News & Notes

January 31, 2012 Lydia Peelle–a Nashville fiction writer and former speechwriter for Governor Phil Bredesen–has joined the faculty of Southern New Hampshire University’s low-residency M.F.A. program in creative writing.

January 30, 2012 When Michael Sims walked into a used bookstore in his hometown of Crossville, he discovered a set of children’s encyclopedias from the 1950s and ’60s—books which first spoke to him in the hybrid language of knowledge, curiosity, and wonder—that made him want to be a writer:

January 24, 2012 Yesterday at a ceremony in Dallas, the American Library Association announced the winners of the Caldecott, Newbery, and Coretta Scott King awards for children’s literature. Nashville native Patricia C. McKissack has won a prestigious Corretta Scott King Honor Book Award for her children’s picture book, Never Forgotten,” illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. The awards were announced here.

January 23, 2012 At a gala Saturday night, the National Book Critics Circle announced the names of finalists for the 2011 NBCC Awards. Representing Tennessee n the shortlist is John Jeremiah Sullivan, whose collection of essays, Pulphead, was published in November and continues to be reviewed in rhapsodic terms. Read the full list of finalists here. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on March 8 at 6 p.m.

January 12, 2012 There have been surprisingly few tributes to Eleanor Ross Taylor in the national media during the two weeks since her death: The New York Times, often considered the newspaper of record for books in the United States, still hasn’t published a single line about her loss, which would be a shocking omission but for the Gray Lady’s undeniable bias against poetry. So it’s all the more worth noting the coverage of Taylor’s life and literary significance in both The Washington Post and Shenandoah:

January 10, 2012 “I arrived in New York in 1979, without a literary blueprint,” writes Madison Smartt Bell in a new essay for The Millions. “I was a Southern boy, from rural Middle Tennessee (okay, by way of Princeton, I admit). My favorite writers at that time were Dostoevsky and Harry Crews. I didn’t know that a contemporary urban fiction existed.”