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3 weeks ago | 
chapter16.org | Sara West |Steve Haruch |Ed Tarkington |Sarah Norris
Ask anyone what defines Southern literature, and the answer is likely to include the importance of place – the land from which our stories spring. But for years now, I’ve wrestled with how many stories have been excluded from this regional designation, how many people have lived just as fully off the land even as they were denied the right to call that land their own. Memphis native Dolen Perkins-Valdez knows this disconnect.
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1 month ago | 
chapter16.org | Clay Risen |Sara West |Aram Goudsouzian |Maria Browning
Almost two years ago, Yolanda Pierce moved to Nashville to become dean of Vanderbilt Divinity School. This was and is intensely good news. In Dr. Pierce, Nashville is met by an activist scholar who is also an accomplished administrator and a renowned public intellectual.
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2 months ago | 
chapter16.org | Sara West |Michael Taylor |Liz Garrigan |Maria Browning
Chantha Nguon’s Slow Noodles, released this month in paperback, has been lauded by foodies and book lovers all over the world, landing on Best of 2024 lists by publications like Food & Wine, BookPage, and Elle. This captivating memoir celebrates Nguon’s indomitable spirit as she chronicles her life growing up in Cambodia and her family’s terror-filled years fleeing to Vietnam to escape persecution under Lon Nol, before Year Zero and the terror of the Khmer Rouge.
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2 months ago | 
chapter16.org | Sara West |Maria Browning
“People liked to make all kinds of proclamations about what they would never do. But people did all sorts of things, and never was a very long time, and in his experience, people who said things like that lacked imagination.
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2 months ago | 
chapter16.org | Sara West |Maria Browning
In our increasingly fragmented culture, short stories — discrete, brief, manageable — seem like an ideal form of fiction, especially for those forced to acknowledge their shrinking attention spans. But for me, the inverse feels true. The more fractured the world around me, the more I long for deep, immersive worlds, characters I can invest in, stories that stretch across generations. Imagine my surprise, then, when Emily Greenberg’s debut Alternative Facts absolutely blew me away.
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Nov 12, 2024 | 
chapter16.org | Sara West
Poet Christian Collier’s work has appeared in such publications as Hayden’s Ferry Review, North American Review, Poetry, and Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts. His chapbook The Gleaming of the Blade was a 2021 Editors’ Selection from Bull City Press, and his poem “Intervention” won the 2022 Porch Prize for Poetry. Greater Ghost, his first full-length collection, takes readers on a journey through all the ways one might be haunted, all the various ghosts that might visit a person.
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Oct 17, 2024 | 
nashvillescene.com | Sara West
The first words of any book can establish its tone, and in Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods, the tone is unmistakable: “The bed is empty.” Before readers know who should be in that bed, before the police investigation, the history or the sprawling range of characters is introduced, those four words produce a pit in the stomach. A few sentences later, Moore repeats those words. “The bed is empty,” and we know something very bad has happened, but what?
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Sep 24, 2024 | 
chapter16.org | Sara West
Perhaps Nashvillian Margaret Renkl needs no introduction, but with the selection of The Comfort of Crows as the 100th title in the wildly popular book club hosted by Reese Witherspoon, the spotlight is once again on Renkl’s unique blend of ferocity and tenderness. Her New York Times essays regularly remind readers of the crossroads encountered as we attempt to attend carefully to a world that can feel so tenuous.
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Aug 28, 2024 | 
chapter16.org | Sara West
The first words of any book can establish its tone, and in Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods, the tone is unmistakable: “The bed is empty.” Before readers know who should be in that bed, before the police investigation, the history, or the sprawling range of characters is introduced, those four words produce a pit in the stomach. A few sentences later, Moore repeats those words. “The bed is empty,” and we know something very bad has happened, but what?
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Aug 6, 2024 | 
bookpage.com | Sara West
Oliver Jeffers is one of the most recognizable and innovative creators in children’s literature today, and The Dictionary Story showcases his vivid imagination at work in yet another collaboration with the wildly inventive Sam Winston (following A Child of Books). An authors’ note explains this picture book as the product of a team of “so many talented friends,” including bookmaker Haein Song, who crafted the handmade dictionary incorporated into each brilliant spread.
