Essay
In Praise of Failure
At a time of new beginnings, novelist Adam Ross contemplates his past
by Adam Ross
January 3, 2012 “I write these words as a man with a Ph.D. in failure, and I commenced my subject’s study on the day I decided to become a writer, a life-changing choice I made in 1986, after taking a creative-writing class my sophomore year at Vassar College. How many times did I fail? Let me count the ways.” As the rest of the country makes resolutions for self-improvement, celebrated Nashville novelist Adam Ross considers the value of failure.
Published Tuesday, 3 January 2012
Letterpressed
How a Chapter 16 writer’s great-grandmother befriended—and betrayed—J.D. Salinger
by Sarah Norris
December 8, 2011 Who owns the story of a friendship? A Chapter 16 writer considers her great-grandmother’s decision to sell the letters J.D. Salinger had written during their twenty years of friendship—and the great, reclusive writer’s final letter in response.
Published Thursday, 8 December 2011
Toward What? Away From What?
A poet alone in Costa Rica considers the nature of art—and loneliness
by Charlotte Pence
December 5, 2011 This type of travel is not meant to soothe; it’s not like a seven-day cruise where the aim is to make sure you never feel lost, unsure, or in want. This travel is about want. About loneliness. About insecurity. About all those things that go into the poems that stay with you, the ones that risk and surprise, that ache to be written, and that talk back to you on the page.
Published Monday, 5 December 2011
On Happiness and the Thematic Resonance of Pigeon Racing
On this Indonesian slum tour, an American novelist discovers more than he expected
by Adam Prince
December 1, 2011 The pigeon races are going to be a scene in the novel I’ve come to Jakarta to research. Thematic resonance is what I’ve told Ronny. It took me half an hour to explain. His English isn’t perfect, but I don’t think that was really the problem. It was more that he just didn’t see the point.
Published Thursday, 1 December 2011
I Yam What I Yam
A poet considers the way a family shapes the soul—in both good and terribly bad ways
by George Scarbrough
September 7, 2011 George Scarbrough (1915-2008) was born the third of seven children in in a clapboard cabin in Patty, a small community in Polk County, Tennessee. Strongly influenced by his literate mother, he was an avid reader from his earliest years and studied at Lincoln Memorial University, the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and the University of the South in Sewanee. As farmer, librarian, and teacher he lived his entire life in East Tennessee, for many years in Oak Ridge. His poetry was published widely in magazines and journals, and he is the author of five books of poems and one novel, all of which established his position as a major figure in American literature. This essay was first published in Touchstone, a publication of Humanities Tennessee, in 1986. Under the Lemon Tree, a new collection of previously unpublished poems by George Scarbrough, will appear this fall from Iris Press. Robert Cumming, the editor of the collection, will discuss George Scarbrough and his work at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.
Published Wednesday, 7 September 2011
Up on the Mountain
A Chapter 16 writer reflects on her stay at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference
by Maria Browning
August 23, 2011 Maria Browning was happy to be accepted to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, even though she wasn’t entirely sure why she wanted to go. She had to get there to find out.
Published Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Rings
What does it mean when a symbol survives longer than the ideal it represents?
by Maria Browning
June 21, 2011 It took a bit of effort to acquire this lovely ring. My future husband and I had been living together for a couple of years, and when we finally decided to get married we knew that traipsing down to the mall and picking out ordinary wedding bands was not for us. We wanted something special, something unique, but didn’t have much of an idea beyond that.
Published Monday, 20 June 2011
In Italy
A troubled father and son find each other on a train in the home country
by Joe Pagetta
We met on Franklin Street in the Heights section of Jersey City. It was the night before I moved to Nashville, and my father had asked me to meet him at the club where he frequently played cards with his friends from the old country. We each had an espresso, and then we took a walk. Not far from the club, he handed me a thousand dollars and said he wished he could give me more. He told me to be careful. He hugged me. As I walked back to my car, I tried to control my breathing and hold back the tears. Something was ending, and something was beginning, but there was much I was leaving unfinished.
Published Friday, 17 June 2011
Living in Eternity
It took a cancer diagnosis to cure poet Wilmer Mills of discouragement and malaise
by Wilmer Mills
June 8, 2011 For the past ten years or so it seems that all I think about and write about is Time, but something about learning that I have a form of liver cancer that is ultimately incurable has given me an amazing sense of clarity about the subject. I find myself standing on the back porch taking deep breaths, intoxicated by air and light and hope. Despite my bleak prognosis, I now see everything in front of me as a space of infinite possibility, within certain limitations, with a full and nourishing sense of Time.
Published Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Garden Secrets
On the sesquicentennial of The Secret Garden, Michael Sims considers the surprising connections between his own Crossville boyhood and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s masterpiece
by Michael Sims
June 6, 2011 It was the wheelchair scene that got me. I had been identifying more than I realized with the adventures of sad little Mary, who lost her parents to a cholera outbreak in India and who finds herself reluctantly lodged at a relative’s country estate in chilly England. Her only companions are the privileged brat Colin, who turns out not to be crippled, and homespun Dickon, who almost speaks the language of his wild-animal pets. In retrospect I find it easy to see that each child spoke to a different aspect of my own childhood experience and yearnings. But I didn’t think of that at the time. When Colin rose from the wheelchair, healed by the other children’s innocent affection and his own determination—in short, cured by the secret walled garden where it was safe to be a child—I was astonished to find myself crying.
Published Monday, 6 June 2011
- 1 of 5
- ››
