A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Book Excerpt

“The holiday / of catastrophe …”

By Dan O'Brien

Dan O’Brien’s Our Cancers chronicles the year and a half during which both he and his wife, actor and writer Jessica St. Clair, were treated for cancer. O’Brien is the author of three previous poetry collections and the recipient of many playwriting honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and two PEN America Awards. His essay collection A Story That Happens: On Playwriting, Childhood, & Other Traumas was published in 2021. He has served on the faculty of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference for more than a decade.

“Center Hill”

By Anna B. Sutton

Anna B. Sutton was born and raised in Nashville. She received her B.F.A. from the Appalachian Center for Craft at Tennessee Tech and her M.F.A. from University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her debut collection, Savage Flower, was the winner of the 2019 St. Lawrence Book Award. She will appear at the online 2021 Southern Festival of Books.

“One Thing I Have Learned”

By KB Ballentine

KB Ballentine’s seventh collection, Edge of the Echo, launched in May 2021 with Iris Press. Earlier books include The Light Tears Loose; Almost Everything, Almost Nothing; and Gathering Stones. Her work also appears in anthologies including Pandemic Evolution (2021). She lives in Chattanooga.

Gatherers at Time’s End

By Jesse Graves and William Wright

From the Chapter 16 archive: Specter Mountain is a book-length poetry collaboration between Jesse Graves and William Wright that imagines the spiritual and ecological life of an embattled landscape. The collection fuses two striking poetic visions into a new perspective on nature and the inevitable imprint of human interaction with wilderness.

Archaic Snailfishing in Nashville

By Aaron Deter-Wolf and Tanya M. Peres

Mastodons to Mississippians: Adventures in Nashville’s Deep Past by Aaron Deter-Wolf and Tanya M. Peres explores the “archaeological roots of Music City.” The book will be published by Vanderbilt University Press in August 2021.

“Hosea’s Appeal”

By Richard Jackson

Richard Jackson has published 26 books, including 15 books of poems: most recently, Take Five (2020) and Broken Horizons (2018). He has been teaching at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga since 1976, where he directs the Meacham Writers’ Workshop.

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