Editor's Note
Another festival is in the books, and we hope everyone who attended came away with good memories and a taller TBR pile. Many thanks to all the individuals and organizations who helped make it happen. (And remember, it’s never too early to start planning for next year. Just ask Roy Burkhead, who has made it to 28 festivals, not counting 2025.)
Today at Chapter 16, Sarah Norris reviews Dead Man Blues, a crime novel by S.D. House (pen name of author Silas House). “House,” Sarah writes, “is a fine storyteller with a poet’s sensibility.” In his review of Tom Zoellner’s The Road Was Full of Thorns, an account of the critical role played by escaped enslaved people during the U.S. Civil War, Chris Scott notes, “One of Zoellner’s main points is that emancipation was not a single moment in time or a single proclamation. It was a process, a messy, complicated, sometimes improvised series of events, ‘gaining speed, persuading the reluctant, transforming the ground with hard facts, knocking apart the bricks of slavery until the whole edifice came down.’” Memphis writer Hadley Hury rounds out our trio of pieces this week with his essay “Grandfather in Black and White,” a remembrance of the kind-hearted man who taught him to love movies and value beauty more than novelty.
News Roundup
- A celebration of Tennessee Book Award Winner Vic Sizemore will be held at the East Tennessee Historical Society and Museum in Knoxville on 11/6. Free tickets are available through Eventbrite.
- A poem by Marcus Wicker was recently featured on The Slowdown.
- Sundress Academy for the Arts is currently accepting applications for short-term writing residencies at Firefly Farms near Knoxville.
- ICYMI: Authors and other copyright holders with books included in the Anthropic settlement have until March 26, 2026 to file a claim and January 7, 2026 to opt out.
- The 150th anniversary of Burke’s Book Store was featured in Memphis Magazine.
