Humanities Tennessee

This final installment of the 50 Book / HT 50 series features two Pulitzer Prize winners, a book about a controversial figure in the Civil Rights Movement, a richly imagined historical novel set in Nashville, and an award-winning collection of essays about the South. 

The mid-2010s were an eventful time on the Tennessee literary scene. Awards were received, some beloved writers left us, and of course, the Southern Festival of Books brought amazing authors to Tennessee every year. There were also plenty of wonderful Tennessee books released. The sampling in this installment of the 50 Books / HT50 series features titles with a connection to each region of the state, and — though we didn’t plan it that way — there’s not a traditional novel in the bunch. 

This installment of the 50 Books / HT50 series is entirely devoted to novels and features two deftly comic tales, a searing depiction of Stalin’s gulag, a finely wrought drama set in occupied Japan, and an Appalachian story of beauty, climate change, and personal evolution.

The years from 2006 to 2010 brought a shocking financial crisis and the global Great Recession that followed, but there was happier news in the Tennessee book world, as well as a new outlet for reporting it: Chapter 16 was launched in September 2009. This seventh installment of the 50 Books / HT50 series includes two Pulitzer Prize winners, a riveting account of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and two highly praised novels.

The books in this installment of the 50 Books / HT50 series are a varied lot — two novels, one nonfiction book, and two poetry collections, including a Pulitzer Prize winner. All the authors have strong ties to the South, however, and two are Tennessee natives.