News & Notes
Saying What You Want to Say in Your Own Way
Charles Wright talks about literary style, Southern writing, and how to get into graduate school without really trying
by Amaryllis Lyle
March 26, 2013 Acclaimed poet Charles Wright, who hails from Kingsport, Tennessee, recently talked with Georgetown’s Vox Populi about his past work as a young writer. He explained how he started out as a history major at Davidson and how he also flew under the radar when aiming for one of the country’s top graduate writing programs:
Published Friday, 26 April 2013
Finding Solace
R.A. Dickey makes the rounds to speak with 60 Minutes and the National Post about abuse and redemption
by Bradley Hartsell
April 24, 2013 In the Internet era with its unceasing news cycle, athletes tend to speak in platitudes and PR statements, but memoirist R.A. Dickey, the Toronto Blue Jays’ new knuckleball pitcher, has never resorted to trite or banal responses in interviews. Since the publication of his memoir, Wherever I Wind Up (newly released in both paperback and a young-readers’ edition called Throwing Strikes),
Published Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Descending the Mountaintop
Katori Hall’s play, staged this season in theaters across the country, offers a surprising perspective on Martin Luther King Jr.
by Amaryllis Lyle
April 12, 2013 Memphis native and playwright Katori Hall is causing an international stir with her play, The Mountaintop, which chronicles the last night of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and the events that took place in his hotel room after his famous “Mountaintop” speech. The original production premiered in 2010 in London, where Hall earned the coveted Olivier Award before returning home to open the play on Broadway in 2011. Only a year after its close on Broadway, The Mountaintop has become one of the most widely produced plays in the nation.
Published Friday, 12 April 2013
The Meaning of Meme
Nashville novelist Ann Patchett reflects on what it’s like to be in “the cultural loop”
by Amaryllis Lyle
March 4, 2013 Perhaps most celebrated for her novels, including the bestselling Bel Canto and State of Wonder, and for her independent book store, Parnassus Books in Nashville, Ann Patchett has recently enjoyed a morsel of fame on the HBO sitcom Girls. The show, well into its second season, makes a habit of aggressive name-dropping and has decided to bring Patchett into the spotlight.
Published Monday, 4 March 2013
Magazines and BBQ
Roger Hodge, new editor at the Oxford American, stops by The Colbert Report
by Bradley Hartsell
February 13, 2013 Roger D. Hodge, a Sewanee grad and the freshly appointed editor of the Oxford American, dropped by to chat with Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report about the release of his first issue as editor.
Published Wednesday, 13 February 2013
Music City Reads
Nashville's citywide-read program to kick off with Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi
by Chapter 16
January 28, 2013 In March the Nashville Public Library will launch the second Nashville Reads, a citywide reading campaign to encourage teens and adults to read the same book at the same time as a way of creating a shared experience of reading in the city. Life of Pi, a novel by internationally acclaimed author Yann Martel, is the selection for this spring's program. On March 2 at 3 p.m., Martel will give a free public lecture at the Nashville Public Library as a kickoff to the event.
Published Monday, 28 January 2013
Superbooks Sunday
On game day, Ann Patchett and Karen Hayes will be featured on Oprah's network, OWN
by Margaret Renkl
January 28, 2013 When a person takes a late lunch break and heads over to the local bookshop on a mid-week winter afternoon, she might expect to spend a quiet hour in the abandoned stacks.
Published Friday, 25 January 2013
A Bollingen Prize for Wright
Charles Wright wins yet another premier poetry prize
by Margaret Renkl
January 22, 2013 Yale University today announced that Charles Wright, a native of Pickwick Dam, Tennessee, has won the 2013 Bollingen Prize for his poetry collection, Bye-and-Bye: Selected Late Poems. The prize, one of the most prestigious given poets, is awarded every other year and carries a stipend of $150,000.
Published Tuesday, 22 January 2013
Vandy Expanding
Lorrie Moore is set to join the faculty of the Vanderbilt creative-writing program
by Margaret Renkl
January 18, 2013 Vanderbilt University's graduate program in creative writing—already the single most selective M.F.A. program in the country—just drafted a powerhouse: Lorrie Moore, a widely acknowledged master of short fiction and winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story, the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of the short story, and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, has accepted a new endowed chair and will join the Vanderbilt faculty in the fall.
Published Friday, 18 January 2013
Recognition for Cornwell’s Latest
Forensic crime novelist Patricia Cornwell celebrates the release of her newest Kay Scarpetta thriller
by Emily Choate
January 11, 2013 Patricia Cornwell has made the media rounds in recent months, celebrating the publication of The Bone Bed, the twentieth entry in her series of bestselling crime thrillers featuring Kay Scarpetta, a forensic pathologist. The Scarpetta novels, for which Cornwell has frequently done research at the Body Farm and National Forensic Academy at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, sparked the forensic science subgenre of thrillers that now crowds television schedules with shows like C.S.I. Investigation.
Published Friday, 11 January 2013
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