April 28, 2011 A week ago, Memphis readers were stunned to learn that Gordon Brothers—the same California-based liquidation company currently dismantling more than 200 Borders stores nationwide—had bought the sole remaining Davis-Kidd Booksellers in order to sell off its assets. But an eleventh-hour deal will keep the store operating as a hub for Memphis book-lovers: yesterday a bankruptcy judge in eastern Kentucky approved the sale of Davis-Kidd to yet another new owner, who promptly announced the store’s new name: DK Booksellers.

April 27, 2011 Khaled Mattawa was five years old when Qaddafi seized power in Libya. In an op-ed piece for The New York Times, Mattawa recalls the unlikely role a dairy plant in his hometown of Misurata has played in the resistance against Qaddafi, and why Libyan forces recently targeted it in a bombing raid:

April 25, 2011 In its commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, CBS Sunday Morning toured the battlefield at Franklin, where 10,000 soldiers lost their lives in one of the bloodiest battles of the conflict. Their tour guide? Bestselling novelist Robert Hicks, whose debut novel, The Widow of the South, turned Carnton Mansion into a tourist destination. “Something important happened here, this place, and in all the battlefields,” Hicks told CBS.

April 14, 2011 The Fellowship of Southern Writers convenes today in Chattanooga for the sixteenth biennial Conference on Southern Literature. For three days, more than fifty members of the Fellowship will gather before a packed audience to read from their work and talk on panels about topics as diverse as writers’ efforts to preserve the Southern environment, the role of mentors in a writer’s development, and Southern politics and Southern literature. They will also give out some coveted awards, and four writers with Tennessee connections are among the honorees this week.