A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Alexander van der Pool

Set in a West Tennessee town, James E. Cherry’s Edge of the Wind explores the connection between jazz and poetry — and between racism and mental illness. The novel, originally published in 2016, has been reissued in a new edition with a foreword by Charles Dodd White.

Ball of Fire

Yasmine S. Ali’s Walk Through Fire: The Train Disaster that Changed America recounts the 1978 derailment and explosion in Waverly, Tennessee, that killed 16 people and led to the creation of FEMA. Dr. Ali will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 27, the Humphreys County Public Library in Waverly on March 3, and the Tennessee State Museum on April 8.

“Statues in the Park”

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.

“We Love Those Among Whom We Have Spent the Day”

“We Love Those Among Whom We Have Spent the Day” is included in Secret City, Katherine Smith’s 2022 collection from Madville Publishing.

“Sleeping Over on Highway 78”

“Sleeping Over on Highway 78” is included in Floyd Collins’ 2022 collection, My Back Pages: The Teresa Poems, published by Stephen F. Austin University Press.

“Weapons, or What I Have Taken in My Hand to Speak When I Have No Words”

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Joy Harjo, who served three terms as U.S. Poet Laureate, is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee Creek Nation. 

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