July 30, 2014 When she faced the prospect of sending both of her sons into war zones—one to Iraq, the other to Afghanistan—River Jordan conceived of a unique way to calm her fears: every night she would say a prayer for someone she didn’t know. Along the way, her project became an Internet phenomenon. Jordan will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.
July 28, 2014 Clay Risen, a frequent Chapter16 contributor, returns to the historic struggle for civil rights in The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act, a penetrating account of the heroic effort to pass the landmark 1964 legislation. He will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.
July 22, 2014 Robert Gordon’s Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion is a propulsive page-turner about a white fiddler and bank employee named Jim Stewart and his sister, Estelle Axton, who built the Stax Record label in the Soulsville neighborhood of Memphis. Robert Gordon will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.
July 11, 2014 John Seigenthaler—revered reporter, editor, author, and advocate for books, civil rights, and the First Amendment—died today after a long struggle with cancer. He was eighty-six.
July 9, 2014 In Delta Dogs, Maude Schuyler Clay captures the beauty, nobility, and sadness of rural Mississippi’s canine denizens. The book also features an introduction by fiction writer Brad Watson and an essay by poet Beth Ann Fennelly. Clay will discuss the collection at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on July 17, 2014, at 5:30 p.m.
July 1, 2014 While recognizing that there are multiple Souths and “as many ways to be black as there are black people,” Zandria Robinson of the University of Memphis works to understand the multiple ways in which black people perform and make use of a Southern identity in their daily lives.
