Nonfiction
The Way He Works
David Macaulay talks with Chapter 16 about a career built on curiosity
by Susannah Felts
May 14, 2013 Twenty-five years ago and long B.G. (before Google), illustrator and writer David Macaulay published his groundbreaking book, The Way Things Work, now a classic of educational children’s literature. In 2008, he published a follow-up of sorts, The Way We Work, which applied his innovative and meticulous show-and-tell approach to the human body. Truly an artist for all ages, Macaulay has received both the Caldecott Medal and a MacArthur genius grant. On May 18 at 2 p.m., he’ll deliver the commencement address to the 2013 graduating class of Watkins College of Art, Design & Film in Nashville. The event, which will be held at the Downtown Presbyterian Church, is free and open to the public.
Published Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Eat! Drink! Be Merry!
Julia Reed, an expert on Southern food and traditions, celebrates life’s sybaritic pleasures
by Sarah Norris
May 9, 2013 Julia Reed’s new essay collection, But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!, is a happy, happy book, intended to make readers laugh out loud and reminisce about family culinary traditions, to inspire them to labor in a kitchen, perhaps with a frothy cocktail in hand, and then to share the delicious rewards. Reed will read from and discuss But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria! at the Southern Food Writing Conference, held in Knoxville on May 16 and 17.
Published Thursday, 9 May 2013
Seeing What’s Essential
Robert Benson writes a poignant meditation on caring for an aging parent
by Tina LoTufo
May 8, 2013 The only people who don’t love Robert Benson’s mother, the author writes in this memoir, “are the ones who have not met her yet.” Benson has written many books about the contemplative life and teaches prayer and writing workshops around the country. His beloved mother, Peggy Jean Siler Benson, is the mother of five children, widow of a former pastor, and a successful writer and speaker in her own right. Moving Miss Peggy is Benson’s poignant book about “the beginning of the end of her life.” Robert Benson will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 16 at 6:30 p.m.
Published Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Great Stories Live Here
Chapter 16 hits Chattanooga for the seventeenth biennial Celebration of Southern Literature
by Tina LoTufo
May 6, 2013 “Being Southern is something you just are,” novelist Elizabeth Spencer said at last month’s Celebration of Southern Literature: “I couldn’t turn it off if I tried. And I never tried.” Held April 18-20 in Chattanooga and sponsored by the Southern Lit Alliance (formerly the Arts & Education Council), this year’s gathering—the seventeenth biennial—included participation by more than twenty-five members of the Fellowship, who handed out ten awards for fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and drama, including the Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley.
Published Monday, 6 May 2013
Dream Season
Former NBA superstar Penny Hardaway coaches a team of disadvantaged Memphis youth to victory in Wayne B. Drash’s moving first book, On These Courts
by Michael Ray Taylor
May 3, 2013 Wayne B. Drash’s On These Courts: A Miracle Season that Changed a City, a Once-Future Star, and a Team Forever is the story of how former NBA star guard Penny Hardaway coached the boys’ basketball team at Lester Middle School—where he had once played himself—to a Tennessee state championship. That season provides a backdrop to the most inspiring sports story to come out of Memphis since Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side, and like that book, it too seems custom-made for Hollywood. Drash and Hardaway will discuss and sign copies of On These Courts at the University of Memphis Bookstore on May 8 at 6 p.m., and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood on May 10 at 6 p.m.
Published Friday, 3 May 2013
Surviving the Unsurvivable
Augusten Burroughs talks with Chapter 16 about his new survival guide for all manner of tragedies
by Amaryllis Lyle
April 29, 2013 Augusten Burroughs, author of several bestselling memoirs, including Running with Scissors, has shifted from memoir to self-help with his newest release, This is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike. Covering topics from dating to mental illness to elevator-riding, This is How has an answer for it all. On May 7 at 6:15 p.m., Burroughs will appear at the Nashville Public Library as a part of the Salon@615 series. The event is free and open to the public.
Published Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Death Becomes Him
In The Faithful Executioner, Joel Harrington examines the meaning of justice, honor, and the law in Reformation-era Europe
by Tim Boyd
April 24, 2013 During the late sixteenth century, the city of Nuremberg was a bustling commercial metropolis at the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. As one of the first cities to convert to Lutheranism in the 1520s, it was also on the front lines of the Reformation. In The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century, Vanderbilt historian Joel Harrington considers this world as it is revealed in the extensive diary of Frantz Schmidt, the city’s public executioner for more than forty years.
Published Wednesday, 24 April 2013
The Oak Ridge Girls
Denise Kiernan’s new book exposes the secret lives of the Tennessee women who unknowingly built the first nuclear bombs
by Kristen Iversen
April 22, 2013 Denise Kiernan’s engaging new book explores the human side of the story of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the best-kept secrets in the saga of how the United States built the first nuclear weapons. Kiernan will discuss The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 14 at 6:30 p.m.
Published Monday, 22 April 2013
Living by Stories
Novelist Richard Bausch teaches his writing students patience, toughness, and the willingness to fail
by Richard Bausch
April 18, 2013 A Celebration of Southern Literature, the biennial gathering of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, begins today in Chattanooga and will run though April 20. Novelist Richard Bausch, a member of the Fellowship and a legendary writing teacher, is beloved in the literary community for his Facebook posts that spur and encourage and guide aspiring writers. In conjunction with the Chattanooga celebration, he has kindly permitted Chapter 16 to repost a selection of his Facebook updates.
Published Thursday, 18 April 2013
On the Origins of Ecology
James B. Hunt details the development of John Muir’s environmental thought
by Ralph Bowden
April 17, 2013 John Muir, a young Scottish immigrant, set out on a walk from Indiana to the Gulf in the fall of 1867. In Restless Fires: Young John Muir’s Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf in 1867-68 historian James B. Hunt traces that walk through Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida. At the time, Muir was already a serious student of botany with a powerful calling to observe and collect species, especially in regions unfamiliar to him, but his thinking about the relationship of humans to the rest of nature was not yet completely formed. Hunt will discuss Restless Fires at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on April 24 at 6 p.m.
Published Wednesday, 17 April 2013
- 1 of 32
- ››
