Scholar John Lang examines the many faces of God in Appalachian poetry
June 16, 2010 In Six Poets from the Mountain South, John Lang argues that Appalachian literature may reject harsh fundamentalism, but it also embraces a spirituality inspired by the mountain landscape.
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May 21, 2010 Ashley McWaters grew up in Memphis. Her work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Painted Bride Quarterly, Hunger Mountain, and Northwest Review, among others. Her debut book of poetry, Whitework, twice a finalist for the National Poetry Series, explores sewing as synecdoche for the whole of women’s work. McWaters teaches at the University of Alabama, where she directs the undergraduate creative writing program. She will read from Whitework at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on May 22 at 1 p.m.
Read moreMay 14, 2010 Stephanie Pruitt is a poet and teaching artist with community-based organizations including Youth Speaks Nashville and the Magdalene House. A Cave Canem Fellow and member of the Affrilachian Poets, Pruitt received the 2010 Academy of American Poets Prize, the 2009 Sedberry Prize, was a finalist for Poets and Writers’ Magazine‘s Maureen Egen Award, and was named one of “Forty Favorite Poets” by Essence magazine in honor of its fortieth anniversary. This week she will receive her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Vanderbilt University. Pruitt lives with her family in Nashville.
Read moreVanderbilt grad student Stephanie Pruitt garners national recognition
May 14, 2010 As she prepared to receive her M.F.A. degree in creative writing from Vanderbilt this month, Nashville native Stephanie Pruitt found herself unexpectedly listed—along with the likes of Rita Dove and Gwendolyn Brooks—as one of Essence magazine’s “Forty Favorite Poets.” She spoke with Chapter 16 about the national recognition, and about her dedication to poetry.
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May 13, 2010 Linda Parsons Marion is the author of two poetry collections, Home Fires and Mother Land. For fourteen years she served as poetry editor of Now & Then magazine and has received literary fellowships from the Tennessee Arts Commission and Associated Writing Programs, and her poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Shenandoah, and Prairie Schooner, among other journals and anthologies. She is an editor at the University of Tennessee and lives in Knoxville with her husband, poet Jeff Daniel Marion.
Read moreAustin Peay’s literary magazine celebrates twenty-five years
April 28, 2010 In 1985 at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, professors David Till and Malcolm Glass founded a literary magazine which they called Zone 3, in honor of the temperate growing zone of middle Tennessee. This was a staggeringly hopeful endeavor. Even twenty-five years ago, it was not clear that poetry itself—let alone literary magazines devoted to it—would survive the twentieth century. If cable television hadn’t swamped the little boat of lyric poetry, the coming tsunami not yet known as the Internet surely would.
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