Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

From the Other Side of the Woods

A young woman learns to fight for her adopted hometown in Moonrise Over New Jessup

In Jamila Minnicks’ debut novel, Moonrise Over New Jessup, Alice Young takes on a new life of love and tangled loyalties in an all-Black Alabama town embroiled in the escalating fight over desegregation.

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A Tennessee Memory of Sidney Poitier

The year was 1966, and two icons came to honor Fisk University’s centennial

We had seen Poitier’s most recent movie, A Patch of Blue, and we understood — how could we not? — the cultural relevance of his career. In films like Lilies of the Field, A Raisin in the Sun, and now his latest, Poitier embodied a reality he thought America must see: a Black man of dignity and strength.

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“Statues in the Park”

Book Excerpt: Intimacies in Borrowed Light

Intimacies in Borrowed Light is the first full-length poetry collection by Knoxville native Darius Stewart, who is also the author of three chapbooks. He received the 2021 Emerging Writer Award from the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame and is currently a Lulu “Merle” Johnson Doctoral Fellow in English Literary Studies at the University of Iowa. He lives in Iowa City with his dog, Fry.

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Overcoming the Divide

David Dark is still questioning everything

Nashville writer David Dark has revisited his 2016 book, Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious, creating a “reframed and expanded” new edition. He’ll appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on January 7.

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