June 16, 2010 Nashville music journalist Barry Mazor has won the Belmont Book Award for his book, Meeting Jimmie Rodgers. The prize for the best country-music book of the year is given at the International Country Music Conference at Belmont University in Nashville. Read more about the award here and a Q&A with Barry Mazor here.
June 10, 2010 Poet, novelist, and Chapter 16 editorial board member Darnell Arnoult has accepted the position of writer-in-residence at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate. She will replace Silas House, who is leaving Tennessee to return to his native Kentucky as National Endowment for the Humanities Chair in Appalachian Studies at Berea College.
June 3, 2010 Constant images from the oil plume spreading devastation across the Gulf coast inspire Harrogate novelist Silas House to consider the similar costs to Appalachia of mountaintop-removal mining. And he has some advice for the president: “It’s time to start talking about sustainable jobs for miners who are losing theirs to machines on MTR sites. It’s time to try to salvage these devastated MTR sites into the only thing they’re really usable for now: wind farms.
June 3, 2010 Today’s poem at poets.org, an online publication of the Academy of American Poets, is “The Sweetwater Caverns” by Kimiko Hahn. As with much of Hahn’s work, the poem is less about its declared subject—in this case, the famous caverns in Sweetwater, Tennessee—than about the way the subject raises questions about the convergence of death and desire.
May 27, 2010 For the academic year 2010-2011, Rogersville native Jeff Daniel Marion will serve as the University of Tennessee Libraries’ Jack E. Reese Writer in Residence. His responsibilities will include meeting with creative-writing students and organizing a series of public readings by regional writers.
May 26, 2010 Aspiring mystery novelists, take note: the deadline for the Claymore Award, a contest sponsored by Killer Nashville, has been extended to June 1, and the list of genres now open for consideration has been expanded, as well. Up to ten manuscripts will be considered for publication by Five Star/Tekno Books. Read contest details here.
