Essays

January 23, 2014 As others begin to share their own experiences of moving away from home or of wanting to make a difference, something in my mind clicks: as readers, we are constantly using our own stories to connect to another person. In an English class once, we spoke about the meaning of literature. Why does it exist? Why are we drawn to it? A remark from the professor struck me: “Literature is one person’s attempt to explain what it is like being human.”

June 27, 2013 It’s wonderful to know that one can mean so much to so many in such a small place. Later, looking out the plane window, I think of all the little villages past the lights of Surabaya, each little school just a dot on an island just a dot on the world. So many dots, so much love to offer. Plop a Peace Corps volunteer in the dot and watch the love tumble in.

June 3, 2013 “There is in me that dark tendency to see gardening as just one more thing at which to fail—a pursuit that can only result in my coming up short in the shadow of my parents’ mastery. But I can also see it as just another form of the revision process, of creative habit, one that has much to say to writing.” Susannah Felts will read from her work on June 4, 2013, at 7 p.m. at Fat Bottom Brewery in Nashville. She will be joined by songwriter Joshua Payne. The free event is part of the East Side Storytellin’ series, which pairs writers and musicians in performance.

“I spend a lot of time in the coffeehouses of East Nashville, where I live. “What do you do?’—the question has been posed to me countless times in idle conversation. My stock response, ‘I write,’ is invariably followed by some permutation of ‘What instruments do you play?'” Fiction writer Todd Dills considers what it means to build a literary community in a town full of songwriters. Dills will read from Triumph of the Ape on May 21, 2013, at 7 p.m. at Fat Bottom Brewery in Nashville. He will be joined by songwriter Mike Willis. This free event is part of the East Side Storytellin’ series, which pairs writers and musicians in performance.