Knoxville Christmas 2007 collection
Ed. Cyn Mobley
Published by Greyhound Books

Read over 267 pages from 45 Guild-member authors & artists--a perfect gift for friends and family.

Water Dreams
by Jeanne Mc Donald

Guild member and former Guild president Jeanne McDonald has published her first novel Water Dreams .  According to novelist Lee Smith, "An accidental drowning forever changes the middle-aged man who happens to witness it--and affects everyone else in his life like widening circles in the water after a rock has been thrown in.  Male and female readers alike will be swept away by this absorbing, grown-up novel, a serious meditation upon chance, fate, love, and responsibility. Like all the best storytellers, Jeanne McDonald knows how to disappear and let the story take over."  McDonald has previously co-authored two nonfiction books with her husband Fred Brown:   Growing Up Southern: How the South Shapes Its Writers  and The Serpent Handlers: Three Families and Their Faith.

  Cumberland Avenue Revisited, ed. Jack Rentfro

Cumberland Avenue Revisited, the first and only 40-year anthology of the Knoxville music scene, is on sale now!

Over 100 of the best writers, artists, musicians and scenesters contributed memoirs, essays, anecdotes and good natured mythologizing about the Knoxville music scene from as far back as the early 1960's to the present day happenings. Cumberland Avenue Revisited includes many cool photos, as well as stories about bands, solo artists, clubs, bars, other music venues, college radio, local music promoters, record stores, poster/flyer making, recording studios and many other aspects that have helped to create forty years of Knoxville music scene history! And portions of the proceeds from sales of the book will benefit the creation of James Agee Park.

Available now at Disc Exchange, Cat's Music, McKay Used Books & CDs, Market Square Booksellers, Borders, Pick 'N' Grin, Rik's Music & Sound, the Metro Pulse office, online through Amazon (soon)  and more to be announced soon. 

The Singing of the Wheels: Poems from Somewhere Not Far
by J. Brian Long
Published by Wind Publications

Wonderful reviews for Long's first volume of poetry:  "Sustaining metaphors of journey, geography, and stillness, the poems in J. Brian Long's The Singing of the Wheels are all 'the sounds of maps unfolding.' Long's eye and ear on the nautral world infuse this remarkable first volume with an instictive power through which we join him in brilliant explorations of 'the makeshift, far-flung myth of us.'" --Claudia Emerson

"The Singing of the Wheels is a striking debut by a gifted poet." --Ron Rash

Available from amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, borders.com, windpub.com and area bookstores.

Paddling the Tennessee River: A Voyage on Easy Water
by Kim Trevathan
This travel narrative of Trevathan's 1998 canoe trip down the 652 mile Tennessee River is due to be published by the University of Tennessee Press in October 2001.  Accompanied by his dog Jasper, Trevathan includes historical background on the old, free-flowing river and the string of reservoirs created by TVA's nine dams.  Available at UT Press , Barnes and Noble, and other Knoxville, TN area bookstores.
 

Ebbing & Flowing Springs by Jeff Daniel Marion

Ebbing & Flowing Springs, Danny Marion's seventh full-length collection, is truly special in that it draws from the author's work over the period 1976-2001. The collection includes twenty new poems and, perhaps of greatest significance to his large and loyal following, previously uncollected stories and essays.  Published by Celtic Cat Publishing.

 

Discovering October Roads: Fall Colors and Geology in Rural East Tennessee
by Fred Brown and Harry Moore

A traveling companion for scenic fall trips, geologic history, and topography, cultural history, and anecdotes, this book contains dozens of color photographs, maps, plates, and figures as well as directions for trips in the Blue Ridge, Valley and Ridge, and the Cumberland Plateau.  Published by University of Tennessee Press.
 

Low Explosions: Writings on the Body (2006)

Ed. Casie Fedukovic with Steve Sparks

A collection of stories, essays, poems, and illustrations in some way related to the human body.

Migrants & Stowaways:  An Anthology of Journeys

Ed. Emily Dziuban with Kristin Robertson

This anthology collects eighty-five stories, poems, essays, memoirs and photographs exploring journeys, both real and imagined. Settings include the international: Japan, Croatia, Panama, Italy and more. The regional: Tennessee, Kentucky and the South. Space is also given to those journeys that happen in our minds and hearts even when we don't acutally go anywhere.

Reviews:  George Garrett, author of Death of the Fox - "Here you will find all the pleasures of good work by good and gifted writers."

Michael Knight, author of Goodnight, Nobody -  "There is a kinship about this anthology born not only of the journey itself but of the place left behind."

Literary Lunch
Ed. Jeannette Brown with Flossie McNabb (2002)

  Literary Lunch is a collection of short stories, essays, memoirs, poems and art that feed the heart and brain. It features creative works involving food from writers, poets and artists representing 13 states. Includes a new prose-poem by Nikki Giovanni. 272 pages

"... a mason jar full of memory--and a book to savor, to treasure, to give to your friends." --Lee Smith

One for Each NIght: Chanukah Tales and Recipes

by Marilyn Kallet Artwork by Heather Seratt

One for Each Night will appeal to a broad audience. It provides a gift for each night of Chanukah, something for families to share, an inspiration for the holiday season. It is a must for parents and children who enjoy Fairy Tales. It is a catalyst for all that enjoy creative cooking.  Published by Celtic Cat Publishing.

