Features
My Life as a Ghost
Eddie and Taj George needed a ghostwriter; Rob Simbeck was their man
by Rob Simbeck
February 7, 2012 When Eddie and Tamara George wanted to write a book about the keys to a happy marriage, their publisher matched them with longtime ghostwriter Rob Simbeck. The Georges will discuss Married for Real: Building a Loving, Powerful Life Together at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Brentwood on February 7 at 7 p.m., and at the Kroger in Hermitage on February 8 at 6 p.m. In an essay for Chapter 16, Simbeck tells the story behind their story.
Published Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Finding a Place in the Light
Novelist Marianne Wiggins talks with Chapter 16 about her Oak Ridge novel—and how the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was part of its genesis
by Sarah Norris
January 20, 2012 Marianne Wiggins spent five years researching Evidence of Things Unseen. Set in East Tennessee, the novel is an epic love story, a mystery, a passionate argument against technological advances made at the cost of human lives—and the reason the Friends of Knox County Public Library will host an Evening with Marianne Wiggins on January 24. Wiggins will give a free public talk at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville in a celebration of the joint 125th anniversary of the Knox County Public Library and the Knoxville News Sentinel. In an interview prior to the event, she talked about history, causality, and how the time she spent in hiding with her then-husband Salman Rushdie in the 1980s influenced her book about East Tennessee between the world wars.
Published Friday, 20 January 2012
“This Brilliant Light Around the Corner”
Poets and writers around the country consider the poetic legacy of Eleanor Ross Taylor, who died last weekend at age ninety-one
by Margaret Renkl
January 6, 2012 In honor of the achievements of Eleanor Ross Taylor, and to mark her passing last Friday, Chapter 16 contacted poets and novelists around the country to ask for their impressions of a writer who spent much of her literary life in the shadow of her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Peter Taylor, but who quietly continued her own work with passion and dedication during their fifty-one years together—and for more than a decade beyond his death. Through the comments of Betty Adcock, Richard Bausch, Claudia Emerson, Mark Jarman, Don Share, Dave Smith, and R.T. Smith, what emerges is a collaborative portrait of a woman who was quiet, modest, and gentle but whose poems were uncompromising, sharp, and (in a word that comes up again and again) fierce.
Published Friday, 6 January 2012
Resist the Amazon Scan Scam!
Remember that old recommendation to vote with your pocketbook? This is the election that matters
by Margaret Renkl
December 9, 2011 Tomorrow, Amazon.com will offer customers a discount of five percent—up to five dollars, total—to go into a local store, scan the barcode with a smartphone, and then go home and order the same product from Amazon. It’s a one-day-only promotion, and it will save customers very little money, probably less than the cost of the gas it takes to drive to the local store and try out that little price-checking app on the iPhone or Android. Consequently it will cost Amazon itself relatively little money, certainly not as much as to costs them to sell the Kindle for less than the price of manufacturing it. But, just as underselling the Kindle is really an effort to drive the market for ebooks, the point of this promotion is not to drive additional online sales on December 10. The point is to get more customers comfortable with a gizmo that will make it even easier for Amazon to drop the local bookstore, and every other kind of store selling nonperishables, onto the dustheap of history. People, please don't do it.
Published Friday, 9 December 2011
Out of Chaos, Discovery
Parnassus Books is opening this weekend in Nashville, and Chapter 16 has the inside story
by Tristan Hickey
November 16, 2011 Two months ago, Ann Patchett and Karen Hayes hired Tristan Hickey—Chapter 16’s summer intern—to help them launch Parnassus Books. On Saturday the store officially opens its doors to the public. Today Hickey gives a behind-the-scenes account of the launch of the Nashville bookstore the whole country is talking about.
Published Wednesday, 16 November 2011
To Be a Writer, and To Live in the World
The Meacham Writers’ Workshop gives students and visitors—and writers—a chance to talk to each other
by Tina LoTufo
November 14, 2011 It’s not every day that attendees at a poetry reading are asked whether they mind being filmed by an MTV camera crew, but that’s what happened at the opening event of last month’s Meacham Writers’ Workshop in Chattanooga. The reading was held at Chattanooga State Community College, where one of the stars of MTV’s reality show “Teen Mom” is a student. It was an unusual beginning to a three-day conference that is itself unique. The Meacham workshop is held twice each year, primarily on the campus of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Published Monday, 14 November 2011
Bigger, Better, and Full of Books
The new Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt throws open its doors, and Nashville readers are wowed
by Sarah Norris
November 10, 2011 Maybe this is simply five months of deprivation talking, but walking into Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt for the first time feels a bit like visiting the Sistine Chapel. It is, frankly, grand. The new campus store is only 7,000 square feet larger than the old Rand location, but the place feels, for many reasons, about a million times bigger. Inside the new Nashville bookstore, 67,000 trade titles are waiting, along with a total of seventy-nine employees to help readers find new books they’ll love.
Published Thursday, 10 November 2011
Guitar Man
With Diary of a Player, Brad Paisley the brilliant songwriter becomes Brad Paisley the brilliant memoirist
by Paul McCoy
November 1, 2011 Brad Paisley is often regarded by critics and tastemakers as a bridge between old-style country music and new. His songs—he writes or co-writes many of them himself—offer sharp, catchy melodies that are also well-crafted, accessible lyrics that are also artful. And when you listen to any of his cuts, the guitar parts always stand out. Today Chapter 16 talks with Paisley about his new memoir, Diary of a Player, the story behind the songwriter.
Published Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Book Excerpt: Brad Paisley's Diary of a Player
In “Welcome to the Future,” the first chapter of his new memoir, Brad Paisley tells the story of his grandfather, the man who gave him his first guitar
by Brad Paisley
November 1, 2011 I am standing on a stage. In front of me is a sea of people, all very close together, and most of them are staring somewhat hopefully in my general direction. Some are wearing T-shirts and jeans, miniskirts, and tank tops, ball caps, cowboy hats, and camouflage. And other than the people facing the wrong way wearing the yellow vests labeled SECURITY and a few facing the wrong way who are too drunk to know better, this mob is expecting something from me.
Published Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Remembering Rebecca
Rebecca Bain’s death is a deep loss to the Nashville literary community, as Humanities Tennessee’s Serenity Gerbman knows all too well
by Serenity Gerbman
October 20, 2011 Rebecca Bain’s voice was with us in intimate spaces: inside our cars, around our kitchen tables, coming from the clock radio beside the bed in the morning. Hers was the cheerfully cajoling voice that led the radio pledge drive, that shared the morning news, and that delighted in announcing a new literary discovery.
Published Thursday, 20 October 2011
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