Knox Pods

Arlene Keizer, an Afro-Caribbean American poet and scholar, writes about the literature, lived experience, theory, and visual culture of the African Diaspora. The recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, she later earned an MA in English and Creative Writing (Poetry) at Stanford University and a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Black Subjects: Identity Formation in the Contemporary Narrative of Slavery (Cornell UP), and her poems and articles have appeared in African American Review, American Literature, The Kenyon Review, Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, PMLA, Poem-a-Day, TriQuarterly, and other ve...

Chris Barton is the author of the poetry chapbook A Finely Calibrated Apocalypse, published by Bottlecap Press in 2024. His writing has appeared in Epiphany, Peach Magazine, The Plenitudes, Hotel, and elsewhere. From 2016 to 2019, he co-hosted the Electric Pheasant Poetry in Knoxville, TN. 

Peter Gizzi grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His many books of poetry include Artificial Heart, Threshold Songs, In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987–2011 and Archeophonics, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. His book Fierce Elegy, published in 2023, won the T. S. Eliot Prize. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

“I...

Charles Douthat is a poet, retired litigator, and visual artist. Born and educated in California, he practiced law for many years in New Haven and began writing poems during a long mid-life illness. His first collection, Blue for Oceans, received the PEN New England Award, as the best book of poetry published in 2010 by a New England writer. Concerning Douthat’s newest book, Again, the poet Alan Shapiro writes, “This book is impossible not to love.” Douthat lives in Weston, Connecticut, with his wife, the artist Julie Leff.

Robert Frost was born in 1874 in San Francisco. When he was...

Matthew Minicucci is an award-winning author of four collections of poems including his most recent, Dual, published in 2023 by Acre Books. His poetry and essays have appeared widely in various publications, including American Poetry Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, the Kenyon Review, Poetry, and The Southern Review. His work has garnered numerous awards including the Stafford/Hall Oregon Book Award and the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, along with fellowships from organizations including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the National Parks Service, and the James Merrill House, among others. He is currently an Assistant Professor in t...

Sara Pirkle is a Southern poet, an identical twin, a breast cancer survivor, and a board game enthusiast. Her first full-length collection of poetry, The Disappearing Act, won the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry and was published by Mercer University Press in 2018. In 2019, she was nominated for Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry, and in 2022 she was shortlisted for the Oxford Poetry Prize. She also dabbles in songwriting and co-wrote a song on Remy Le Boeuf’s album, Architecture of Storms, which was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY in the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album category. Pirkle's poems have be...

Recorded live, April 14, 2025. In celebration of National Poetry Month, Denton Loving joined us for Lawson McGhee Library's monthly book discussion group, All Over the Page.

Denton Loving is the author of the poetry collections Crimes Against Birds and Tamp, recipient of the inaugural Tennessee Book Award for Poetry. He is a co-founder and editor at EastOver Press and its literary journal Cutleaf. His fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including The Kenyon Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and Ecotone. His third collection of poems, Feller, is forthcoming in 2025 from Mercer University Press.

Jennifer Horne served as the twelfth Poet Laureate of Alabama from 2017 to 2021. The author of four collections of poems, Bottle Tree, Little Wanderer, Borrowed Light, and, most recently, Letters to Little Rock, she also has written a collection of short stories, Tell the World You’re a Wildflower. She is the author of a literary biography, Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield, Author, described as “mesmerizing”  and “a beguiling tale of madness and literature” by Publisher’s Weekly. She has edited or co-edited five volumes of poetry, essays, and stories. 

Thomas Hardy was born on Ju...

Cornelius Eady is a Professor of English and John C. Hodges Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. From September 2021 to December 2022, he served as interim Director of Poets House in New York City. Eady published his first collection, Kartunes, in 1980. His second collection, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1985), was chosen as winner of the Academy of American Poets’ Lamont Poetry Award by Louise Glück, Charles Simic, and Philip Booth. He has published eight other collections, including The Gathering of My Name (1991), nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Brutal Imagination (2001), a National Book Award finalist; and Hard...

Cassandra de Alba has published several chapbooks including habitats by Horse Less Press in 2016, Ugly/Sad by Glass Poetry Press in 2020, and Cryptids, which was co-authored with Aly Pierce and published by Ginger Bug Press in 2020.  Her work has appeared in The Shallow Ends, Big Lucks, Wax Nine, The Baffler, Verse Daily, and others. 

