This section is no longer updated regularly as literary news from around the state is now conveyed through Chapter 16‘s newsletter, which goes out each Monday morning. For weekly updates on Tennessee writers, including book deals, national reviews, major prizes, page-to-screen rights, and links to great writing by Tennessee writers between books, please sign up here to receive our free newsletter.
When Jim Ridley died last year at age fifty, he left a legacy of brilliant writing about movies, literature, music, art, and the vibrant life of a growing city. Celebrating that achievement, Vanderbilt University Press has just announced that it will publish an anthology of the late Nashville Scene editor’s most memorable film reviews. Today Chapter 16 talks with Steve Haruch, editor of People Only Die of Love in Movies: Film Writing by Jim Ridley.
Middle Tennessee native Patricia C. McKissack, acclaimed author and storyteller, died near her home in Missouri on April 7. Her body of work, which includes many books written with her late husband Fredrick, did much to champion the African American experience.
Good news for Vanderbilt undergraduates Ariana Yeatts-Lonske and Marissa Davis, and for Belmont undergraduate Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay suggests the future is bright for poetry in Tennessee
For a writer, the Holy Grail of book reviews is a positive notice in The New York Times, the newspaper of record for American literature. In the past month, three Tennessee authors—novelists Lydia Peelle and Kevin Wilson, and nonfiction writer Michael Sims—have found their way into those august pages.
Last weekend Jeff Zentner and Congressman John Lewis picked up prestigious prizes from the American Library Association, and the team that produces Nashville Public Television’s A Word on Words won an Emmy.
