W. Ralph Eubanks explores the literary tradition in Mississippi
In A Place Like Mississippi, W. Ralph Eubanks marries searching prose with stunning photographs. While touring the state, he introduces us to its writers and their intertwined legacies.
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Anjali Enjeti considers her identity in an evolving region in Southbound
In the final pages of Southbound, Anjali Enjeti’s collection of essays on identity, race, and Southern politics, the author poses one simple but thorny question that looms like a ghost over much of the work: “Who am I?”
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Hannah Carmona tells a story of emigration in Anita and the Dragons
Hannah Carmona discusses her new picture book, Anita and the Dragons, illustrated by Anna Cunha, with Chapter 16.
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On seeing Knoxville’s past and present
I watch the TikTok videos of a man in Knoxville. He roller skates — backwards — across Market Square plaza, inside and outside the Convention Center, and down Volunteer Landing that snakes parallel to the Tennessee River. He skates down the brightly graffitied Strong Street alley. Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy, Mercy Me” plays as he skims past the images and murals on the alley walls. The pictures swirl into swaths of neon colors like a psychedelic dream.
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Book Excerpt: I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World
Kendra DeColo is the author of two previous poetry collections, My Dinner with Ron Jeremy (2016) and Thieves in the Afterlife (2014). She is a recipient of a 2019 Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and has taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Vanderbilt University. She’ll discuss I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 23.
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In The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames, a daughter confronts her mother’s Dickensian childhood
Growing up, Justine Cowan struggled with her demanding, ambitious mother, Eileen, a talented pianist who claimed noble Welsh ancestry. In her memoir, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames, Cowan explores the grim truth of her mother’s origins and comes to understand their fraught relationship.
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