Amy Lowell was born in 1874 in Brookline, Massachusetts. She was educated in private schools in Boston and at her home. Lowell’s first significant poetry publication came in 1910 when her poem “Fixed Idea” was published in the Atlantic Monthly. Two years later, her book A D...

Mathias Svalina is the author of seven books. His most recent, America at Play (published by Trident Press), is a collection of absurdist instructions for children's games. His poetry collection Thank You Terror was published earlier this year, and his first short story collection, Comedy, is forthcoming soon. Svalina was a founding editor of Octopus Books. He’s led writing workshops in universities, libraries, community spaces, and in prison. Since 2014, he has run a dream delivery service, traveling around the country to write and deliver dreams to subscribers. Through the Dream Delivery Service, Svalina has worked with the Denver Mu...

Jos Charles is author of the poetry collections a Year & other poems (Milkweed Editions, 2022), feeld, a Pulitzer-finalist and winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series selected by Fady Joudah (Milkweed Editions, 2018), and Safe Space (Ahsahta Press, 2016). She teaches as a part of Randolph College's low-residency MFA program and resides in Long Beach, CA.

Links:

Jos Charles' website

Bio and Poems at Poets.org

a Year & other poems and feeld at Milkweed Editions

Two poems at The Adroit Journal

Five poems at Frontier Poetry

Amish Trivedi is the author of three books. His most recent is FuturePanic (Co•Im•Press, 2021). His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. Trivedi earned an MFA from Brown University and a PhD in English and Critical Theory from Illinois State University. He's an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Delaware.

Links:

Read this episode's poems (along with several others):

"Green Boots" at The Brooklyn Rail

"Watch the Corners" at Black Sun Lit

"Number Nine" and "Dyin...

Anna Laura Reeve is the author of Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility (Belle Point Press, 2023). Winner of the Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Salamander, Terrain.org, and others. She lives and gardens near the Tennessee Overhill region, traditional land of the Eastern Cherokee.

Links:

Anna Laura Reeve's website

Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility at Belle Point Press

"Sara Moore Wagner on Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility," a book review at Still

...

Zachary Schomburg is a poet, painter, and a publisher for Octopus Books, a small independent poetry press. He earned a BA from the College of the Ozarks and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Nebraska. He is the author of six books of poems including, most recently, Fjords vol. 2, published by Black Ocean in 2021 and a novel, Mammother, published by Featherproof Books in 2017.  

Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania in 1874. She attended Radcliffe College and Johns Hopkins Medical School. In 1903, she moved to Paris where she eventually began writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Sh...

Poet, playwright, and essayist Linda Parsons is the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, The Chattahoochee Review, Baltimore Review, Shenandoah, and others. Her sixth collection, Valediction, contains poems and prose. Five of her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

Links:

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation

"Poet Linda Parsons Launches Her Latest Work, 'Valediction'" in Inside of Knoxville

"Valediction: Poems an...

Todd Davis is the author of seven books of poetry. His most recent collections are Coffin Honey and Native Species. His book Ditch Memory: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming from Michigan State University Press in August of 2024. He has won the Midwest Book Award, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Bronze and Silver Awards, the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Editors Prize, and the Bloomsburg University Book Prize. His poems appear in such journals and magazines as Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Missouri Review, North American Review, Orion, Southern Humanities Review...

Iliana Rocha earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from Western Michigan University. She is the 2019 winner of the Berkshire Prize for her book The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez (Tupelo Press). Her first book, Karankawa, won the 2014 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Best New Poets anthology, Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The Nation, Virginia Quarterly Review, Latin American Literature Today, and many others. She has won fellowships from CantoMundo and MacDowell. She serves as Poetry Co-Editor for Waxwing Literary Journal, and she is an Assistant Professor at the University of...

Harold Whit Williams is a poet and longtime guitarist for the indie rock band Cotton Mather. He's the recipient of the 2020 FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, the 2014 Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize, as well as multiple Pushcart nominations. Williams is currently cataloging the KUT Radio Collection for the University of Texas Libraries, all the while writing, recording, and performing his solo music under the moniker Daily Worker. 

Links:

Read “Early Recordings: Volume 1;” “Caught by the Indian Summer Train;” and “Participation Trophy”

Harold Whit William's website

Daily Worker at Radio Gurl...

