A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

The Magazine at the Corner of Second and Church

By Tina LoTufo

December 10, 2012 In May 2011, Roy Burkhead was hit by a car at the intersection of Church Street and 2nd Avenue in downtown Nashville. (He was not seriously injured.) In many people, such an experience might spark musings on mortality, but for Burkhead it sparked the idea for a literary journal. “This event forced me to pause and look around,” he says. “I was interested to realize just how many different aspects of Nashville were represented from this particular spot of town. Maybe it was the impact of the bumper, but I started to ponder that this specific spot could work as a great metaphor, a virtual location in this actual city.” One year later, he published the first issue of 2nd & Church.

London Calling

By Tina LoTufo

November 15, 2012 When brainy, uptight, rule-following Julia Lichtenstein sets out on her junior-year class trip to London, she can’t wait to soak up the old-world ambiance of historical sites associated with her literary heroes. But that’s before Mrs. Tennison, her teacher and chaperone, alphabetically assigns each student a buddy, and Julia is suddenly saddled with Jason Lippincott, a vulgar, arrogant, rule-breaking jerk. Of course, opposites attract and romance ensues, but as William Shakespeare himself once wrote, “The course of true love never did run smooth.” In Meant To Be, the new YA novel by Maryville native Lauren Morrill, Julia is in for a bumpy ride indeed. Lauren Morrill will discuss Meant to Be at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on November 16 at 6 p.m.

Steady as Time

By Tina LoTufo

November 13, 2012 The difficulty of finding work during the Depression drew poet and novelist James Still to Knott County, Kentucky, but it was the wild beauty of the place that kept him there. As he got to know the fiercely independent inhabitants of a harsh landscape, he began to write about their lives. In The Hills Remember, editor Ted Olson, professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, has put together a collection of Still’s short pieces spanning more than forty years. In them Still’s own voice emerges, as clear and as pure as a dipperful of cold mountain water.

A Brain on Fire

By Tina LoTufo

October 25, 2012 Mem Fox believes passionately that a good book has the power to move a reader “profoundly, one way or another—to laughter or tears, horror or delight, disgust or dismay, fascination or fright. If a book makes children laugh, cry, squeal, shiver, or wriggle and jiggle in some way, it takes up residence in their hearts and stays there.” Inspired by decades of experience as an educator, an award-winning children’s book author, and a parent, Fox considers her most important role to be crusading for the importance of reading aloud to young children, which she believes is an absolutely essential component in a child’s healthy development. On November 5 at 6:15 p.m., Mem Fox will appear at the Nashville Public Library as part of the Salon@615 series. The event is free and open to the public.

More at Peace than Ever Before

By Tina LoTufo

October 19, 2012 In Stormy Weather & Other Stories, bestselling author and Kingsport native Lisa Alther has put together a collection of short stories written throughout her decades-long career. The selections are lively and varied, and together they represent a body of work that reaches all the way back to the publication of her first novel, Kinflicks, in 1976. Most recently, Alther returned to Appalachia as she researched Blood Feud, an accounting of the famous feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families. On October 25, Lisa Alther will be inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame and also receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from Knoxville’s Friends of Literacy.

More at Peace than Ever Before

La Vie Bohème

By Tina LoTufo

October 1, 2012 In 1926, two New Orleans roommates—one a writer, the other an artist—decided to put together a little book about their French Quarter circle of friends, most of whom were also writers and artists, and publish a few hundred copies, consisting mainly of caricatures and witty captions. In Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s, John Shelton Reed uses this little book by artist William Spratling and his roommate—a fellow by the name of William Faulkner—as a snapshot out of time through which to explore the bohemian arts community that thrived in the Vieux Carré of the 1920s. John Shelton Reed will discuss Dixie Bohemia at Nashville’ s Southern Festival of Books on October 14 at 2:30 p.m. in Legislative Plaza Room 12. All festival events are free and open to the public.

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