Appalachia returns to the best-seller lists! August’s last New York Times best-seller lists had Tailspin by Sandra Brown, set in North Georgia, as the #3 fiction hardback and Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy, which concerns Southwest Virginia, as the #7 non-fiction hardback.
Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Roanoke’s Beth Macy was on Amazon’s Best Books of August 2018 list and Publishers Weekly’s list of Fall 2018 top ten forthcoming books in the Politics and Current Events category.
The Birds of Opulence by Crystal Wilkinson was named the debut selection of the Open Canon Book Club. The club was created by author Wiley Cash to introduce readers to voices and portrayals of the American experience they may not have otherwise encountered in their day-to-day lives, their education, or their book club meetings. Each month, Cash will post discussion questions and host live book club discussions online and in independent bookstores.
Lynn Powell will be the featured Appalachian author celebrated at the 37th Annual Literary Festival at Emory & Henry College to be held November 8-9, 2018. Powell is the author of three collections of poetry, Old & New Testaments (1995), The Zones of Paradise (2003), and Season of the Second Thought (2017), as well as one non-fiction book, Framing Innocence: A Mother’s Photographs, A Prosecutor’s Zeal, and A Small Town’s Response (2010). A native of East Tennessee, Powell earned her B.A. from Carson-Newman College and her MFA from Cornell University. She has lived in Oberlin, Ohio, since 1990 where she teaches poetry and nonfiction in the creative writing program of Oberlin College and is the founder and director of Oberlin Writers-in-the-Schools training program for undergraduates.
The Knoxville Friends of Literacy has scheduled their15th Annual East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame Awards Gala for October 5th. They are honoring no less than 14 people, many of whom are historical figures. Their award for “Lifetime Achievement” goes to Cormac McCarthy; for “Outstanding Contribution to East Tennessee Culture and Literacy” is going to John Rice Irwin. Their fiction honoree is Charles Dodd White; Nonfiction goes to Wayne Bledsoe, and poetry to Brian Griffin. Other categories include Children’s Literature, Playwriting, and Songwriting.