Denton Loving is the author of Crimes Against Birds (Main Street Rag) and Tamp (Mercer University Press). He is also the editor of Seeking Its Own Level: an anthology of writings about water (MotesBooks). He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. His work has appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, The Kenyon Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Threepenny Review, and Ecotone. He is a co-founder and editor at EastOver Press and its literary journal Cutleaf.  

D.H. Lawrence was born in 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire in England, and he died in...

Hank Lazer has published thirty-four books of poetry; his latest books are P I E C E S, When the Time Comes, and field recordings   of mind   in morning. In 2014, he retired from the University of Alabama after 37 years as a professor and an administrator. He continues to teach innovative seminars on Zen Buddhism and Radical Approaches to the Arts for the University’s Blount Scholars Program. In 2015, Lazer won The Harper Lee Award, Alabama’s highest literary award for lifetime achievement.

Links

Read "Duncan Farm November Meditation" and section 8 from The New Spirit

Hank L...

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is a poet and essayist and the author of Dear Outsiders and three other poetry collections. Her poetry has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Cream City Review, Ninth Letter, and The Cortland Review. Her prose has appeared in The Rumpus, Fourteen Hills, and The Los Angeles Review. She co-founded and co-edits Josephine Quarterly and teaches creative writing at Kennesaw State University.

Links:

Read "Occupation Interview," "Tragedy Lesson," and "Souvenirs for Locals"

Jenny Sadre-Orafai's website

Three Poems at $

"I Become More Animal When I'm Grieving: A Conversation with Jenny Sadre-Oraf...

Anna Laure Reeve was born and raised in Knoxville, and she earned a Master of Arts in Literature & Poetry Writing from the University of Tennessee. Her poems have appeared in Terrain.org, Jet Fuel Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and many others. She recently won Beloit Poetry Journal’s Adrienne Rich Award, and she was a finalist for the Heartwood Poetry Prize and the Ron Rash Award in Poetry. Her book Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility was recently published by Belle Point Press. She is an assistant editor of Juke Joint, a literary magazine based in Jackson, Mi...

Pauletta Hansel is the author of nine collections of poetry, including her latest book Heartbreak Tree. Her work has been featured in Oxford American, Rattle, American Life in Poetry, and Poetry Daily, among others. Hansel was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate, and she was the 2022 Writer-in-Residence for The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine in 1892. Along with her many books of poetry, Millay published plays, a libretto called The King’s Henchman, and she wrote short stories for popular fiction magazines under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd. She was t...

Gary Metras is a retired high school English teacher and college writing instructor. His poems have appeared in America, The Common, Poetry, and many others. Metras has published eight books, including his latest called Vanishing Points. His book Marble Dust is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. Metras was the founder, editor, and letterpress printer of Adastra Press, a venture that for forty years specialized in limited editions of poetry chapbooks. In 2018, Metras was appointed the inaugural Poet Laureate of Easthampton, Massachusetts.  

Simon Perchik's poems have appeared in The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and many others. He was born in...

Sara Moore Wagner is the winner of the 2021 Cider Press Review Editors Prize for her book Swan Wife and the 2020 Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize for Hillbilly Madonna. She has published two chapbooks, Tumbling After (Red Bird Chapbooks) and Hooked Through (Five Oaks Press). She won the 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award, and she was a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist. Her work has appeared in Sixth Finch, Beloit Poetry Journal, Waxwing, The Cincinnati Review, Nimrod, Rhino, and others. Wagner's book Lady Wingshot, based on the life of Annie Oakley, won the Blue Lynx Prize...

This is the last in our four-part lunch and learn series “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the AI Galaxy” with apologies to Douglas Adams.

Self-driving cars. ChatGPT. Cancer detection. Smart speakers. Robots in manufacturing… and even in our homes. AI is seemingly everywhere these days. So what does the average human need to know about the artificial intelligence that is quickly becoming part of our everyday lives?

Knoxville entrepreneur and Lirio Chief Evangelist Patrick Hunt translates complex technical concepts into easily digestible, bite-sized nuggets of helpful information.

In this episode recorded on May 25, Patrick...

This is the third in our four-part lunch and learn series “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the AI Galaxy” with apologies to Douglas Adams.

Self-driving cars. ChatGPT. Cancer detection. Smart speakers. Robots in manufacturing… and even in our homes. AI is seemingly everywhere these days. So what does the average human need to know about the artificial intelligence that is quickly becoming part of our everyday lives?

