Kevin Wilson’s debut novel tells the tale of a wildly funny dysfunctional family
September 1, 2011 In his funny, whimsical debut novel, The Family Fang, Kevin Wilson creates a familiar family drama with an outrageous twist. Kevin Wilson will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.
Read morePoets&Writers magazine highlights three Tennessee schools in its annual M.F.A. rankings
August 31, 2011 Every fall, Poets & Writers magazine releases a comprehensive listing of the fifty best (and most applied-to) M.F.A. programs in the nation. The rankings depend on factors like the quality of the faculty, available funding, fellowship and job-placement opportunities, and selectivity. The issue also includes information about each school’s application fee, teaching load, and the surrounding area’s cost of living. Two related articles list twenty-five honorable-mention M.F.A. programs and the top fifteen doctoral programs in creative writing.
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In a new memoir, David Frizzell writes about the life of his brother, country legend Lefty Frizzell
August 31, 2011 There are echoes of his voice on the radio today. When Tim McGraw sings—or Willie Nelson, or Merle Haggard—what you’re hearing is the influence of Lefty Frizzell, front and center stage. Little known today, Lefty’s music was simply everywhere in the early 1950s. And his life was filled with as many ups and downs as his loose, turbulent voice. In his new memoir, I Love You A Thousand Ways: The Lefty Frizzell Story, Lefty’s brother David tells the story as he knew it.
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August 30, 2011 Richard Jackson is the author of ten books of poems, most recently Resonance, the 2011 Hochner Award Winner; Unauthorized Autobiography: New and Selected Poems; and Half Lives: Petrarchan Poems. Jackson’s translation of Aleksander Persolja’s Journey of The Sun appeared in Slovenia in 2009, and his translation of Giovanni Pascoli’s Last Voyage appeared in 2010. He is the winner of Fulbright, Guggenheim, NEA, NEH, and Witter-Bynner Fellowships and has been awarded the order of Freedom Medal from the President of Slovenia. He is on the faculty at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga.
Read moreIn an op-ed piece for The New York Times, Ann Patchett sings a ballad of bookstore survival
August 29, 2011 Poets are the literary artists who live and die by the use metaphor, but in an op-ed piece for The New York Times yesterday, novelist Ann Patchett manages to find some startling connections, too. It’s not every writer who can make a convincing case for the links between bookstores and a) periodic cicadas, b) platform shoes, c) Newt Gingrich, and d) Pete Seeger songs, but Patchett pulls it off, and all as part of an argument that bookstores are making a comeback, too:
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Preston Lauterbach links an informal network of black-owned “joy businesses” to the birth of rock and roll
August 29, 2011 In The Chitlin’ Circuit: And the Road to Rock and Roll, Memphis music writer Preston Lauterbach takes us back before the days when black music had its way with white teenagers; back to a time when Southern black musicians like B. B. King, Little Richard, and Ray Charles depended for their livelihood on the informal yet influential association of rural nightclubs, big city “strolls,” and gangsters-cum-entrepreneurs known as the chitlin’ circuit. Lauterbach will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.
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