Mission Statement :   Another resource is available to writers and readers active in Civil War literature. The Civil War Literature Roundtable and Writing Group is an informal workshop sponsored by the Knoxville Writers’ Guild. Participants exchange information located in personal libraries, and identify other research resources that might be helpful. Writing group review of partial or completed manuscripts is offered. Markets for writers are discussed. We invite published guest writers to visit and share their query-to-publication experience with the group. Past and contemporary Civil War literature will be critiqued at each meeting. Authors and titles selected might include Bruce Catton’s Army of the Potomac trilogy, Douglas Southall Freeman’s Lee’s Lieutenants, or excerpts from Shelby Foote’s Civil War narrative. Writers and readers who come can bring a favorite book and lead the group in a short discussion of it; however a title to share is not an attendance requirement.

Our purpose is to discover and enjoy great Civil War literature.  Admirable writers’ words connect us deeply with Northern and Southern frailty, tragedy, courage, duty and devotion.  Their craftsmanship influences writers today to carry new insight into dim and forgotten history.  Bruce Catton prefaced his The Army of the Potomac:  Mr. Lincoln’s Army to explain it :

        As an attempt to understand the men who fought in the Army of the Potomac … In a sense,
        The research that went into these books was simply an effort to find out about the things
        which the veterans never discussed …Yet, in an odd way, the old veterans did leave one
        impression: the notion that as young men they had been caught up by something ever so
        much larger than themselves and that the war in which they fought did settle something for
        us–or, incredibly, started something which we ourselves have got to finish. It was not only
        the biggest experience in their own lives; it was the biggest experience in our life as a nation,
         and it deserves all of the study it is getting … Those men are all gone now and they have  left
        forever unsaid the things they might have told us, and no one can speak for them now.  Here
        is my attempt to speak about them.

The Civil War Literature Roundtable and Writing Group meets the second Wednesday of every month at 6:30 p.m. at Carpe Librum Booksellers, 5113A Kingston Pike, next door to Gourmet’s Market (Bearden). Refreshments furnished. Carpe Librum Booksellers offers all Civil War Literature Roundtable participants a 10% discount on any Civil War book order.