Kay Ryan has enjoyed critical respect and a slew of honors and awards, but she was reluctant to accept the post of U.S. Poet Laureate. A literary outsider known for compact verse that marries humor and insight, Ryan talks with Chapter 16 about her work and the experience of being the nation’s designated poet. She will give a reading at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville on February 16 at 7 p.m. at the University Center Auditorium.
Kate Gleason, of Keene, New Hampshire, won Austin Peay State University’s Zone 3 First Book Award for her poetry collection Measuring the Dark. She is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, The Brighter The Deeper and Making As If To Sing. A recipient of writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (in conjunction with the Ragdale Foundation), the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center, she has also won the Outstanding Emerging Writer Award from the New Hampshire Writers’ Project.
Poet, novelist, and essayist Allen Tate (1899-1979) was one of twentieth-century America’s most important literary voices. Born in Kentucky and a graduate of Vanderbilt, Tate was a central figure in the circle of Nashville writers who came to be known as the Fugitives—and later the Southern Agrarians—a group which included John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson, and Merrill Moore. After her husband’s death in 1979, Helen Tate settled in Nashville, where she continues to work and volunteer. As Tate’s widow, she is one of the few living links to a critical moment in American literary history and a reminder of Nashville’s central role in the emergence of modern poetry. She recently spoke with Chapter 16 about her husband and his literary legacy.
Bobby C. Rogers grew up in West Tennessee and was educated at Union University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and the University of Virginia. His first book, Paper Anniversary, won the 2009 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize at University of Pittsburgh Press and will be published in fall, 2010. He is a professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. He lives in Memphis with his wife and son and daughter.
Kory Wells is breaking out of her career as a software developer with her first poetry collection, Heaven Was the Moon. Her novel-in-progress was a finalist in the William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition, and Ladies’ Home Journal praised her “standout” essay in the anthology She’s Such a Geek. Wells and her family, long-time residents of Murfreesboro, are renovating a house in Bell Buckle.
Wyatt Prunty, a native of Humboldt, Tennessee, is the author of seven poetry collections, and his honors include fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation. Founding director of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, he teaches creative writing at the University of the South. To read an interview with Wyatt Prunty, please click here.
