June 3, 2010 Today’s poem at poets.org, an online publication of the Academy of American Poets, is “The Sweetwater Caverns” by Kimiko Hahn. As with much of Hahn’s work, the poem is less about its declared subject—in this case, the famous caverns in Sweetwater, Tennessee—than about the way the subject raises questions about the convergence of death and desire.
May 27, 2010 For the academic year 2010-2011, Rogersville native Jeff Daniel Marion will serve as the University of Tennessee Libraries’ Jack E. Reese Writer in Residence. His responsibilities will include meeting with creative-writing students and organizing a series of public readings by regional writers.
May 26, 2010 Aspiring mystery novelists, take note: the deadline for the Claymore Award, a contest sponsored by Killer Nashville, has been extended to June 1, and the list of genres now open for consideration has been expanded, as well. Up to ten manuscripts will be considered for publication by Five Star/Tekno Books. Read contest details here.
May 25, 2010 The waters finally receded, but as the news reports got grimmer and grimmer and the photographs got more and more heartbreaking, three Nashville novelists decided to do something about the flood. As thousands of citizens fanned out across the region to help their neighbors drag saturated carpet and drywall to the street, Myra McEntire, Amanda Morgan, and Victoria Schwab tried to think of a way to use their connections as writers to help.
May 24, 2010 The numbers are astonishing: ten times in the past two years, Hohenwald novelist Sherrilyn Kenyon has landed in the number-one slot of The New York Times bestseller list. Kenyon already has twenty-two million copies in print of her paranormal books for adults, and those titles have been printed in more than thirty different countries. Tonight she launches a new series of books, this time for teen readers, called The Chronicles of Nick.
May 21, 2010 From a field of more than 4,000 entrants, Ann Patchett has awarded the first-place prize in National Public Radio’s Three-Minute Fiction contest to Yoav Ben Yosef’s “Not Calling Attention to Ourselves.” Listen to Patchett read the story—and offer some priceless advice about what makes a short-story work—here.
