Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

“Time Is a Desert of Rain”

Book Excerpt: Heirloom Language

Barbara E. Young is a Middle Tennessee native. She has known party lines, coonskin caps, hula hoops, transistor radios under the covers, 8-track, CD-ROM, Blogger, and Covid 19. She returned to writing poetry at age 60 and still has a lot to learn. Heirloom Language is her first full-length collection. Young will read from her work at Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville on June 24.

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“Self-Portrait as Getting Drunk Dialed by God”

Book Excerpt: I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World

Kendra DeColo is the author of two previous poetry collections, My Dinner with Ron Jeremy (2016) and Thieves in the Afterlife (2014). She is a recipient of a 2019 Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and has taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Vanderbilt University. She’ll discuss I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 23.

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The Music City?

Book Excerpt: I’ll Take You There: Exploring Nashville’s Social Justice Sites

In I’ll Take You There: Exploring Nashville’s Social Justice Sites, editors Amie Thurber and Learotha Williams Jr. collect the contributions of more than 100 Nashvillians to tell stories “about place, power, and the historic and ongoing struggle toward a more just city for all.” I’ll Take You There will be published by Vanderbilt University Press in May 2021.

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Love and Hurt

Book Excerpt: The Wheel

Combining poetry, commentary, and memoir, The Wheel is the first book by Nashville writer and musician AM Ringwalt. Ringwalt will discuss The Wheel at a virtual event hosted by The Porch in Nashville on March 5 at 6 p.m. CST.

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“Before You Told Me”

Book Excerpt: Trouble Can Be So Beautiful at the Beginning

Shuly Xóchitl Cawood’s Trouble Can Be So Beautiful at the Beginning won the 2019 Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry. Cawood is the author of the memoir The Going and Goodbye, the inspirational little book 52 Things I Wish I Could Have Told Myself When I Was 17, and the short story collection A Small Thing to Want. She lives in Johnson City. She’ll appear with Ciona Rouse and Larry Thacker at a virtual event hosted by East Tennessee State University on March 3.

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You’re Gonna Talk about This Chicken

Book Excerpt: Hot, Hot Chicken: A Nashville Story

Rachel Louise Martin’s Hot, Hot Chicken: A Nashville Story recounts the story of hot chicken and what the dish’s growing popularity reveals about race relations in a changing city. Hot, Hot Chicken will be published by Vanderbilt University Press in March 2021.

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