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Looking Back on 50 Years of Tennessee Books

By Humanities Tennessee

The mid-2010s were an eventful time on the Tennessee literary scene. Awards were received, some beloved writers left us, and of course, the Southern Festival of Books brought amazing authors to Tennessee every year. There were also plenty of wonderful Tennessee books released. The sampling in this installment of the 50 Books / HT50 series features titles with a connection to each region of the state, and — though we didn’t plan it that way — there’s not a traditional novel in the bunch. 

“Haunting My Own Name”

By Tonya Abari

Comprised of braided essays which use key pop-culture moments to weave together stories of triumph and personal exploration, Julian Randall’s The Dead Don’t Need Reminding unearths grief and deeply rooted family histories.

“Haunting My Own Name”

Looking Back on 50 Years of Tennessee Books

By Humanities Tennessee

This installment of the 50 Books / HT50 series is entirely devoted to novels and features two deftly comic tales, a searing depiction of Stalin’s gulag, a finely wrought drama set in occupied Japan, and an Appalachian story of beauty, climate change, and personal evolution.

Goddesses and Coal Miners

By Michael Sims

I loved opening the bookstore alone on Sunday. I loved how it smelled — all those books with their genie-in-a-bottle dreams of love and fear, goddesses and coal miners — Sherlock Holmes on the foggy moor — barefoot Sappho — Harriet Tubman, vampires, Lassie. Often I would arrive well before noon, to have some time alone with the books.

All in the Unsaid

By Erica Wright

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Black Zodiac, Charles Wright pursues timeless questions of aging and mortality.

A Living Pulse

By Emily Choate

In their recently published collections, poets Denton Loving, Evie Shockley, and Susan O’Dell Underwood each find an original expression for the mingling of past and present that presses at the edges of contemporary life. Susan O’Dell Underwood and Denton Loving will appear at the 2024 Tennessee Mountain Writers Conference in Oak Ridge, April 4-6

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