Our writer friends in Knoxville have announced their 2010 contest winners in their e-newsletter on the Knoxville Writers Guild website. I invite you to read my stories: The Major’s Wife (Third place, short fiction) and Stitches in Time (Second place, creative nonfiction).
Killer Nashville
What fun it was to be at Killer Nashville last weekend! The session I presented was on “True Crime.” There were many sessions, about 350 in attendance, and a good time was had by all.
Zone 3 Video Online
Bill Larson at www.clarksvilleonline.com was at the Zone 3 celebration to video all the readings. You can view his video here.
Zone 3 Celebration
I will be reading in Clarksville on April 28, along with others who are past contributors or editors of Zone 3. Here is a press release about the literary journal and the event:
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – In 1985, Austin Peay State University English professors David Till and Malcolm Glass shared an ambitious dream. They wanted to create one of the south’s preeminent poetry journals, publishing only works of high artistic merit.
They settled on the name “Zone 3” for their new magazine, in reference to the temperate zone that encompasses Clarksville, and the APSU Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts agreed to publish a few issues. It was a risky venture. Thousands of literary journals are founded each year, only to fold because of small readerships and financial constraints.
Twenty-five years later, both Till and Glass have retired from APSU, but the poetry journal they helped found has grown into a leading voice in the nation’s network of literary magazines. “Zone 3”expanded into publishing short stories in the 1990s, and it recently added provocative flash interviews with some of America’s finest prose writers, such as Michael Martone, Brenda Miller and Ander Monson.
On April 28, former editors and contributors will join the current editorial staff of “Zone 3” at the Clarksville-Montgomery County Public Library for “Terra Firma,” a reading and broadside exhibition commemorating the journal’s 25th Anniversary.
The event, sponsored by the Tennessee Arts Commission, the CMC Library and the Center of Excellence, begins with a reception at 5:30 p.m. At 6 p.m., Till and Glass will read from their work, as will current “Zone 3” editors Blas Falconer, associate professor of English at APSU, Barry Kitterman, professor of English at APSU, and Amy Wright, assistant professor of English at APSU. Past magazine contributors Phyllis Gobbell and Jeff Hardin will also read during the event.
Gobbell is the recipient of several writing awards, including the Leslie Garrett Fiction Prize, Knoxville Writer’s Guild First Place Award in Creative Nonfiction and Tennessee’s Individual Artist Literary Award in 2006. Her story “Primates,” written originally as part of her graduate thesis at APSU, received the Special Mention for Fiction honor in the 2005 Pushcart Prize XXIX Best of the Small Presses anthology. She is an associate professor of English at Nashville State Community College, where she serves as editor of the campus literary journal.
Hardin has published poems in recent and forthcoming issues of The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, The Hudson Review, Ploughshares, Nimrod, Passages Meridian and Measure. He is the author of two chapbooks, “Deep in the Shallows” and “The Slow Hill Out.” His first collection, “Fall Sanctuary,” received the 2004 Nicholas Roerich Prize from Story Line Press. Hardin teaches at Columbia State Community College in Columbia.
A book signing will follow at 7 p.m.
In addition to the readings, the event will feature broadsides of Zone 3 poems, created by APSU art students using the University’s Goldsmith Press and Rare Type Collection. These broadsides will be on display during the event.
For more information about the 25th Anniversary Celebration, contact Susan Wallace with the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts at 931-221-7031 or wallacess@apsu.edu.
Reunion of Writers
Alana White has started the ball rolling by setting the date – October 9, 2010, during the Southern Festival of Books – for a reunion of writers from the early years of the Nashville Writers Alliance. We didn’t even call ourselves by a formal name in those days. Then John Egerton did an article about us and he gave us the name. If you didn’t get an email from Alana, she probably did not have your address. I can’t wait for the reunion!
Creative Nonfiction
Our writers group started a discussion about creative nonfiction that I want to continue. We all know CNF is grounded in “truth” – but what kind of liberties can the CNF writer take? In a memoir, for example, how accurate must conversations from decades ago be? Jump in with your thoughts.
Celebrating Robert Burns
Every year our writers group celebrates Robert Burns’ birthday in January with a night of poetry. Some of us write our own; some of us read favorite poems. Always at Doug’s house because he started the tradition, the poetry night has become one of our favorite Tuesdays of the year. Wearing plaid is mandated and there is even a kilt now and then. Where was the camera?
Halloween at our writers group
Each year we read original Halloween stories on the Tuesday night before Halloween. We were at Doug’s house, and Doug took the prize for the best Halloween story – but they were all wonderful! Phyllis dressed as Morticia and served as judge. And a good time was had by all.
Southern Festival of Books, 2009
For writers and readers alike, this is the best value of the year in Nashville – three days of free events, October 9-11. Check out the Southern Festival website for more information, including a list of the sessions you can attend. If you’ve never been to the Southern Festival, you will be amazed. And another amazing thing – for more than fifteen years now, the weather has always been perfect for the weekend of the festival.