An interview with Museum of Appalachia founder John Rice Irwin
When he died in January 2022, historian John Rice Irwin was described as the “guardian of Appalachia’s past.” In a 2008 interview, he talked with poet Jesse Graves about his family and his life’s work.
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Carsen Smith co-authors a new sci-fi thriller for middle-grade readers
Comedy writer Carsen Smith and actor and producer James S. Murray join forces to launch Area 51 Interns, a new middle-grade series. The first book, Alien Summer #1, is on shelves now.
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Parton and Patterson tell a Nashville story in Run, Rose, Run
In Run, Rose, Run, Dolly Parton and James Patterson collaborate on a story about a frightened young woman escaping a mysterious menace while pursuing a career as a country music singer/songwriter.
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Martin Luther King Jr.’s Mountaintop speech was more than brilliant rhetorical art; it was also the culmination of a lifetime spent in intense and extensive reading
April 2, 2015 We rightly associate Martin Luther King Jr.’s oratorical eloquence with his vocation as a Baptist minister, following his father and grandfather before him. But King also emerged from the rhetorical tradition of the liberal arts, transforming the sources with which he engaged throughout his too-brief life.
An accidental food writer looks for lessons from the canon
Maybe part of a food writer’s job is to contribute to much-needed reckonings, whether the topic is race, food justice, climate change, workplace inequity … or genocide and disappearing cultural memory. In that sense, maybe nothing is food writing. Maybe everything is.
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For Tennessee writers, our environment’s fate hinges on unearthing the truth about where we stand
When I look across Tennessee’s literary ecosystem, I see how many of our writers feel compelled to write about their relationship to the land. Some have intertwined their literary vision with an environmental mission. Others have devoted their work to excavating truths about our history that have lain buried for too long.
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