Essay
I Think I Attract the Mentally Ill
An author on book tour encounters his public
by Robert Hicks
July 30, 2010 The truth was there before me from that first event at my local bookstore, when two devotees of a book they have never read—a man and a woman—got in a slugfest over who would be last to meet me, and the woman won. Somehow in the commotion, as the staff was ushering me out a side door, I knew in my heart that this was going to be a long book tour.
Published Friday, 30 July 2010
Killer Dreams
An aspiring author heads to Killer Nashville, a conference designed to help unpublished writers land a book contract
by Chris Scott
July 23, 2010 Killer Nashville began in 2006 when Clay Stafford, a Franklin-based writer and film producer, threw a conference together in about four months, given a last-minute boost by the attendance of bestselling suspense-author Carol Higgins Clark. Stafford soon had a successful series, the goal of most mystery writers, on his hands. Now an international affair, Killer Nashville still pulls in big names—this year's guest of honor is Jeffery Deaver—and offers four tracks: writing, forensics, marketing, and a fan track for public book signings and author events, as well as a contest, the Claymore Dagger Award, to honor an unpublished work worthy of publication. Chapter 16 contributor Chris Scott gives an inside look at the conference, which this year will be held August 20-22.
Published Friday, 23 July 2010
The Old Man
It was a hard winter, and the horse had lived a long time
by Wayne Christeson
June 28, 2010 It was a late winter day in February when Bruce and I were sitting in the Country Boy having lunch. Laura Weaver came in looking for Bruce and told him that it looked like a horse was down over at the Big Farm. Bruce is an old-timer himself, and he knew that people often mistook sleeping horses for sick or dead ones, but he also knew that Laura was a good judge of horses and was not apt to make a mistake. He was calm, but he looked worried.
Published Monday, 28 June 2010
A Natural History of Cemeteries
A man remembers the boy he was when his father died—or does he?
by Michael Sims
June 17, 2010 My father is buried there, in the lovely and quiet hilltop cemetery at the end of the road, the Hedgecoth family cemetery with its guarding meadow of Queen Anne's lace and goldenrod. He has patiently lain for decades on his side of the big bed of which the gravestone is headboard. Overhead, fox and vole, wasp and cricket, perform the rote gestures and fatal spats for which nature programs them. Us. Moles bump their heads on his pillow. Roots embrace him, trying to reach his nutrients. I will be nutritious, too, some day.
Published Thursday, 17 June 2010
This One's For the Girls
Facing a double mastectomy at age 23
by Claudia Gilmore
June 11, 2010 It's been nearly three years since I heard the eulogy, the hymns, and the loving testimony my father gave at my grandmother's funeral. The first female Baptist minister in Dallas, her love knew no boundaries or obstacles. She simply followed God's calling—registering the homeless to vote, working tirelessly to defeat George Bush—and she upset a lot of people at the time. Eventually she had to join the Methodist faith in order to preach from the pulpit. And while her sermons were always moving, it was the way she lived her life and loved indiscriminately that changed so many lives, including my own. It's because of my grandmother that I have decided, at age 23, to undergo a preventative double mastectomy with reconstruction.
Published Friday, 11 June 2010
The Good Books
What if all you ever wanted was a kid who loves books, and your daughter turns out to have bad taste in literature?
by Susannah Felts
May 24, 2010 My daughter was born, grew, sat up, ate mush, and all the while I was happy with the books I'd carefully selected for her. Thalia, however, seemed not so terribly interested. I began to wonder if, horror of horrors, my squirmy kid was not going to like reading. But she grew some more, and I watched her reading enthusiasm grow, too. Only it was growing for books I didn't choose—books I considered problematic.
Published Monday, 24 May 2010
Book Excerpt: The Railroad As Art
Real Work
by Rick Bragg
May 17, 2010 Hang some of those tools on the wall, he told me, some of those chainsaws or chisels or big yard forks that would hold seventy pounds of rock in a single scoop. Hang 'em up high so you can see 'em real good, he told me, after you finally get yourself an easy job, and every time you feel like griping, take a long, hard look.
Published Monday, 17 May 2010
After the Flood
As the water begins to recede, Chapter 16 writers take stock
by Chapter 16
May 7, 2010 If a picture is worth a thousand words, and everyone in town has a camera in his pocket, then this flood has been documented beyond anything Chapter 16, a website devoted to language, could possibly add to the discussion. But we wanted to try anyway.
Published Friday, 7 May 2010
After Eudora
In an age of big-box retail and multi-ethnic migration, can a distinctly Southern literature survive?
by Serenity Gerbman
A friend of mine spent his childhood "playing church" and arguing over whose turn it was to preach and whose to be saved. And a relative recently attended a wedding reception where the centerpiece was a whole hog, smoking away in a homemade smoker on a trailerbed still hitched to the pick-up truck. When the owner got mad about something or other, he got in and drove away, pulling the smoking hog on the trailer behind him. (More potato salad, anyone?) These stories are true, and funny, and Southern. But they are also potential fodder for some bad Southern fiction.
Published Thursday, 1 April 2010
The (Im)Perfect Word
Are sticks and stones really worse than a mean name?
by Silas House
Writers are always looking for the perfect word, the perfect sentence. Put a bunch of writers together for a little while and you'll most likely hear one of them declare, "I love that word," in response to something someone has uttered. Words have power. Words mean something. Words live and breathe. But what happens when the perfect word is one that you do not want to use?
Published Thursday, 17 December 2009
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