Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

John Kasper, Ezra Pound’s Biggest Fan

Book Excerpt: Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control

In Dynamite Nashville, Betsy Phillips delves into a series of unsolved bombings in the city between 1957 and 1960 and uncovers links to racist violence that spread across the South in the years that followed. Dynamite Nashville will be published by Third Man Books in July 2024.

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“Steve’s Short-Sleeve Shirt”

Book Excerpt: Obama’s Children

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Earl S. Braggs is a UC Foundation and Battle Professor of English at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. His awards include the International Jack Kerouac Literary Prize and the Anhinga Poetry Prize. Obama’s Children is his 15th collection of poetry.

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Of Berries and Death

Book Excerpt: The Comfort of Crows

Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows is a literary devotional that moves through a year of beauty, joy, and grief in the teeming natural world of Renkl’s own backyard. The book includes 52 original color artworks by Billy Renkl and will be published by Spiegel & Grau in October 2023.

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“To the Aliens, Letter #4”

Book Excerpt: Star-Tent: A Triptych

Amie Whittemore was the 2020-2021 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She teaches at Middle Tennessee State University, where she directs MTSU Write.

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“Daffodils”

Book Excerpt: What Bends Us Blue

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Former Knoxvillian Tom Lombardo is a poet, essayist, and freelance medical writer who lives in Midtown Atlanta. His poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Ambit, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and New York Quarterly, among others. He is the editor of an anthology, After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life Shattering Events, and is the poetry series editor for Press 53. His M.F.A. is from Queens University of Charlotte. 

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