Editor's Note
We’ve got a 20th-century romance and two tales of mystery at the site this week. Jeff Zentner’s new novel, Love, Like Apples, is set in the 1970s and takes its protagonist, Tiller Loomis, from East Tennessee to New York City to pursue a creative life and his heart’s desire. “Zentner’s wit and inventive imagery give ballast to this emotional love story,” says reviewer Peggy Burch.
In her essay “Vanleer Ghost,” Jane Marcellus recalls her childhood visit to the Dickson County house where her aunt and uncle once found themselves visited by someone otherworldly. “Neither my aunt and uncle nor my father tried to explain away the ghost,” Jane writes. “I heard no speculation about who she might have been. A ghost was a ghost. That simple.”
Rolli also travels back to childhood and an encounter with a frightening stranger in his essay “The Bug-Eyed Lady.” “I passed a long night lying awake, wondering about this strange woman,” he writes. “I pictured her hunched over the steering wheel, eyes shining like headlights, scouring the dark streets for victims. Decades later, I still lose sleep thinking about the Bug-Eyed Lady.”
News Roundup
- Two poems by Kabal Briar were published in American Poetry Journal.
- Tayari Jones received the Kirkus Prize for her novel Kin.
- Ann Patchett, along with Barbara Kingsolver and Min Jin Lee, discussed the art of being a modern novelist with Kara Swisher.
- An archive of Nikki Giovanni’s papers has opened at Boston University.
- The Authors Guild has published AI guidelines for publishers.
- Catapult Book Group, which has published books by Tennessee authors including Lydi Conklin, Alan Lightman, and Leta McCollough Seletzky, will cease operations at the end of this month.
