October 21, 2010 Chattanooga native and Sewanee graduate Jon Meacham has taken a job as executive vice president and executive editor at Random House, which published his biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. He will acquire and edit nonfiction titles and will begin his duties on January 3, 2011.
October 19, 2010 It’s an authorial feather many writers never get to add to their caps at all: an invitation to appear on legendary journalist John Seigenthaler’s NPT program, A Word on Words. But Nashville novelist Adam Ross recently appeared in two different episodes of the program. Listen to the podcasts here.
October 18, 2010 In an essay for The Wall Street Journal, Ann Patchett remembers the decade she spent freelancing for Gourmet magazine, when “Magazine work was a beautiful party and we all just figured it would go on forever.” For Patchett, the party featured assignments to exotic destinations, a generous expense account (which once reimbursed her for a soup turtle she had set free), and– perhaps most luxurious of all– an editor who valued her work: “For 10 golden years they picked up the tab while I ate at the best restaurants and laid down my head
October 15, 2010 This week, the Fellowship of Southern Writers notified Kate Daniels and Jeff Daniel Marion that they would be honored in April at the Fellowship’s Conference on Southern Literature in Chattanooga.
October 14, 2010 If you’re the kind of reader who longs to know whether your favorite novelist writes at a desk or on a laptop, Ann Patchett has a treat for you. In today’s New York Times she explains what she loves best about the house where she lives: “I think of Eudora Welty who, at age 16, moved into the house where she would live until she was 92. She wrote her short stories at the desk in her bedroom. I write my novels in the bedroom across the hall from where we sleep.
