Gallatin poet Elizabeth McClellan is a finalist for an unusual literary award
October 3, 2011 “Razor Hair Girls,” a poem by Gallatin native Elizabeth McClellan, is one of five finalists for the 2011 Naked Girls Reading Literary Honors. The winner will be announced in Chicago on November 18 after a live, on-stage reading of the finalists by the Naked Girls, a group of “beautiful ladies who love to read…naked,” according to their website.
Read moreAccording to a new analysis of a study by UT, it’s even worse than we thought
September 22, 2011 Liz Garrigan’s Dear John letter to Amazon in today’s edition of Chapter 16 is an unvarnished call for book lovers to put their money where their mouths are and support their local bookstores instead of buying books online. Garrigan argues that Amazon’s refusal to collect the state and local sales taxes that other bricks-and-mortar stores collect–taxes that support local schools, police and fire departments, and other civic necessities–amounts to a “powerful incentive for customers to let their fingers do the clicking.”
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Poet Terrance Hayes adopts lightheadedness as an aesthetic stance
September 19, 2011 Terrance Hayes’s fourth collection of poems, Lighthead, won the National Book Award in poetry this year—a prize which is only the most recent iteration of an award-winning literary career. Hayes recently answered questions from Chapter 16 via email prior to his appearances at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville on September 21 and at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on September 23.
Read moreMemphis poet Matt Cook lands on the Writer’s Almanac yet again
September 19, 2011 Having a poem read aloud to millions of public-radio listeners by the thick, buttery voice of Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac has to be a high point in any poet’s public life. For Memphis poet Matt Cook, it’s a high with which he’s becoming increasingly familiar: today Keillor read Cook’s poem, “Nonsense”–Cook’s ninth appearance on the program since 2002. Listen to Keillor read it here.
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Memphis author and bookseller Corey Mesler talks about art and commerce
September 14, 2011 Corey Mesler has eight books of poetry and fiction to his credit and has received praise from the likes of John Grisham and Robert Olen Butler, but he’s probably best known to his fellow Memphians as the co-owner of Burke’s Books, a venerable store founded in 1875. With two new books this year—Before the Great Troubling, a volume of poetry, and a collection of short fiction, Notes Toward the Story & Other Stories—he talks with Chapter 16 about his art and his business. Mesler will read and sign Before the Great Troubling and Notes Toward the Story & Other Stories at Burke’s Books on September 15 at 6 p.m.
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September 8, 2011 Near the end of his writing life George Scarbrough (1915-2008) used an alter ego, writing in the voice of the legendary eighth-century Chinese poet, Han-shan, whose poems were simple, direct, and frank, never failing to call attention to the flaws in society as he saw them. Writing in the voice of Han-shan gave Scarbrough the means to speak directly about the social abuses he saw around him but could not address so clearly in his own first-person voice. “At the Last Festival” appears in Under the Lemon Tree, a new, posthumously published collection of Scarbrough’s Han-shan poems. Robert Cumming, the book’s editor, will discuss George Scarbrough and his work at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.
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