Fiction | Chapter 16

Getting Closer

With Jason Bateman joining Nicole Kidman on the project, Kevin Wilson’s bestselling novel, The Family Fang, is surely headed for the big screen

By Margaret Renkl | November 8, 2013

November 8, 2013 In 2011, when actress Nicole Kidman, who lives in Nashville, optioned Kevin Wilson’s debut novel, The Family Fang, for a feature film, the Sewanee author was dumbfounded. “It’s crazy,” he told Chapter 16’s Tina LoTufo at the time. “That’s the furthest thing from your mind when you’re writing a book. [But] maybe in the back of my head I was thinking if I could write a good-enough novel I would get to meet Nicole Kidman. And it would all be worth it.”

A Collision of the Beautiful and the Brutal

In a new anthology, John Branscum and Wayne Thomas have collected the literary treasures of Appalachia

By Ralph Bowden | October 31, 2013

October 31, 2013 For Red Holler: Contemporary Appalachian Literature, John Branscum and Wayne Thomas have compiled a group of stories, essays, poems, and graphic narratives from the work of twenty-three Appalachian authors. As the book’s subtitle suggests, the selections are truly contemporary, and many stretch the boundaries of traditional literary forms. They also stretch the old Appalachian stereotypes of primitive violence, poverty, and ignorance.

American-Made and the Nature of Community

A writer visits the real Tennessee shirt factory at the heart of her new historical novel

By Susan Gregg Gilmore | October 25, 2013

October 25, 2013 Wages for skilled cut-and-sew workers have risen faster than those of the average job, but young Americans aren’t interested in garment manufacturing. Experts say the work just isn’t glamorous enough to attract their attention. I wish some of them could have joined me recently when I spent an afternoon in an old shirt factory in Dunlap, Tennessee, about twenty miles northwest of Chattanooga.

“Fiction Was My First Love”

Elizabeth Gilbert talks with Chapter 16 about her new historical novel, The Signature of All Things

By Sarah Norris | October 24, 2013

October 24, 2013 Bestselling memoirist Elizabeth Gilbert will discuss her first novel in thirteen years, The Signature of All Things, as part of the Salon@615 series at the Nashville Public Library on November 1, 2013, at 6:15 p.m. She will also appear at the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville on November 2, 2013, at 7 p.m. The Nashville event is free. Tickets for the Knoxville event are $35 and include a copy of the novel.

The Secret That Raised Me Above the Surface of Life

After a decade’s silence, Donna Tartt releases a profound and beautiful novel, The Goldfinch

By Ed Tarkington | October 15, 2013

October 15, 2013 More than twenty years have passed since the publication of The Secret History, the extraordinary international-bestselling novel that established Donna Tartt as a literary legend at age twenty-eight, and more than a decade since her most recent, the equally acclaimed The Little Friend. Tartt’s new novel, The Goldfinch—a coming-of-age tale that gradually evolves into a pulse-quickening thriller—is well worth the wait. Tartt will appear at the Nashville Public Library on October 22, 2013, at 6:15 p.m. as part of the Salon@6:15 series. The event is free and open to the public.

Reckoning with Mystery

Ayana Mathis discusses the mysteries of human experience, including her novel’s elusive protagonist

By Emily Choate | October 8, 2013

October 8, 2013 Hattie Shepherd, the woman at the center of Ayana Mathis’s debut novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie—made famous as the first selection of Oprah’s Book Club 2.0—has survived the Jim Crow South, a decades-long struggle with poverty, and life as the mother of eleven children. Today Mathis talks with Chapter 16 about Hattie’s complicated character. Mathis will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.

I Gotta Sing!

By Alice Faye Duncan
WaterBrook
40 pages
$14.99

“A whole barnyard makes noise ‘in the Spirit of joy’ throughout this raucous picture book, a sweetly heartwarming sing-along by Duncan. Kellam conveys comfort and happiness as the loved ones reflect sunny enthusiasm in this gladdening rendition of the Black American religious folk song ‘I’m Goin’a Sing When the Spirit Says Sing.’”

~Publishers Weekly