Nonfiction | Chapter 16

Failed Love in a New Nation

Rafia Zakaria’s memoir, The Upstairs Wife, sets the story of a sad marriage against the torturous history of Pakistan

By Maria Browning | October 8, 2015

October 8, 2015 In The Upstairs Wife, Rafia Zakaria nestles the story of her aunt’s difficult marriage within a broadly-sketched account of Pakistan’s torturous past, humanizing the country’s suffering and making its complex political situation more understandable, if no less troubling. Zakaria will discuss the book on October 9, 2015, at 3:30 p.m. in Conference Room 1A-B of the Nashville Public Library. The event, part of the Southern Festival of Books, is free and open to the public.

Book Excerpt: Rick Bragg’s My Southern Journey

“My Brother’s Garden”

By Rick Bragg | October 7, 2015

October 7, 2015 “I listen for the past, but I cannot hear it. The juke joints fall silent, cotton mills wind down to a final, solitary thread, and a last buck dancer shuffles off into the mountain mist. Then I see my brother Mark in his garden, and know that not everything must fade away.” Rick Bragg will discuss My Southern Journey on October 10, 2015, at noon in Conference Room 1 of the Nashville Public Library. The event, part of the Southern Festival of Books, is free and open to the public.

Mapping the Pathways of the Heart

Phyllis Tickle, influential religious writer and publisher, has died at her home in Lucy

By Margaret Renkl | October 3, 2015

October 2, 2015 Phyllis Tickle, influential author of more than two dozen books about faith and religion, died of lung cancer on September 22, 2015, at her home in Lucy, Tennessee. She was eighty-one.

Musical Journey

NPR’s Fiona Ritchie talks with Chapter 16 about her new book on the evolution of Appalachian music

By Michael Ray Taylor | October 2, 2015

October 2, 2015 In a book that includes lavish illustrations and a twenty-track CD, Fiona Ritchie, creator and host of the long-running public radio program The Thistle and Shamrock, and Doug Orr, founder of the Swannanoa musical workshops, have produced an authoritative history of traditional American music. The pair will discuss Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia during the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 9-11, 2015.

Time Marches On

Songwriter Bobby Braddock talks with Chapter 16 about his new memoir—and fifty years on Nashville’s Music Row

By Stephen Trageser | September 30, 2015

September 30, 2015 In his new memoir Bobby Braddock: A Life on Nashville’s Music Row, Country Music Hall of Famer Bobby Braddock looks back over a life that coincides with some of the South’s most significant social and political changes. Braddock will discuss the book at three Nashville events: on October 3, 2015, at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum; on October 9, 2015, at the Southern Festival of Books; and October 19, 2015, at Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt.

Scrambled Starts

September 30, 2015

“Jenny Youngman’s honesty and practicality will help families pray in a face-paced world. I can’t wait to pray through this book with my daughters.”

— Jacob Armstrong

Tias and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women Who Raise Us

By Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, illustrated by Josie Del Castillo
Seal Press
304 pages
$30

“Within these pages, I found my abuela, my tías and my primas — laughing, crying, and nodding alongside me. This book is a gift of understanding, and loving one’s family, even when our families are complicated and painful. It’s a beautiful reminder of the power of storytelling and the profound connection of kinship.”

~ Paola Mendoza, author, organizer and filmmaker