee Conell depicts smart characters who are mysteries to themselves. The book’s title provides an accurate index for the wit and sophistication to be found in this volume. Conell will appear on November 29 at Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt at 6 p.m.
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Archaeology of the Imagination
David Madden’s Marble Goddesses and Mortal Flesh, a collection of novellas, explores a writer’s journey
David Madden’s new collection of novellas, Marble Goddesses and Mortal Flesh, traces the arc of an artist’s journey and testifies to the power of a veteran writer who continues to find innovative ways to entertain and instruct readers.
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Real Bones, Real Person, Not a Myth, Not a Story
In Bryn Chancellor’s Sycamore, a small town reckons with the eruption of a long-buried mystery
For the characters of Bryn Chancellor’s accomplished debut novel, Sycamore, the image of a vanished girl has come to embody the instability marking their lives. Once a new arrival discovers human remains outside town, their pasts suddenly press into the present.
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Looking Back—and Looking Forward
Editor Adam Ross talks with Chapter 16 about the 500th issue of The Sewanee Review
This fall marks the publication of the 500th issue of The Sewanee Review and a full year of issues under Adam Ross’s leadership. Today the Nashville novelist talks with Chapter 16 about how the past informs the present—and influences the future—at the oldest literary magazine in the country.
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