Knoxville entrepreneur and Lirio Chief Evangelist Patrick Hunt translates complex technical concepts into easily digestible, bite-sized nuggets of helpful information.

In this episode recorded on May 18, Patrick...

This is the second in our four-part lunch and learn series “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the AI Galaxy” with apologies to Douglas Adams.

Self-driving cars. ChatGPT. Cancer detection. Smart speakers. Robots in manufacturing… and even in our homes. AI is seemingly everywhere these days. So what does the average human need to know about the artificial intelligence that is quickly becoming part of our everyday lives?

Knoxville entrepreneur and Lirio Chief Evangelist Patrick Hunt translates complex technical concepts into easily digestible, bite-sized nuggets of helpful information.

In this episode recorded on May 11, Patrick...

This is the first in our four-part lunch and learn series “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the AI Galaxy” with apologies to Douglas Adams.

Self-driving cars. ChatGPT. Cancer detection. Smart speakers. Robots in manufacturing… and even in our homes. AI is seemingly everywhere these days. So what does the average human need to know about the artificial intelligence that is quickly becoming part of our everyday lives?

Knoxville entrepreneur and Lirio Chief Evangelist Patrick Hunt translates complex technical concepts into easily digestible, bite-sized nuggets of helpful information.

In this episode recorded on May 4, Patrick...

Derek N. Otsuji is the author of the book The Kitchen of Small Hours, which won the Crab Orchard Review Poetry Series Open Competition. He was also awarded the 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His poems have appeared in The Southern Poetry Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Threepenny Review, The Bennington Review, Harpur Palate, Missouri Review Online, and many others. He is an associate professor of English at Honolulu Community College.      

George Herbert was born in 1593 in Montgomery Castle, Wales. He attended Westminster School and then Trinity College, Cambridge. He was ordained as a pries...

Recorded live, April 10, 2023. In celebration of National Poetry Month, Maurice Manning joined us for Lawson McGhee Library's monthly book discussion group, All Over the Page. Hear Manning read his poems and talk about his book Bucolics. Manning also discusses more recent work including his new podcast, The Grinnin' Possum.

Maurice Manning has published seven books of poetry. His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions, won the Yale Younger Poets Award, and his fourth, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches Transylvania University.

Links:

The Grinnin' Possum Podcas...

In this episode, Lyn Hejinian reads four untitled poems from The Book of A Thousand Eyes.

Lyn Hejinian is a poet, translator, editor, and scholar whose literary career has been long associated with Language writing. Hejinian is the author of over twenty-five volumes of poetry and critical prose, the most recent of which are Tribunal (Omnidawn Books, 2019), Positions of the Sun (Belladonna, 2019), and a revised edition of Oxota: A Short Russian Novel (Wesleyan University Press, 2019.) Fall Creek, her latest long poem, is forthcoming from Litmus Press. A book of critical essays titled Allegorical Moments: Call to the...

Jim Minick is the author of two books of poetry, Her Secret Song and Burning Heaven. In addition, he’s published: Finding a Clear Path, a collection of essays; The Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family, which won the Southern Independent Booksellers Association’s award for nonfiction; and Fire Is Your Water, a novel that won the Appalachian Book of the Year Award. Minick’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Tampa Review, Shenandoah, Orion, Oxford American, and The Sun. His latest nonfiction book, Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas, is forthcoming next month, and his latest poetr...

Monica Mody was born in Ranchi, India. She holds a PhD in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including Ordinary Annals, and two full-length books, Kala Pani, a cross-genre work, and Bright Parallel, which is forthcoming from Copper Coin. Her writing has won awards including the Sparks Prize Fellowship, the Zora Neale Hurston Award, and a Toto Award for Creative Writing. Her work has been published in Poetry International, Indian Quarterly, Almost Island, Dusie, The Fabulist...

Erin Elizabeth Smith is the Executive Director for Sundress Publications and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. Her third full-length poetry collection, Down, was released in 2020 by Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Guernica, Ecotone, Mid-American, Tupelo Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, and Willow Springs, among others. She earned her PhD in Creative Writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and is now a Distinguished Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Tennessee. She is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

...

