The Tennessee State Museum in Nashville, in partnership with Humanities Tennessee, Chapter 16, and Vanderbilt University Press, is presenting TN Writers | TN Stories again this year. The monthly author series, which has featured Marissa Moss, Tara Stringfellow, and Jeff Zentner, among others, will launch its 2023 sessions on March 11 with historian Mary Ellen Pethel, who'll discuss her book Title IX, Pat Summitt, and Tennessee's Trailblazers. Read Chapter 16's recent Q&A with Pethel here, and you'll find full details about the event here.

Today at Chapter 16, Odie Lindsey reviews Playhouse, the latest novel by master storyteller Richard Bausch. Last week, we featured an excerpt from a new edition of Edge of the Wind, the second novel by James E. Cherry; Jim Patterson talked with Suzanne Craig Robertson about He Called Me Sister, her memoir recounting her family's friendship with death row inmate Cecil Johnson; and David Wesley Williams reviewed Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock, a companion book to the exhibition of the same name currently running at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

Review

A Masterful, Lyrical Satire

Memphis takes center stage in Richard Bausch’s  Playhouse

By ODIE LINDSEY

Excerpt

Alexander van der Pool

Book Excerpt: Edge of the Wind

By JAMES E. CHERRY

Feature

Ministering to the Least of These

A family learns about grace from a death row prisoner 

By JIM PATTERSON

Review

L.A. Roots

Western Edge explores country-rock from the Byrds to the Blasters and beyond

By DAVID WESLEY WILLIAMS

Q&A

Raise the Roof for Tennessee Women and Title IX

Mary Ellen Pethel celebrates the lives of 50 Tennessee women athletes

By PETER KURYLA

• Percival Everett was interviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

• Poems by Darnell Arnoult were published in Cutleaf.

• A poem by John Jeremiah Sullivan appeared in The Yale Review.

• Lisa Cupolo's story collection, Have Mercy on Us, was reviewed in The New York Times.

• Alice Faye Duncan offered advice for aspiring children's book authors at the Astra Publishing House blog.

• Review of It’s One of Us by J.T. Ellison (appearing at Parnassus Books in Nashville on 2/20)

• Review of Blue If Only I Could Tell You by Richard Tillinghast (appearing at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on 2/23)

• Review of Burner by Mark Greaney (appearing at The Rendezvous in Memphis on 2/25)

• FROM THE ARCHIVE: Q&A with Alice Faye Duncan re Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop 

• Review of Walk Through Fire by Yasmine S. Ali (appearing at Parnassus Books in Nashville on 2/27, Humphreys County Public Library in Waverly on 3/3, and Tennessee State Museum in Nashville on 4/8)