October 26, 2012 On October 30 at 7 p.m., John Seigenthaler will speak on “First Amendment Challenges Posed by New Media Technology” at the Massey Performing Arts Center on Belmont University campus in Nashville. The event is free and open to the public. Click here for ticket details. On November 8 at 11:30 a.m., Seigenthaler will receive the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee’s 2012 Joe Kraft Humanitarian Award. Tickets to that event are $75. Click here for details.
October 23, 2012 Since her first novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969, Margaret Atwood has always seemed a writer very much of her time and yet prescient, with an almost uncanny ability to show us clearly who we are and where we might be headed. One of a tiny handful of authors who enjoy both critical respect and wide popular appeal, Atwood has used her prominence to advocate for the environmental causes that are her passionate concern. As the Nashville Public Library Foundation prepares to honor Atwood with the 2012 Nashville Public Library Literary Award, Chapter 16 surveys her body of work. Atwood will give a free public reading on October 27 at 10 a.m. in the auditorium of the Nashville Public Library downtown.
October 11, 2012 With Master of the Mountain, acclaimed historian Henry Wiencek offers a timely and troubling account of how Thomas Jefferson—the Founding Father most frequently invoked as the “guiding spirit” of the New World—rationalized keeping human beings enslaved. Wiencek constructs the image of a man who in his young adulthood sensed the atrocity of slavery but went on, nevertheless, to embrace the practice after he discovered the easy profits he could glean from an institution he referred to in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence as “a cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberties.” Wiencek will discuss Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves at Nashville’s Southern Festival of Books on October 12 at 2 p.m. in Legislative Plaza, Room 12. All festival events are free and open to the public.
October 10, 2012 Knuckleballer R.A. Dickey is having what sportswriters call a “streak,” scientists call “critical mass,” and Dickey himself calls a “kairotic moment.” To put it more prosaically, this is R.A. Dickey’s year. “Timing is so important in life, I believe,” Dickey recently wrote to Chapter 16 in an email. “I have really felt that this last year has been the culmination of so many things coming together.”
October 1, 2012 In 1926, two New Orleans roommates—one a writer, the other an artist—decided to put together a little book about their French Quarter circle of friends, most of whom were also writers and artists, and publish a few hundred copies, consisting mainly of caricatures and witty captions. In Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s, John Shelton Reed uses this little book by artist William Spratling and his roommate—a fellow by the name of William Faulkner—as a snapshot out of time through which to explore the bohemian arts community that thrived in the Vieux Carré of the 1920s. John Shelton Reed will discuss Dixie Bohemia at Nashville’ s Southern Festival of Books on October 14 at 2:30 p.m. in Legislative Plaza Room 12. All festival events are free and open to the public.
September 28, 2012 Kentucky has been primarily known for its folk music: ballads and string bands in Eastern Kentucky, jug bands along the Ohio River, more thumbpickers than you can swing a cat at in the Western Kentucky coal fields, and of course, bluegrass. But the modern sounds emerging from Kentucky are as varied as its landscape, encompassing not only country and folk but also indie-rock, jazz, gospel, blues, and rap. In his new book, A Few Honest Words: The Kentucky Roots of Popular Music, Jason Howard provides intimate profiles of a few Kentucky musicians who draw on their sense of place to inform their art. Among these venerable musicians is the iconic Naomi Judd, who will appear with Howard at Nashville’s Southern Festival of Books on October 12 at 3 p.m. in the Nashville Public Library Auditorium. All festival events are free and open to the public.
