Berlin or Bust
April 30, 2014 As he ends his year as a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, Nashville novelist Adam Ross has just received another prestigious appointment: he’ll be in the 2014-2015 class of Berlin Prize Fellows.
The Insensible Power of Nature
April 2, 2014 Alan Lightman is the highly acclaimed author of plays, poems, novels, and essays—and he’s working on a memoir about his Memphis childhood—so it is not surprising that the recent run of calamitous weather would inspire him to write a literary meditation on the relationship between human beings and the natural world.
A Bold Second Outing
March 31, 2014 When Amy Greene saw the cover design for Long Man, her new novel, her first thought was “My publisher takes me seriously as a writer.” And it’s true: this novel, unlike Bloodroot Greene’s critically acclaimed and New York Times-bestselling first novel, is not illustrated with a delicate watercolor image of a beautiful woman in a romantic dress. It’s illustrated with bold lines, block colors, imposing type—a designer’s signifier of literary heft and consequence.
Identity Issues
March 14, 2014 Changers, the first in a fantasy series of YA novels by East Tennessee husband-and-wife team T Cooper and Allison Glock-Cooper, is singled out by the literary paper of record for its unusual appeal to teens struggling with identity issues—as what teen is not?
Something New Inside
February 20, 2014 Novelist Tova Mirvis grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Memphis. As expected, she became engaged at twenty-two to an Orthodox Jewish man she met on a blind date. As expected, she followed the laws and expectations of her community, even as she wondered, “Is this all true?”
From Libya to the Academy of American Poets—By Way of Tennessee
January 17, 2014 Poet and translator Khlaled Mattawa left Libya when when he was fourteen, the year after Muammar Gaddafi’s forces began hanging “traitors” in the public square of Benghazi, Mattawa’s home city. Mattawa settled in Chattanooga, where he later graduated from UTC before going on to study creative writing at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. In the years since, his commitment to both his homeland and to poetry has not waned.
