Editor's Note
In Tennessee and around the world, we’ve been immersed in remembrances of Dolly Parton. Her gifts as a singer-songwriter, her personal kindness, and her tremendous generosity have been widely celebrated, so we won’t try to round up all those tributes here (though we can’t resist sharing Margaret Renkl’s Dolly story and this thoughtful piece by Nashville music writer Craig Havighurst).
But we must take a moment to acknowledge Dolly as “The Book Lady of Sevier County.” According to a recent announcement, her beloved Imagination Library will live on and continue to operate just as it has for three decades. Dolly leaves an amazing legacy in all the young readers her program has nurtured. She also published books of her own, of course, and her story inspired authors in various genres, from Lauren Nossett to Sarah Smarsh to Lynn Melnick. In fact, Tressie McMillan Cottom makes the case that Dolly’s whole career and public persona are best understood as the work of a writer. We love that idea, and we think Dolly would love it, too.
Today at the site, Kashif Andrew Graham reviews Dear Mothership, the new poetry collection by Marcus Wicker. “Fueled by a lyricism that feels at once like rap, jazz, and funk,” Kashif writes, these poems allow us to “revisit what it means to be human by looking at ourselves through an extraterrestrial lens.” Hamilton Cain reviews poet Emily Skaja’s second collection, Black Lake, which “probes a year of miscarriages and the misery into which Skaja plunged, at the age of 40” as she sought to become a mother. We complete this week’s lyrical theme with Tina Chambers’ consideration of All the Sunshine in the World, a middle-grade novel in verse by Caroline Brooks Dubois about a young girl coping with the “sudden, shocking loss of a sibling.”
News Roundup
- Submissions for the Knoxville Writers Guild Short Fiction Contest, judged by Monic Ductan, are open from September 1 through September 30.
- Ann Patchett received the 2026 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.
- Saeed Jones was interviewed for the You Could Make This Beautiful podcast.
- Ishmael Reed’s foreword to the 50th anniversary edition of his novel Flight to Canada was reprinted in Literary Hub.
- A planned film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s final novels has been abandoned, according to the filmmaker.
