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 discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on January 14.
Larry D. Thacker’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in Poetry South, Appalachian Journal, Still: The Journal, and Pikeville Review, among other publications. His 2021 story collection, Working It Off in Labor County, was published by West Virginia University Press. He lives in Johnson City, Tennessee.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Bill Brown, a native of Dyersburg, Tennessee, was the author of many poetry collections, including Late Winter, The News Inside, and The Cairns. Brown also spent much of his life nurturing the work of other writers, chiefly during his years as a teacher at Nashville’s Hume-Fogg High School. He died on December 17, 2023.
In her latest poetry collection Winter Sharp with Apples, Annette Sisson considers the ordinary but important moments that bind people together. Sisson will appear at The Nocturne Reading Series at Land of a Thousand Hills in Nashville on January 21.
Bess Cooley is a winner of The Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, and her work has also appeared in Prairie Schooner, Western Humanities Review, and Verse Daily, among other publications. She is the co-founding editor of Peatsmoke Journal and teaches at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Load in Nine Times is Frank X. Walker’s poetic exploration of American life in the period surrounding the Civil War. The collection takes Kentucky as its geographical framework, speaking through enslaved mothers, fathers, and children and masters and mistresses.