Rough Ascension and Other Poems of Science

by Art hur J. Stewart

"Art Stewart's poems ring with finely made images gleaned with the careful eye of a scientist. His ear is tuned to the metaphoric resonance of the scientific vocabulary -he understands the great untapped resource of imagination within the discipline, a resource which the professional strictures of science may not fully value. He is a good-hearted provocateur within the culture of science, an authentic new voice in the culture of poetry."  Published by Celtic Cat Publishing

-Alison Hawthorne Deming, poet, essayist, and
recipient of the 1993 Walt Whitman Award of
the Academy of American Poets.

Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia
edited by Sandra L. Ballard and Patricia L. Hudson

From Publishers Weekly
The 105 writers in this anthology "have been relegated to the fringes of the American literary community, largely because their 'place'-Appalachia-continues to be viewed as outside the American mainstream," contend Ballard and Hudson in their introduction to this collection of writing by women from the Appalachian Mountains. Of course, not all Appalachian women writers are on the "fringes" of the literary community (Barbara Kingsolver, Dorothy Allison and Annie Dillard). But many, such as North Carolina ballad singer Sheila Kay Adams and Kentucky short story writer Lucy Furman, are relatively obscure. The editors wisely incorporate a mix of both famous and unfamiliar authors to present an impressive and stirring display of (mostly) contemporary writings by women whose "identities have been marked by life" in Appalachia. The subjects covered include nature, motherhood, poverty and sexuality. A brief biography introduces each contributor, making this a particularly helpful reference work.

Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Blood Kin by Mark Powell (winner 2005)

Blood Kin is "a powerful novel--fast paced, riveting, and beautifully crafted," said Jill McCorkle, a professor in the Bennington College M.F.A. in Writing Program. "Mark Powell is a gifted wirter who brings to life a family--their loves and losses and triumphs." McCorkle chose the novel from a field of five finalists selected from almost 400 entries.

Fire on Mount Maggiore
by John Parras (winner 2004)
Based on first-hand experience battling forest fires in Italy, John Parras’s debut novel, Fire on Mount Maggiore, tells the story of Matteo Arteli, a firefighter harrowed by survivor’s guilt after a fierce blaze kills five men in his brigade, leaving him an unlikely phoenix emerging from the ashes. Amid rumors of flawed firefighting operations, mismanagement of state lands, underworld involvement, and serial arson, Matteo probes suspicions swirling around the circumstances of the deaths and finds himself at the center of an intricate conspiracy. Fire on Mount Maggiore is written in a fluid voice that illuminates the beauty as well as the destructiveness that is fire; it describes both the thrill and the psychological toll of chasing burns across mountain landscapes. Displaying craft and originality, this is fiction that signals the emergence of an outstanding talent.

Minyan: Ten Jewish Men In A World That Is Heartbroken
by Eliezar Sobel (winner 2003)
Winner of the Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel, Minyan is the story of Norbert Wilner, a man who has mastered the art of arrested development. At thirty-seven, he lives in New York City, still trying to find his place in the world and still hanging out with the Jewish guys he grew up with in the Jersey suburbs. Most of them remain single and sontinue to search for God, women, and a good deli sandwich, though not necessarily in that order. Bernstein is a Hindu, Greenblatt's a Sufi, Weissbaum worships Willie Mays, and nobody likes Finkelstein, the big-shot lawyer and born-again Christian. And Freddy Lipschitz has just died.

As these middle-aged men gather to mourn their childhood friend, they begin to take stock--and make schtick--of their failed relationships, missed opportunities, questionable careers, and the underlying sense of dread that pervades their existence. Norbert takes the opportunity to make two important decisions: he will become a rabbi to save other Jewish souls, and he will start the Happy Hearse Funeral Parlor.

Blue: A Novel
by Sarah Van Arsdale (winner 2002)
In the small city of Intervale in northern Maine, on a rainy night, an unknown woman appears on a bridge. "Blue," as she comes to be known, has complete retrograde amnesia. Her condition provides a lens through which author Sarah Van Arsdale examines questions of identity, isolation, and loss. As the protagonist tries to recover fragments of her memory, she becomes the focus of the obsessions of local resident Rita LaPlatte, who sets about stealthily proving that Blue is her "missing" twin. While in Intervale, Blue comes under the care of Robert Reichman, a psychiatrist who is grappling with his own lost identity as a Jew—a battle that is underscored by his father’s rapidly deteriorating memory loss. Also under the care of Dr. Reichman is Annie Blaise, a psychotic woman housed at the hospital during the harsh winter months after she is arrested for lighting fires by the river. It is Annie who holds the key to the question of both her own identity and Blue’s, an answer not revealed until the book’s last pages. 

Winner of the 2002 Peter Taylor Prize for the novel, this subtle, engaging story entertains while exploring intriguing questions of memory and loss, mystery and revelation, dreaming and waking.

A House All Stilled
by A. G. Harmon (winner 2001)
"At times the images are wrenching, but always a page turner. Harmon paints a vivid picture of a young boy coming of age in the rural South. Laced with tender and funny moments, Henry is caught in a battle between his mother's aspirations and his father's history, all the while struggling with his own changing body. Not your typical piece of regional fiction, A House All Stilled is timeless, poignant and elegantly written."  --Pamela Sheridan. Published by University of Tennessee Press, 2002.

The Marriage of Anna Maye Potts
by Dewitt Henry (winner 2000)
From UT Press:  A compelling portrayal of working-class life in Philadelphia, The Marriage of Anna Maye Potts centers on a thirty-six-year-old woman whose quiet life is suddenly shaken by her fathers death and by her sisters takeover of the family home Published by University of Tennessee Press, 2000.