A writer once called his Sunday School teacher the worst name he could think of—and it haunts him still
April 29, 2016 In 1957, when I was eight years old, I called my Sunday School teacher, Miss Jeffie Lou Beecroft, a bad word. I didn’t call her the bad word to her face, but it was a very bad word, apparently the worst word I had in me at the time, and that’s what has mattered ever since.
A new essay collection from the University of Tennessee honors Jeff Daniel Marion, beloved Appalachian poet and teacher
April 28, 2016 Jeff Daniel Marion: Poet on the Holston celebrates the life and work of Appalachian poet Jeff Daniel Marion. Edited by Jesse Graves, Thomas Alan Holmes, and Ernest Lee, the anthology contains seventeen essays—including an autobiographical essay by Marion himself—an interview with the poet, and a detailed timeline of his life.
Shirletta J. Kinchen’s Black Power in the Bluff City explores the history of student activism in Memphis
April 27, 2016 Shirletta Kinchen’s Black Power in the Bluff City examines the way black youth in Memphis played a pivotal role in creating societal change, both before and after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Hotel in 1968. In the end, the struggle for equality became a children’s crusade, with high-school and college students leading the way.
Journalist William Geroux spotlights the impressive World War II sacrifice of men from small-town Virginia
April 26, 2016 Mathews County, Virginia, has a long tradition of supplying seafaring men to the Merchant Marine. In The Mathews Men, Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler’s U-Boats, William Geroux writes of the exceptional service and sacrifice during World War II of the seamen from Mathews County. He will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville May 3, 2016, at 6:30 p.m.
Rhodes College professor David McCarthy writes a history of protest art in America
April 25, 2016 In American Artists Against War, Rhodes College professor David McCarthy serves up a history of protest with artists at its center.
News of the next Kevin Wilson novel arrives just as his first hits the silver screen
April 25, 2016 Sewanee author Kevin Wilson has a new novel coming out in January and a film version of his first novel coming out in a few days.
