Margaret Renkl

April 9, 2010 When writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans went to Alabama in 1936, their assignment was to come back with an article for Fortune magazine about tenant farmers living in desperate poverty in the Depression-era South. For eight weeks, Agee and Evans lived in Moundville, Alabama, primarily with the Burroughs family.

April 9, 2010 There’s nary a hormone-charged teenager in sight, but Dracula’s Guest: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories will chill the blood of serious readers wondering how vampires managed to sink their teeth into the popular imagination. Patricia Altner, writing in this week’s issue of Library Journal, gives the book a starred review.

April 8, 2010 The buzz about Adam Ross’s debut novel, Mr. Peanut, has been building all year, and Ross just keeps getting good news. Last week, the pre-publication industry news journal Kirkus Reviews gave the book a starred review, calling it “an intellectual noir novel that shows evidence of an original voice.”

April 7, 2010 Graduate students in Vanderbilt University's nationally ranked MFA program have launched a national literary magazine, Nashville Review. The online journal, which went live on April 1, is a daunting project the students "conceived of, pursued, and brought into being all by themselves," says poet—and Vanderbilt professor of creative writing—Kate Daniels.

April 7, 2010 If your idea of a multimedia presentation on global warming begins and ends with the somber pronouncements of An Inconvenient Truth, check out the debate between Nashvillian Amanda Little, author of Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells—A Ride to Our Renewable Future, and independent filmmaker Phelim McAleer, a global-warming denier. The debate, sponsored by Lexus to call attention to its new hybrid vehicle, was held in New York City on March 30 and proved to be a raucous event.

April 6, 2010 After being welcomed by the American media as literary royalty—featured three times in one week by The New York Times and appearing on that high throne of media success, The Daily Show, just for starters—Rebecca Skloot is now getting attention overseas as well.