A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

The Magazine at the Corner of Second and Church

December 10, 2012 In May 2011, Roy Burkhead was hit by a car at the intersection of Church Street and 2nd Avenue in downtown Nashville. (He was not seriously injured.) In many people, such an experience might spark musings on mortality, but for Burkhead it sparked the idea for a literary journal. “This event forced me to pause and look around,” he says. “I was interested to realize just how many different aspects of Nashville were represented from this particular spot of town. Maybe it was the impact of the bumper, but I started to ponder that this specific spot could work as a great metaphor, a virtual location in this actual city.” One year later, he published the first issue of 2nd & Church.

“Practice”

December 7, 2012 Clay Matthews has published poetry in journals such as The American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. His most recent book, Pretty, Rooster), is a collection of sonnets written in syllabics. His other books are Superfecta (Ghost Road Press, 2008) and RUNOFF (BlazeVox, 2009). He teaches at Tusculum College in Greeneville and edits poetry for the Tusculum Review.

Life’s Most Overwhelming Love

December 3, 2012 In his second poetry collection, The Foundling Wheel, Blas Falconer writes about the complex emotions of new parenthood. Through rich and arresting imagery, he conveys a vivid sense of life’s most overwhelming love, as well as its effects and resonances within the family and beyond.

No Imaginary Fences

November 27, 2012 Author of seven books of poems, including a new and selected collection titled Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been), Chase Twichell applies her study of Buddhism to deliver well-chiseled, unsentimental poems that explore terrain not normally associated with Buddhist thought. Whether addressing hot-house irises, Dumpsters, or Chanel No. 5, her poems ponder questions that matter: what is the self, and why do we suffer? As a consequence, Twichell has been awarded many prestigious prizes, including the 2011 Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Award, which carries a $100,000 stipend, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Artists Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Chase Twichell will read from her work on November 29, in Vanderbilt’s Buttrick Hall, Room 101, at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

No Imaginary Fences

“Out of Africa”

November 16, 2012 Marcel Brouwers, a first-generation American, has lived in Chicago, Seoul, Prague, Zihuatanejo, Kalamazoo, and Cassis, France. He currently lives in Knoxville, where he teaches in the University of Tennessee’s English department and serves as director of the UTK Writing Center. He is also the author of The Rose Industrial Complex, a chapbook of poems published by Finishing Line Press in 2009. He will read from his new collection, The Old Cities, on November 25 at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville. The event begins at 2 p.m.

“The Longest Night”

November 9, 2012 Ted Olson, a former Fulbright Senior Scholar, is the author of several books, including a previous collection of poetry, Breathing in Darkness, and a study of Appalachian culture, Blue Ridge Folklife. He has edited numerous books, including collections of literary work by James Still, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Sherwood Anderson; and the award-winning The Bristol Sessions: Writings about the Big Bang of Country Music. Olson served as associate editor for The Encyclopedia of Appalachia and co-editor of A Tennessee Folklore Sampler. In 2012, for his work as a music historian, Olson received two Grammy Award nominations and also the East Tennessee Historical Society’s Regional Excellence in History Award of Distinction. He holds the Ph.D. degree in English from the University of Mississippi, and he teaches at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City. Ted Olson will read from Revelations: Poems on November 11 at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville. The event begins at 2 p.m.

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