Chattanooga poet Christian Collier focuses on loss and grieving in his debut collection, Greater Ghost, while still infusing every poem with a pulsing, insistent life. He will be the featured author for Writers@Work 2026 in Chattanooga on April 7-9 and a visiting writer at the Southern Literary Festival at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga on April 11.
Rebecca Rose Mooradian’s great-grandmother fled the Armenian Genocide and eventually settled in the United States. Rose by the Sea, Mooradian’s debut picture book, was inspired by her grandmother’s story and combines lyrical lines with beautiful images by Myo Yim to help children understand both troubling history and enduring human goodness.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In Walking Gentry Home, poet Alora Young crafts a family history from the stories passed down through generations.
With simple, poetic lines, The Weedy Garden: A Happy Habitat for Wild Friends invites young readers to imagine they’re the animals in a garden where a weed is not something to be pulled up and eradicated but an essential, life-giving force. Margaret Renkl and Billy Renkl will discuss The Weedy Garden at Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis on February 22, Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 24 and 28, David Lusk Gallery in Nashville on February 28, and Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville on March 19.
In collaboration with Emily Yellin, the Rev. James Lawson penned Nonviolent, a memoir explaining the principles, personalities, and struggles of a movement for social change. Yellin will speak at the Historic Woolworth Theatre in Nashville on February 18, the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis on February 20, and Novel in Memphis on March 26.
The work of photographers George Masa and Jim Thompson documented the unique beauty of the Smokies and played a significant role in the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Land of Everlasting Hills by Ren and Helen Davis collects more than 200 of Masa and Thompson’s photographs and includes biographies of both men, as well as a history of the park’s creation.
