Q&A | Chapter 16

Deconstructing a Dog

Bronwen Dickey talks with Chapter 16 about Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon

By Maria Browning | May 27, 2022

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Whether you’re the adoring owner of a pittie or a person who thinks pit-bull bans make perfect sense, you are likely to find some of your assumptions overturned by Bronwen Dickey’s Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon. Dickey sifts through a great deal of history, science, and popular culture to uncover the truth about the dogs and the source of our extreme ideas about them.

Finding Her Place in the Sun

Jamie Sumner brings readers a 12-year-old girl who finds her courage

By Julie Danielson | May 24, 2022

Jamie Sumner’s middle-grade novel The Summer of June tells the story of one 12-year-old’s struggle to manage her anxiety. Sumner will sign the book at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 4.

Faction Jackson

David S. Brown places Andrew Jackson in the partisan politics of his time

By Aram Goudsouzian | May 16, 2022

In The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson, biographer David S. Brown explains the world that shaped the seventh president of the United States, while illustrating how Jackson’s brand of raucous, divisive politics changed the new American nation.

Sex, God, and Politics

By recounting historic debates over sex and morality, R. Marie Griffith explains our political divides

By Aram Goudsouzian | May 13, 2022

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In Moral Combat, Chattanooga native R. Marie Griffith tells the history of the twentieth-century United States through religious debates over issues of sex and morality, exploring such topics as birth control, sex education, LGBT rights, and sexual harassment.

The Man as a Writer

Gordon Van Ness discusses the complex legacy of poet James Dickey

By Michael Ray Taylor | May 2, 2022

In James Dickey: A Literary Life, Gordon Van Ness, a long-time scholar of the Vanderbilt-educated poet and novelist, has written a comprehensive biography of a complex man and his place in American letters.

The Glorious Pastime: Anjali Enjeti

Anjali Enjeti on the books that inspire her

By Maria Browning | April 26, 2022

The Parted Earth, Enjeti’s debut novel, tells a story shaped by the sectarian violence of India’s 1947 partition, following the legacy of that trauma from the streets of New Delhi to 21st-century Atlanta. To mark the book’s paperback release this month, Chapter 16 asked Enjeti to share some of her favorite books and authors via our Glorious Pastime questionnaire.

Camilla and the Caterpillars

By Frances Figart, illustrated by Matt Brass
Smokies Life
68 pages
$14.95

A young girl’s encounter with an extraordinary caterpillar in the Great Smoky Mountains leads her and her family on a quest to plant a national park right in their own backyard.

This environmentally themed chapter book for ages 6 through 11 introduces young readers to important ecological concepts including habitat loss and the interdependence of native species and offers a compelling grassroots solution through native-plant gardening that invites anyone to take part in addressing the growing biodiversity crisis.

~the publisher