Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Wandering, Escaping, Arriving

Sybil Baker considers many kinds of travel in Immigration Essays

Travel can be a luxury, a diversion, an obsession, a necessity, or a means of survival. In Sybil Baker’s Immigration Essays, it’s all those things, as well as a kind of meditation on how to be in the world. Baker will discuss Immigration Essays at Starline Books in Chattanooga on February 15 at 7 p.m.

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American Letters

Daniel L. Mallock finds timely lessons in the friendship of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

In Agony and Eloquence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and a World of Revolution, Nashville writer Daniel L. Mallock details the breakup and later renewal of the friendship between two beloved founders. Mallock will sign Agony and Eloquence at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Cool Springs on February 11 at 1 p.m. and at Books-A-Million in Nashville on March 26 at 3 p.m.

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Memory, Outrage, and Courage

Timothy B. Tyson updates the story of Emmett Till’s murder

In The Blood of Emmett Till, Timothy B. Tyson retells the story of a fourteen-year-old boy’s brutal murder in Mississippi, how it inspired a movement, and why his life and death still resonate today.

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Coming Full Circle

Andrew Maraniss talks with Chapter 16 about the new edition of Strong Inside for young readers

Andrew Maraniss spent eight years researching and writing Strong Inside, the story of Vanderbilt basketball player Perry Wallace, who broke the color barrier in SEC athletics. Now Maraniss has produced a version of the story for readers in middle and high school. He will launch the new edition at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 9 at 6:30 p.m.

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A Park is Born

Following the success of last year’s Smoky Jack, Ken Wise and Anne Bridges revive another memoir by Paul J. Adams

In 1925 a young man from Knoxville named Paul Adams established the first permanent camp atop Mt. Le Conte, the highest peak in what would become Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Editors Ken Wise and Anne Bridges have now updated Adams’s memoir, Mount Le Conte, first published fifty years ago, as a follow-up to Smoky Jack, which was published posthumously last year.

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Finding Holmes

Michael Sims investigates the very real origins of the greatest fictional detective

With The Story of Charlotte’s Web and The Adventures of Henry Thoreau, Michael Sims invented what amounts to a new genre: the biography of a particular book. In Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes, he follows literary and historical clues to identify the origins of the most famous fictional detective in the world.

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