Chattanooga poet Christian Collier focuses on loss and grieving in his debut collection, Greater Ghost, while still infusing every poem with a pulsing, insistent life. He will be the featured author for Writers@Work 2026 in Chattanooga on April 7-9 and a visiting writer at the Southern Literary Festival at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga on April 11.
Nashville poet Donovan McAbee’s first full-length collection, Holy the Body, brims with depictions of the spiritual life that refuse dogma or sentimental cliché. McAbee will discuss Holy the Body at a book launch event at Woodmont Christian Church in Nashville on March 24, with featured guests including Ciona Rouse, Thomm Jutz, Mark Jarman, and Mary Gauthier.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In Walking Gentry Home, poet Alora Young crafts a family history from the stories passed down through generations.
In her mesmerizing debut, Helen of Troy, 1993, poet Maria Zoccola merges the mythological and the modern, casting Helen of Troy as a restless housewife and mother in Sparta, Tennessee. Zoccola will be a featured author at ETSU’s Emerging Writers Series on February 9.
Three recent poetry collections — Lou Turner’s Twin Lead Lines, Connie Jordan Green’s Nameless as the Minnows, and Richard Collins’ Stone Nest — skillfully utilize a variety of Tennessee settings, including the Nashville music world, Oak Ridge in its early years, and a rocky mountaintop in Sewanee.
In his third collection, Feller, East Tennessee poet Denton Loving offers moments of heightened exchange between the human and nonhuman worlds.
