A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Straight on ‘til Morning

In the summer of 1981, a group of young people from the U.S. and Germany launched a homemade raft on the Missouri River near Kansas City, determined to float all the way to New Orleans. Nashvillian Justus Wayne Thomas documented the trip with his camera, and his striking photographs of the crew and the landscape they journeyed through are collected in The River Wil Be a Part of Us.

Straight on ‘til Morning

Loss, Life, and Hope

Chattanooga poet Christian Collier focuses on loss and grieving in his debut collection, Greater Ghost, while still infusing every poem with a pulsing, insistent life.

Loss, Life, and Hope

Eyes in the Shadows

Grey Wolfe LaJoie’s debut story collection, Little Ones, encompasses the psyche of social outcasts, night terrors, and the perceptive sufferers and witnesses of grief

Eyes in the Shadows

Coal Catastrophe

In his first book, Valley so Low, Jared Sullivan, a journalist who has written for The New Yorker, Time, and The Bitter Southerner, tells the story of a decade-long legal battle for Tennessee workers sickened and killed by the coal sludge from the 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant disaster. Sullivan will appear at Landmark Booksellers in Franklin on October 15; Williamson County Public Library in Franklin on October 16; East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville on October 17; ArtsBuild in Chattanooga on October 23; and the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

Coal Catastrophe

Duality Is Fine

In John Vercher’s third novel, Devil Is Fine, a biracial father grieves his deceased son and dying career, realizing that he only understands both through a post-mortem examination. Vercher will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 26-27.

Duality Is Fine

Loving the World More Fully

Leaf, Cloud, Crow, a companion to Margaret Renkl’s 2023 book The Comfort of Crows, is a weekly journal organized by season, encouraging readers to look closely at the plants and creatures that surround them, “to understand them more intimately, and to love them more fully.” Margaret Renkl will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

Loving the World More Fully

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