Bernard Clay was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and he spent most of his childhood and high school years there. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Kentucky, and he is a member of the Affrilachian Poets collective. His work has been published in Appalachian Heritage, The Limestone Review, Blackbone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets, and various other journals and anthologies. His book English Lit was published by Old Cove/Swallow Press in 2021. He lives on a farm in eastern Kentucky with his wife Lauren Kallmeyer, an herbalist who serves as the director of Kentucky Heartwood's...

Just in time for Halloween! GennaRose Nethercott reads two spooky entries from the imagined bestiary 50 Beasts to Break Your Heart.

GennaRose Nethercott is a writer and folklorist. Her work has appeared in The American Scholar, Bomb Magazine, Pank, The Literary Review, and others. Her first book, The Lumberjack’s Dove, was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series, and her debut novel—the modern fairytale Thistlefoot—was published last month. She tours nationally and internationally performing strange tales (sometimes with puppets in tow) and composing poems-to-order on an antique typewriter with her tea...

Juan R. Palomo is the author of Al Norte (Alabrava Press 2021). Born in Grafton, North Dakota to migrant-worker parents, Palomo grew up in South Texas and several midwestern states. He received a bachelor’s degree in art education from Texas State University and a master’s in journalism and public affairs from American University. He was a reporter, columnist, and editorial writer for The Houston Post; he covered religion for the Austin American-Statesman; and he wrote a column for USA TODAY. His poems have appeared in The Acentos Review, The Sonora Review, The Account, and others.

Links:

Andrea Carter Brown was born in Paterson, New Jersey. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Mississippi Review, and many others. She is the author of September 12, which recently won the 2022 IPPY Silver Medal in Poetry from the Independent Publishers Group. Her other titles include the The Disheveled Bed, Domestic Karma, and Brook & Rainbow. Her poems have won the Five Points James Dickey Prize, the River Styx International Poetry Prize, and the PSA Gustav Davidson Memorial Prize. She was a founding editor of the poetry journal Barrow Street, and, since 2017, she has been...

Linda Parsons holds a BA and an MA in English from the University of Tennessee. She's the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. Parsons has published poems in The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, The Chattahoochee Review, Southern Poetry Review, Baltimore Review, and Shenandoah, among others. Her fifth poetry collection is Candescent, which was published by Iris Press in 2019. She has received grants from the Tennessee Arts Commission, the Knoxville Arts Council, was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame in 2011, and she’s wo...

Matthew Wimberley grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He’s the author of Daniel Boone's Window and All the Great Territories. Wimberley has won the Crab Orchard Poetry Series First Book Award, the Weatherford Award, the William Matthews Prize, and his work was chosen for the 2016 Best New Poets Anthology. He's an Assistant Professor of English at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, North Carolina.  

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was born in New York City. He's best known as the author of novels like Moby Dick and White-Jacket, along with short fiction including “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno.”...

Amelia Martens is the author of four chapbooks and the full-length collection The Spoons in the Grass are There to Dig a Moat. Her work has appeared in The Indianapolis Review, Cream City Review, Diode, Southern Humanities Review, Plume, Southern Indiana Review, and many others. She serves as the Associate Literary Editor for Exit 7: A Journal of Literature and Art and she co-curates the Rivertown Reading Series in Paducah, Kentucky.

Marianne Moore (1887-1972) was born near St. Louis, Missouri, raised in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and she graduated from Bryn Mawr College. Early on, she worked as a schoolteacher...

Ashley M. Jones is Alabama's first African American Poet Laureate, and she's also the youngest. Her books are Magic City Gospel, dark // thing, and REPARATIONS NOW! She teaches creative writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and also at the Low Residency MFA program at Converse University.

Phillis Wheatley Peters was abducted in West Africa and brought to Boston where she was sold as a slave when she was around seven year old. Her first and only book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in 1773. She was in poor health for most of...

Joyelle McSweeney is the author of ten books of poetry, stories, novels, essays, translations, and plays. She has won The Pushcart Prize, The Fence Modern Poets Series Award, and The Leslie Scalapino Prize for Innovative Women Performance Artists. With Carmen Maria Machado, she was the guest editor of Best American Experimental Writing 2020. With Johannes Göransson, she co-edits the international press Action Books and teaches at the University of Notre Dame.

Links:

Read today’s poem at BOMB: “Two Poems by Joyelle McSweeney”

Joyelle McSweeney’s Website

Bio and Poems at the Poetr...

