Hey, Baby Doll
December 12, 2014 My mother understood that my father’s death was at hand. For my part, I understood that their love for one another and their straightforward, practical faith would see them through this profoundest of transitions.
Essays
My (Fictional) Home
October 20, 2014 After college, I moved a dozen times—from Indiana to New Jersey, Wyoming, Vermont, Connecticut, and Tennessee—before settling in Chicago. Each of these places etched themselves on my psyche, but Nashville, with its fruit tea, tangy barbeque, and hot chicken, was the place where I learned to be a writer.
All Together Now
October 10, 2014 The Southern Festival of Books is big, varied, and one of the most inclusive cultural events around. Chapter 16’s Maria Browning considers the special pleasure of the festival’s collective spirit. The twenty-sixth annual Southern Festival of Books will take place in Nashville October 10-12, 2014, at Legislative Plaza and the Nashville Public Library. All festival events are free and open to the public.
With Every Shining Wish
August 11, 2014 Diann struggled with the legacy of being a Southern woman and poet, and I think she would have preferred to have been otherwise, perhaps a Boston Mandarin like her mentor, Helen Vendler. Confronting her heritage and making a conscious effort to be the poet she felt she ought to be are, I think, her most important achievements.
Sloughing Off the Nay-Sayers
August 1, 2014 “The farcical means by which I returned to a life as a writer—adopting a stray cat, going to work for the vet who saved her life, mopping up dog urine and watching the castration of a Siamese cat, and then, on day three of this unique torture, herniating a disc and needing back surgery—is fit for fiction itself. During the recovery, I discovered a writer named John Sandford, and something clicked, and I had one, simple, arrogant thought. If he can do it, so can I.” J.T. Ellison will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.
Good Medicine
July 18, 2014 Two summers ago, when I learned I’d been accepted to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, I was weeks into a debilitating illness that had left me unable to walk and unsure how much mobility I’d ever regain. I was in constant pain, barely able to stand up on crutches. My friends and family tried to look supportive when I insisted that I would be well enough to go to Sewanee. Then they’d find a tactful way to ask me whether I’d ever seen the University of the South—all those steep hills and narrow stone steps.
