Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Emily Choate

In Collapse There Is Light

Three new collections illuminate times of transformation

In their latest collections, poets Erin Hoover, L.S. McKee, and Shuly Xóchitl Cawood locate moments of insight, challenge, and transformative power in even the darkest aspects of contemporary life. Erin Hoover will appear at ArtsBuild in Chattanooga on October 12.

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Muscadine Vines

Monic Ductan gathers stories of tangled small-town legacies in Daughters of Muscadine

Cookeville writer Monic Ductan’s debut story collection, Daughters of Muscadine, reveals the entangled historical and psychological legacies at work in several generations of Black families in Muscadine, a fictional rural town in northeast Georgia. Monic Ductan will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

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The Depths

Playground brings Richard Powers’ inimitable storytelling to the world of Earth’s oceans

In his recent novels, Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Powers invites us to set down the blinkered limitations of human perspectives and connect to the natural world in deeper, more urgent ways. Now, with Playground, Powers brings his inimitable storytelling to Earth’s subterranean depths, illuminating the abundant riches of our oceans and the critical dangers they face.

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To Live on This Margin of Earth

Three debut poetry collections highlight the originality of their authors’ visions

Recently published debut poetry collections from Tara M. Stringfellow, Ben Groner III, and Stephanie Choi invite us into the particulars of their authors’ imaginative worlds.

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All The Mistakes Families Make

Small-town lovers grapple with an unexpected pregnancy in Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne’s Holding on to Nothing

In her 2019 debut novel, Holding on to Nothing, Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne creates a fresh, moving story of young lovers in a small East Tennessee town and the myriad forces that trouble them as they set out to make a family. The book has just been released in a new paperback edition

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Both in and out of Place

Deviant Hollers pushes against reductive stereotypes about Appalachia’s future

Pushing against narratives of Appalachia that include only white, patriarchal, and heteronormative characterizations, the authors collected in Deviant Hollers: Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future hope to open up new spaces of possibility for envisioning the region.

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