Last fall, Poets & Writers named Vanderbilt University one of the top twenty creative-writing programs in the nation. Two weeks ago Beth Bachmann, a poet in the creative-writing program at Vanderbilt, learned she had won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award for her book, Temper. Last week, the Blues Foundation announced that Vanderbilt nonfiction writer-in-residence Peter Guralnick would be inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. This week the PEN/Faulkner Foundation named five fiction finalists for 2010, and Lorraine Lopez, author of the story collection Homicide Survivors Picnic, was on the short list. Care to guess where she teaches?

Marshall Chapman and Lee Smith make it to New York for the opening of Good Ol’ Girls, Killer Nashville scores a big-name keynoter in Jeffery Deaver, Rebecca Skloot is on the third leg of her fifty-three-city book tour, Clay Risen is installed at the op-ed page of The New York Times—and on the cover of The Atlantic—and Michael Sims gives Chapter 16 a peek at his new collection of vampire stories (and there’s not a lovelorn teenager in sight).

U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan visits Tennessee, debut poet Beth Bachmann brings home the prestigious Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Barry Mazor explains to readers of The Wall Street Journal what Music City U.S.A. really means, William Gay goes to the movies—again, Good Ol’ Girls opens Off-Broadway, and both Amy Greene and Rebecca Skloot hit The New York Times bestseller list.

U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan visits Tennessee, debut poet Beth Bachmann brings home the prestigious Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Barry Mazor explains to readers of The Wall Street Journal what Music City U.S.A. really means, William Gay goes to the movies—again, Good Ol’ Girls opens Off-Broadway, and both Amy Greene and Rebecca Skloot hit The New York Times bestseller list.