News & Notes

July 22, 2011 In the opening of Margaret Mitchell’s novel, Gone With the Wind, Gerald O’Hara makes an observation his daughter Scarlett never forgets: “Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for t’is the only thing in this world that lasts.” He might have noted that certain pernicious myths have staying power, too. Not least among them, of course, is the notion of a noble Lost Cause that lurks behind the Confederate nostalgia of Gone With the Wind itself.

July 20, 2011 It’s hard enough for an unpublished writer to sell one literary novel in this publishing climate; to sell two must feel a little like winning the lottery. Courtney Miller Santo, a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Memphis now knows the feeling: William Morrow has bought her debut novel, Roots of the Olive Tree, along with her next book, “for six figures,” according to Publisher’s Weekly.

July 19, 2011 Knoxville novelist Margaret Lazarus Dean has always been fascinated by space travel, and her first novel, The Time It Takes to Fall, is set on the Space Coast during the time of the Challenger disaster. So it makes sense that she made the trip to Florida for the final launch of the orbiter Atlantis on July 10. In an essay for the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Dean describes what it’s like to watch the end of an era for American space flight:

July 19, 2011 With the sustained recession and the inevitable decline of many print publications, the market for freelance writers is difficult, but Nashville-based journalist Rob Simbeck has some advice for aspiring writers.

July 13, 2011 Tennessee’s regional libraries are under strong financial pressure, but that won’t stop the state’s much-anticipated (and criticized) efforts to streamline the system.