Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

“My Therapist Tells Me I Keep Dating My Mother”

Book Excerpt: Negotiations

Destiny O. Birdsong is a Louisiana-born poet, fiction writer, and essayist. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and the MacDowell Colony and won the Academy of American Poets Prize. She earned her M.F.A. and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University and lives in Nashville. Birdsong will appear at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 14.

Read more

“Suspect”

James E Cherry is the author of six books. His latest novel, Edge of the Wind, was published in 2016. His 2008 poetry collection, Honoring the Ancestors, was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Still a Man and Other Stories, a Lillian Smith Book Award nominee and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award for Fiction, will be re-released by Willow Books in July 2020. Cherry has an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso and resides in Jackson, Tennessee, with his wife, Tammy.

Read more

“Bear Witness”

Eqiuilibrium_cover_lgTiana Clark’s debut chapbook, Equilibrium, won the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition sponsored by Bull City Press. She is the winner of the 2016 Academy of American Poets Prize and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. Her debut collection, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, was published in 2018.

Read more

“Orderly”

Book Excerpt: Code

Charlotte Pence’s first book of poems, Many Small Fires (Black Lawrence Press, 2015), received an INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award from Foreword Reviews. Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have recently been published in Harvard Review, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and Brevity. A graduate of Emerson College (M.F.A.) and the University of Tennessee (Ph.D.), she is now the director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama.

Read more

“Upon Waking”

Book Excerpt: The Headless Angel

Bill Brown is the author of 12 poetry collections. During the past 30 years, he has published hundreds of poems and articles in literary journals and anthologies. In 2011 the Tennessee Writers Alliance named him Tennessee Writer of the Year. He lives in Greenbrier.

Read more

“The Skin of Meaning”

Book Excerpt: The Skin of Meaning

Keith Flynn is the award-winning author of six collections of poetry and an essay collection, The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory. From 1984-1999, he was lyricist and lead singer for the nationally acclaimed rock band The Crystal Zoo, which was formed in Nashville and produced three albums. Flynn is founder and managing editor of Asheville Poetry Review.

Read more
TAKE THE SHORT READER SURVEY! CHAPTER 16 SURVEYOR SURVEYING