Editor's Note
Chapter 16 returns from hiatus today, and we’ve got a busy season of book coverage ahead. But first we’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the loss of two members of the Tennessee literary community. The state’s longtime poet laureate, Margaret Britton Vaughn, known to her friends as Maggi, died on June 27. Serenity Gerbman, who directs Humanities Tennessee’s literature and language programs, had the pleasure of knowing and working with Maggi, and she has penned a tribute to the poet and songwriter she calls “one of the great characters of our time.”
Poet and East Tennessee State University professor Don Johnson died on July 12 at age 84. He’s remembered as a passionate writer, teacher, sports fan, and music lover. His poem “Vacation Bible School” was featured at Chapter 16 in 2014.
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Today at the site, Emily Choate reviews the new poetry collection by Knoxville writer Erica Wright, A Buyer’s Guide to the Afterlife. The collection, Emily writes, “chronicles the restless search for orientation in a world that seems unmoored, at once half-familiar and utterly foreign.”
Aram Goudsouzian interviews sports historian Keith B. Wood about The Memphis Showboats: The USFL Team and the City’s Fight for Major League Status. “The city’s history of chasing major league status,” Wood notes, “is filled with stories of hope that perpetually end in disbelief.”
The grisly story of the Harp brothers, a pair of relentless killers who terrorized Tennessee and Kentucky in the late 1790s, receives serious historical investigation in Katherine Grandjean’s Kingdom of Devils: A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution. Reviewer Chris Scott writes that the book is “as much a history of early America as it is a true-crime drama. Grandjean interweaves the Harps’ story with little-known or little-understood incidents that paint complex – and not always flattering – portraits of the ordinary and extraordinary personalities who sculpted the nation.”
News Roundup
- The finalists for the 2026 Tennessee Book Awards have been announced.
- The winners of the Porchlight Prize in Poetry are M.E. Gibson, Jake Lawson, and Noel Poston.
- Declaration: I Am Tennessee, a collaborative project of the Knoxville Writers Guild and the East Tennessee Historical Society, initiated by Knoxville Poet Laureate Linda Parsons, brings together 30 Knox County writers to reflect on many aspects of the state. A digital version can be seen here, and book is available at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville and on Amazon.
- Alan Lightman wrote about the miracle of existence in The Atlantic.
- “Guns Over Mogadishu” by Anthony J. Rinderer (writing as Asher Hockett) was published in Carpe Noctem.
