Editor's Note
The funding crisis had us so preoccupied back in April that we failed to nod to National Poetry Month. But there’s always plenty of poetry news here in Tennessee. Some recent items of note:
Marcus Wicker announced a new poetry collection, Dear Mothership, due in 2026. Major Jackson shared some thoughts with Vanderbilt Magazine on how to read a poem. Caki Wilkinson received the Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity at Rhodes College, and poems by Annette Sisson were finalists for The Penn Review poetry contest and the Charles Simic Poetry Prize. Poems by Anna Laura Reeve, Jake Lawson, and Scott Honeycutt were published in Appalachian Places. A poem by Linda Parsons appeared in Braided Way, and she’ll be a participant in Poetry Liberation Front on June 22 in Knoxville, a fundraiser for ACLU of Tennessee that will feature Black Atticus, Denton Loving, Erin Elizabeth Smith, Susan O’Dell Underwood, RB Morris, Marilyn Kallet, and others.
This week at Chapter 16, David Wesley Williams reviews Between Grief and Nothing, Lisa C. Hickman’s unsparing account of William Faulkner’s turbulent life and final days. In her essay “A Life in Bookmarks,” Faye Jones considers the wealth of meaning a humble bookmark can contain. And we revisit Jesse Graves’ 2022 feature on John Rice Irwin, a man known as the “guardian of Appalachia’s past.”
News Roundup
- John Jeremiah Sullivan wrote about Mark Twain for Harper‘s.
- Charles Dodd White has a new novel, The World Itself, forthcoming in 2027.
- A story by Richard Schweid appeared in The Barcelona Review.
- Alan Lightman wrote about the beauty of summer in Maine for the Harpswell Anchor.
- Richard Bausch discussed his new story collection, The Fate of Others, with Texas Public Radio and offered writing advice at Literary Hub.
