July 10, 2015 John Seigenthaler, who died last year on July 11, was perhaps the most central and admirable personality that defined the Nashville I lived in during the 1970s. He was the apotheosis of integrity and of all that was serious and good. Anybody who knew him, even if they were his political opposites, held him in lofty esteem for the moral, thoughtful, and inspiringly intelligent human being he was.
June 1, 2015 I grew up wanting something I couldn’t name. I was raised in the Reform Jewish “tradition,” though the word here is gross hyperbole. The temple I attended as a kid in Memphis represented a variety of Judaism designed to be invisible, to blend indistinguishably with the Christ-haunted Southern landscape. As a consequence, I was virtually untouched by tradition and had not even an awareness of its absence. Nevertheless, one Sunday, playing hooky from confirmation class, I went exploring the old red brick pile of our temple along with a couple of partners in crime.
May 7, 2015 With a stellar lineup of award-winning children’s authors and illustrators from all over the country, Knoxville is getting ready for the eleventh annual Children’s Festival of Reading. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at World’s Fair Park on May 16, 2015, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
March 4, 2015 In the Waves, Lennon and Maisy Stella’s debut picture book, is an adaptation of their first original song. The sisters celebrated the book’s release on a sunny Nashville day in April, and Chapter 16 was there.
March 23, 2015 The Fellowship of Southern Writers—a group that includes luminaries like Bobbie Ann Mason, Ron Rash, and Natasha Trethewey—will gather in Chattanooga April 16-18, 2015, for the Celebration of Southern Literature, an event that is part writers’ conference, part book festival, and part homecoming for a diverse group of authors who share a connection to the region. Tickets to the biennial event are available now.
January 21, 2015 Writers’ retreats can be powerful incubators for novels, stories, and poems, allowing writers to immerse themselves in their work, free from the distractions of daily life. Rivendell Writers’ Colony, in Sewanee, is the first of its kind in Tennessee, and word of its particular magic is beginning to travel.
