Nonfiction | Chapter 16

Book Tours on Ice

By Stephen Usery

May 30, 2013

May 30, 2013 Humorist David Sedaris is currently on an author tour for his new book, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. He spoke with Chapter 16 by phone about his upcoming appearance at Parnassus Books in Nashville, the difference between his lecture and bookstore tours, and the true meaning of Christmas. [This interview is also available as a podcast.] Sedaris will discuss and sign copies of Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 31, 2013, at 6 p.m. The event is free and open to the public but requires book purchase through the Parnassus website. Click here for details.

The Way He Works

By Susannah Felts

May 14, 2013

May 14, 2013 Twenty-five years ago and long B.G. (before Google), illustrator and writer David Macaulay published his groundbreaking book, The Way Things Work, now a classic of educational children’s literature. In 2008, he published a follow-up of sorts, The Way We Work, which applied his innovative and meticulous show-and-tell approach to the human body. Truly an artist for all ages, Macaulay has received both the Caldecott Medal and a MacArthur genius grant. On May 18 at 2 p.m., he’ll deliver the commencement address to the 2013 graduating class of Watkins College of Art, Design & Film in Nashville. The event, which will be held at the Downtown Presbyterian Church, is free and open to the public.

Eat! Drink! Be Merry!

By Sarah Norris

May 9, 2013

May 9, 2013 Julia Reed’s new essay collection, But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!, is a happy, happy book, intended to make readers laugh out loud and reminisce about family culinary traditions, to inspire them to labor in a kitchen, perhaps with a frothy cocktail in hand, and then to share the delicious rewards. Reed will read from and discuss But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria! at the Southern Food Writing Conference, held in Knoxville on May 16 and 17.

Seeing What’s Essential

By Tina LoTufo

May 8, 2013

May 8, 2013 The only people who don’t love Robert Benson’s mother, the author writes in this memoir, “are the ones who have not met her yet.” Benson has written many books about the contemplative life and teaches prayer and writing workshops around the country. His beloved mother, Peggy Jean Siler Benson, is the mother of five children, widow of a former pastor, and a successful writer and speaker in her own right. Moving Miss Peggy is Benson’s poignant book about “the beginning of the end of her life.” Robert Benson will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 16 at 6:30 p.m.

Great Stories Live Here

By Tina LoTufo

May 6, 2013

May 6, 2013 “Being Southern is something you just are,” novelist Elizabeth Spencer said at last month’s Celebration of Southern Literature: “I couldn’t turn it off if I tried. And I never tried.” Held April 18-20 in Chattanooga and sponsored by the Southern Lit Alliance (formerly the Arts & Education Council), this year’s gathering—the seventeenth biennial—included participation by more than twenty-five members of the Fellowship, who handed out ten awards for fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and drama, including the Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley.

Dream Season

By Michael Ray Taylor

May 3, 2013

May 3, 2013 Wayne B. Drash’s On These Courts: A Miracle Season that Changed a City, a Once-Future Star, and a Team Forever is the story of how former NBA star guard Penny Hardaway coached the boys’ basketball team at Lester Middle School—where he had once played himself—to a Tennessee state championship. That season provides a backdrop to the most inspiring sports story to come out of Memphis since Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side, and like that book, it too seems custom-made for Hollywood. Drash and Hardaway will discuss and sign copies of On These Courts at the University of Memphis Bookstore on May 8 at 6 p.m., and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood on May 10 at 6 p.m.