Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

A River’s Tale

Patti Callahan Henry tells a story of two sisters and the power of fairy tales

…lions or anything else they can imagine. Whisperwood is their secret refuge, a hidden escape just for the two of them that no one else knows about. To get there,…

“Ars Poetica”

Book Excerpt: Gatherer

…flames lick up the side of your beloved childhood home, how can you write about hope? In the ashes, can you write a stanza? When the ash is blowing all…

Looking at Everything

Ross Gay reprises his practice of everyday delight

…Destroy the State!” — a title that encapsulates his ability to hold both the whimsical and the subversive. In another essay on the power plays of self-appointed authorities versus the

All in the Unsaid

A look back on Charles Wright’s influential poetry collection Black Zodiac

…hired fresh out of college. I lugged the heavy, thankfully sturdy canvas tote onto the subway, then up four flights of stairs where they spilled out by the radiator that…

Black Futures Forever

Two books of Afrofuturist fiction envision Black possibility and protest

…and present together, taking the reader from slave ship to suburb in the space of a single paragraph. In congruence with the breadth of the African diaspora, the language throughout…

A Living Pulse

Past and present mingle in collections by Loving, Shockley, and Underwood

…ancient, unnamed river / surrounding the island of my dead.” These lines set the tone for the rest of the collection, in which the underworld of dreams always hovers close….

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