In her mesmerizing debut, Helen of Troy, 1993, poet Maria Zoccola merges the mythological and the modern, casting Helen of Troy as a restless housewife and mother in Sparta, Tennessee. Zoccola will be a featured author at ETSU’s Emerging Writers Series on February 9.
Three recent poetry collections — Lou Turner’s Twin Lead Lines, Connie Jordan Green’s Nameless as the Minnows, and Richard Collins’ Stone Nest — skillfully utilize a variety of Tennessee settings, including the Nashville music world, Oak Ridge in its early years, and a rocky mountaintop in Sewanee.
In his third collection, Feller, East Tennessee poet Denton Loving offers moments of heightened exchange between the human and nonhuman worlds.
In the wake of the 2024 presidential election, celebrated writers Saeed Jones and Maggie Smith attempted what so many of us have struggled to do: process events that have unleashed an onslaught of dangers. As a response, Jones and Smith have assembled The People’s Project, which they describe as “a community in book form.”
By turns plaintive and exhilarating, Silas House’s All These Ghosts conjures an attentive, nuanced reckoning with what it means to call a place our home ground. House will discuss All These Ghosts at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 18-19.
In three recent poetry collections — Stephanie Niu’s I Would Define the Sun, Richard Tillinghast’s Night Train to Memphis, and Abby N. Lewis’ Aquakineticist — the nonhuman world offers potent spaces which alchemize human memory and reflection.
