Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

“Leaving Town on the 8:05”

Book Excerpt: The Light Tears Loose

KB Ballentine’s sixth collection,The Light Tears Loose, appeared in July 2019 with Blue Light Press. Published in Crab Orchard Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, among others, her work also appears in anthologies, including In Plein Air and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace.

Read more

“A Letter”

Book Excerpt: Swallow

Tara Mae Mulroy is the author of the full-length poetry collection Swallow and the chapbook Philomela. A graduate of the M.F.A. program in poetry at the University of Memphis, she currently manages Nightjar Review, freelances, and teaches Latin.

Read more

“Dear J.T.”

Book Excerpt: And What Would You Say If You Could?

Born in New York and raised in Nashville, Haviland Whiting is a 2019 United States Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador and the 2018 Nashville Youth Poet Laureate. She is a senior at Harpeth Hall School. And What Would You Say If You Could? is her first published collection of poetry.

Read more

“A Rose By Any Other Name”

Book Excerpt: The Garden of Fragile Beings

Carolyn Welch is a writer and a pediatric nurse practitioner. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Gulf Coast, Poet Lore, Bellevue Literary Review, Sundog, Tar River Poetry, The Southeast Review, The Minnesota Review, and other literary journals. She lives in Norris, Tennessee.

Read more

“Letter to My Mother / Whom I Blamed for Absolutely Everything”

Book Excerpt: Queen of Jacks

Stellasue Lee is a co-host, with Linda Parsons, of WordStream, a weekly reading series in Knoxville. She was founding editor of Rattleand is now editor emerita. Dr. Lee received her Ph.D. from Honolulu University. Winner of the grand prize of Poetry to Aide Humanity by Al Falah in Malaysia, she now teaches privately.

Read more

“When the Dust Settles”

Bill Brown grew up in West Tennessee ten miles from the Mississippi River. He is the author of eight poetry collections and a writing textbook. Formerly the director of the writing program at Hume-Fogg Academic High School in Nashville, he was named a Distinguished Teacher in the Arts in 1995 by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts and the 2011 Writer of the Year by the Tennessee Writers Alliance. His latest book is The News Inside. “When the Dust Settles” is from his 2008 collection, Late Winter.

Read more
TAKE THE SHORT READER SURVEY! CHAPTER 16 SURVEYOR SURVEYING