Rebecca Bain’s death is a deep loss to the Nashville literary community, as Humanities Tennessee’s Serenity Gerbman knows all too well
October 20, 2011 Rebecca Bain’s voice was with us in intimate spaces: inside our cars, around our kitchen tables, coming from the clock radio beside the bed in the morning. Hers was the cheerfully cajoling voice that led the radio pledge drive, that shared the morning news, and that delighted in announcing a new literary discovery.
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As Humanities Tennessee kicks off another Southern Festival of Books, an English professor explains why such celebrations really matter
October 14, 2011 We’re coming to the Southern Festival of Books to spend time with people who create for us worlds only they can imagine, or who make us see in a more brilliant light the world we are forced to occupy. We’ll be there because we choose to inhabit their worlds, ethereal worlds that hang somewhere between language and love. We want to see these writers face to face, to learn the color of their eyes, check out their mannerisms and idiosyncrasies, confirm our suspicions, shake their hands, and have them read to us. The 2011 Southern Festival of Books will be held this weekend, October 14-16, at Legislative Plaza in Nashville. All events are free and open to the public.
Read moreMemphis event explores new possibilities in a rich literary tradition
October 6, 2011 With a new show called Fragments: Poets and Artists of the South and Southwest, Memphis’s Harrington Brown Gallery hosts an innovative exploration of the ancient tradition of ekphrasis—a literary description or consideration of a work of art. The show opens on October 7 at 6 p.m. and runs through November 1.
Read moreHandmade & Bound, a book-arts festival at Watkins College, kicks off a new tradition in Nashville
September 29, 2011 Handmade & Bound, a new book-arts festival in Nashville, will give visitors a chance to read between the lines. The festival features demonstrations and workshops that explore the world of carved wooden books, book restoration, indie-publishing resources, DIY pop-up books, zine-making, and more. “It really is an all-ages thing,” explains Annie Herlocker of Watkins College, a co-sponsor of the event. “This is something that spans all generations.”
Read moreA Chapter 16 writer makes a public break with Amazon
September 22, 2011 Amazon, my relationship with you feels like an illicit love affair because, I suppose, it sort of is. I want you, but I hate myself for it. I hide our relationship from my friends. You understand my needs—and happily meet them—and you anticipate my desires, teasing me with what else you can offer. But it’s time to confront the inconvenient truth: I’m cheating with a cheater.
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Iris Press issues two new posthumous books from poet and novelist George Scarbrough
September 8, 2011 Near the end of his writing life George Scarbrough (1915-2008) used an alter ego, writing in the voice of the legendary eighth-century Chinese poet Han-shan, whose poems were simple, direct, and frank, never failing to call attention to the flaws in society as he saw them. Writing in the voice of Han-shan gave Scarbrough the means to speak directly about the social abuses he saw around him but could not address so clearly in his own first-person voice. “At the Last Festival” appears in Under the Lemon Tree, a new, posthumously published collection of Scarbrough’s Han-shan poems. In this essay Robert Cumming, the book’s editor, explains the significance of Han-shan to Scarbrough. He will also discuss George Scarbrough and his work at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.
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