Aspiring writers have just a couple of days to make the deadline for early bird registration for MTSU Write, the annual creative writing conference hosted by Middle Tennessee State University. The keynote speaker for this year's hybrid virtual/in-person conference, taking place September 23-24, will be novelist Sequoia Nagamatsu and faculty include Allison Blevins, Christian J. Collier, Adria Bernardi, Charles Dodd White, and Linda Parsons. 

At Chapter 16 today, Kashif Andrew Graham reviews A Beat Beyond, the new collection of prose by poet Major Jackson. On Friday, we revisited Emily Choate's review of Shift Work, the most recent collection from West Tennessee poet Bobby C. Rogers, and on Thursday we featured another West Tennessean, Andria K. Brown, with her love letter to Memphis, "Halfway Home." Davis Shoulders' Q&A with Z. Zane McNeill about the anthology Y'all Means All and Yurina Yoshikawa's review of Intimacies by Katie Kitamura rounded out the week. 

Review

A Liberation of Language and Lyric

A Beat Beyond collects a wealth of prose from poet Major Jackson

By KASHIF ANDREW GRAHAM

Review

Defenseless Against the Memory

Bobby C. Rogers brings depth and richness to his poetry’s West Tennessean setting  

By EMILY CHOATE

Essay

Halfway Home

I connect with Memphis in a way maybe only outsiders can

By ANDRIA K. BROWN

Q&A

A Queerness Full of Appalachian Grit and Spirit

Zane McNeill discusses Y’all Means All, an anthology of emerging queer voices

By DAVIS SHOULDERS

Review

Outwardly Fine, Inwardly Lost

Katie Kitamura’s international novel hits close to home

By YURINA YOSHIKAWA

• Poems by Christian J. Collier, Chet Weise, and Richard Jackson appeared in a recent issue of Symposeum Magazine.

• Anders Carlson-Wee's "The Family" was published at Harvard Review Online.

• Nashville Ballet's production of Lucy Negro Redux, based on the book by poet Caroline Randall Williams, will be featured on PBS' Great Performances series in September.

• Henry Jones' poem "Old Wounds, New Wounds" was published at WordPeace.

• Poems by Cleve Latham appeared in The Write Launch.

• Review of Buddy Emmons: Steel Guitar Icon by Steve Fishell 

• Review of Kin: A Memoir by Shawna Kay Rodenberg (appearing at the Johnson City Public Library on 9/10 and the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on 10/14-16)

• Review of Twelfth by Janet Key (appearing at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on 10/14-16) 

• Excerpt from In the Backhoe’s Shadow by Thomas Alan Holmes (appearing at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on 9/11 and the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on 10/14-16)

• Review of Inaugural Ballers by Andrew Maraniss (appearing at Parnassus Books in Nashville on 9/13 and the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on 10/14-16)