Editor's Note

Reverend James Lawson Jr. was not the most visible figure in the Civil Rights Movement, but he was a major influence on its commitment to nonviolence and played a critical role in many key events, including the Nashville sit-ins and the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike. Before he died in 2024, Lawson collaborated with writer Emily Yellin on his memoir. Today at Chapter 16, Aram Goudsouzian interviews Yellin about Nonviolent: A Memoir of Resistance, Agitation, and Love, due for release this month.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park sees millions of visitors every year and it’s hard to imagine the region without it, but the creation of the park in the early 20th century was not without controversy. Advocates for the park relied heavily on the work of two photographers, George Masa and Jim Thompson, to help make the case for preserving the Smokies’ unique beauty. Ren and Helen Davis collected some of Masa and Thompson’s best work in their book Land of Everlasting Hills, and they talk with Chapter 16 today about the story behind the photos. 

Carolyn Newton, a native of Athens, Tennessee, has penned an international story of survival in her second novel, Songs of the Dead Road, which begins in WWII Poland and ends in late 20th-century America. Reviewer Sarah Norris writes that the book “offers an affecting narrative and a testament to the power of art in the face of erasure.”

News Roundup

• The James Agee Conference will take place at the Strawberry Plains campus library of Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville on February 21. Charles Dodd White, James Cherry, Patrick Wensink and Mark Powell are among the featured speakers. 

• Due to the disruptions caused by winter weather, the postmark deadline for Tennessee Book Award submissions has been extended to February 24. 

• The Tennessee Mountain Writers Conference is scheduled for March 26-28 in Oak Ridge. Featured authors include Monic Ductan, Michael Amos Cody, and Kristin O’Donnell Tubb. 

• Anjali Enjeti discussed her book Ballot on the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast at Literary Hub. 

• Michael Amos Cody’s novel Streets of Nashville won the Independent Press Award and was a finalist for the Best Thriller Award.