Editor's Note
The recipients of this year’s Tennessee Book Awards have been announced, and we’re delighted to celebrate three outstanding authors whose work was chosen by a stellar panel of judges. The award for fiction goes to Vic Sizemore of Maryville for his novel God of River Mud, which judge Rebecca Makkai describes as “a layered, nuanced and often harrowing story of people ill-used by religious structures both internal and external.” Jared Sullivan of Franklin receives the nonfiction award for Valley So Low: One Lawyer’s Fight for Justice in the Wake of America’s Great Coal Catastrophe. Sullivan’s in-depth account of the fallout from the Kingston coal ash disaster, says judge Chris Offutt, “is a crucial book for these uncertain times.” Nashville poet Didi Jackson wins the poetry award for her collection My Infinity, praised by judge Richard Blanco “for its stunning imagery and metaphorical constructs.”
Finalists for the 2025 awards include Ann Byrn for Baking in the American South; Jonathan Metzl for What We’ve Become; Rea Frey for In Every Life; Jeff Zentner for Colton Gentry’s Third Act; Christian Collier for Greater Ghost; and Tara Stringfellow for Magic Enuff.
See the Humanities Tennessee website for more information about the awards and this year’s winners. Congratulations to all!
Today at Chapter 16, Sara Beth West puts a few questions to John T. Edge about his new memoir House of Smoke, which Edge describes as a book “about rewriting the stories I inherited from the South and from my family.” Jim Patterson reviews Meridian Rising, Paul Burch’s fictional account of the life of Jimmie Rodgers, whose brief career left an outsized legacy in American folk music. Chris Scott considers Dead Center, a memoir by former U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, who urges Americans to avoid political extremes.
News Roundup
- Lorrie Moore reviewed the latest novel by Miriam Toews, A Truce That Is Not Peace, in The New York Review of Books.
- Porchlight, a new online publication “that aims to champion the rich tradition and evolving voice of Southern literary fiction” has announced the William Gay Memorial Prize in Short Story. Submissions are open through November 30.
- The Middle Tennessee chapter of Sisters in Crime will host panel discussions for writers on Saturday, September 20, from 12 to 4 p.m. at the Donelson Branch of the Nashville Public Library.
- Cary Holladay’s story “Marl” was published in the latest issue of Alaska Quarterly Review.
