April 28, 2014 Anita Norman, a junior at Arlington High School near Memphis, walked away the winner of this year’s state Poetry Out Loud competition after reciting “Early Affection” by George Moses Horton. “I never want to overpower the words,” she said. Norman will represent Tennessee in the national Poetry Out Loud semi-finals, which will be held in Washington, D.C., on April 29, 2014.
April 25, 2014 Corey Mesler’s work has been published in many journals and anthologies. In addition to a dozen chapbooks of both poetry and prose, he has also published eight novels, four full-length poetry collections, and three books of short stories. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and two of his poems were chosen for The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Mesler lives in Memphis, where he is the co-owner (with his wife, Cheryl Mesler) of Burke’s Book Store. He will read from and sign copies of his newest collection, The Catastrophe of My Personality, at Burke’s on May 1, 2014, at 5:30 p.m.
April 11, 2014 Sarah Arvio’s books include Visits from the Seventh; Sono: cantos; and night thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis (all from Alfred A. Knopf). Arvio has won the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts & Letters, as well as Guggenheim, Bogliasco, and NEA fellowships. For many years a translator for the United Nations in New York and Switzerland, she now lives in Maryland near the Chesapeake Bay. Arvio will read from night thoughts at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on April 17, 2014, at 5:30 p.m.
April 7, 2014 “Your poems may be in the past. Your faults are always in the future.” In this interview, Eavan Boland discusses her latest books, including A Journey with Two Maps, which blurs the boundaries of genre by combining memoir with literary criticism. On April 10, 2014, at 7 p.m., Boland will appear in Buttrick Hall on the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville as part of the Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series. The event is free and open to the public.
March 20, 2014 Marjorie Garber believes that the way we read Shakespeare’s plays tells us as much about ourselves as it does about the Bard himself. In an interview with Chapter 16, Garber discusses her approach to Shakespeare, her love of literature, and her commitment to intellectual speculation. She will speak at Rhodes College in Memphis on March 27, 2014, at 7 p.m. Her talk, “Occupy Shakespeare: Shakespeare and/in the Humanities,” is free and open to the public.
February 28, 2014 R.B. Morris is a Knoxville poet, songwriter, solo performer, band leader, and a sometimes-playwright and actor. He has published books of poetry and music albums, and he wrote and acted in The Man Who Lives Here Is Loony, a one-man play taken from the life and work of writer James Agee. He was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame in 2009. R.B. Morris will read from The Mockingbird Poems at the John C. Hodges Library Auditorium on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville on March 3, 2014, at 7 p.m. The reading is free and open to the public.
