February 22, 2011 For several years novelist Richard Bausch and science writer Rebecca Skloot were colleagues at the University of Memphis (though Skloot recently left the program to move to Chicago); now they’ve each been nominated for the 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in their respective categories: Bausch is on the short list for fiction; Skloot’s nomination is in Science and Technology writing.

February 21, 2011 When they hear the name “Dickey,” literary types in Tennessee automatically think of the brilliant poet James Dickey (though he’s perhaps more famous as the author of the novel Deliverance than as the author of many oft-anthologized poems like “The Heaven of Animals,” “The Lifeguard,” and “Falling”), who was a student at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

February 21, 2011 When former Harrogate, Tennessee, novelist Silas House joined legendary Kentucky poet and essayist Wendell Berry and twelve other protesters outside Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear’s office, he didn’t pack pajamas, but he came to stay the night. The protesters hoped the sit-in would call media attention to the environmental and human devastation caused by mountaintop-removal mining, a practice which House has long worked to see ended.