Janet McAdams is the author of the novel Red Weather and the poetry collections Feral and The Island of Lost Luggage, which won an American Book Award. Her chapbook of prose poems Seven Boxes for the Country After won the Wick Chapbook competition and was published in 2016. She teaches at Kenyon College, where she is the Robert P. Hubbard Chair in Poetry.

Links:

Read "Thanatoptic"

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation

"Lie" at Poem-a-Day

Interview at Shenandoah’s website

"______and the Elders” at Southern Humanities Review

Jesse Graves is a Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at East Tennessee State University. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Southern Poetry Review, and other literary magazines and anthologies. He has published four books of poetry and his book Said-Songs: Essays on Poetry and Place is forthcoming from Mercer University Press in 2022. Graves received his PhD in English from the University of Tennessee and his MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. He has won the Book of the Year in Poetry Award from the Appalachian Writers’ Association and the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Aw...

Bruce Alford’s work has appeared in the African American Review, Imagination & Place Press, The Comstock Review, and elsewhere. He teaches poetry at Louisiana State University. Before working in academia, he was an inner-city missionary and journalist.

Links:

Read "from Alford's Devotional"

Bruce Alford’s website

Poems at SickLit 

“Perfect” at Storm Cellar

Review of Terminal Switching at Alabama Writers Forum

Robert Penn Warren is primarily known as the author of the great American novel All the King’s Men, but he’s also a well-respected poet, and was the USA’s first Poet Laureate. Though he grew up in Guthrie, KY, he crossed the state line to go to high school in Clarksville, TN. In 1921, he began his studies at Vanderbilt University and joined a group of poets who called themselves the Fugitives. He went on to publish over 40 books, and he is the only writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry.

Links:

Read "Vision"...

Chris Tonelli is a founding editor of the independent poetry press Birds, LLC; co-director of the NC Book Festival; and author of five chapbooks and two full-length collections of poetry, most recently Whatever Stasis (Barrelhouse Books, 2018). He works in the Libraries at NC State and is the co-owner of So & So Books in downtown Raleigh, where he lives with his wife, Allison, and two kids, Miles and Vera.

Other Links:

Read "Wide Bird" and "Pluto" by Chris Tonelli

Bio and links at Birds, LLC

Interview at NaPoWriMo.net

from “A Test of Company” at poets

Adelaide Crapsey is best known as the inventor of the American cinquain. She was born in 1878 in Brooklyn, NY, and she grew up in Rochester. In 1903, she began to show symptoms of tuberculosis which would eventually take her life in 1914. In spite of her illness, Crapsey attended the American Academy’s School of Classical Study in Rome, and then eventually returned to the U.S. to teach at Smith College. Shortly after her death, her first book of poems was published. It was called simply Verse.

Links:

Read "Amaze" and "Niagra" by Adelaide Crapsey

...

Amy Wright is the author of three books of poetry and six chapbooks. Wright’s essays have appeared in The Georgia Review, Fourth Genre, Ninth Letter, Brevity, and elsewhere. She has been awarded two Peter Taylor Fellowships to the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop, an Individual Artist Grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission, and a fellowship to Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her nonfiction debut, Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round, is forthcoming in 2021 from Sarabande Books. She teaches at Austin Peay State University. 

"Habitat" is used with permission by the author.

Links:

Read "Habitat" b...

Prince Bush is an MFA student at Western Kentucky University. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including The Cincinnati Review, Cream City Review, Poet Lore, Pleiades, Puerto del Sol, and others. He was a 2019 Fellow at Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets and an Erastus Milo Cravath Presidential Scholar at Fisk University. 

"Lithium" first appeared in Pleiades; "On Truth" first appeared in Sporklet. Both poems are used with permission by the author.

Links:

Read "Lithium" and "On Truth" by Prince Bush

Prince Bush’s Website

“Middle of Protesting” at Rattle<...

David Baker is the author and editor of 18 books, including 12 books of poetry. His most recent book is Swift: New and Selected Poems, published by W. W. Norton.  Baker teaches at Denison University and he frequently serves on the faculty of the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College. He is the Poetry Editor of The Kenyon Review.  

"Swift" is used with permission by the author.

Links:

Read "Swift" by David Baker

David Baker’s Website

"Poetry That Bears Witness to a Changing Natural World,” a review of Swift: New and Se...

Tyler Mills’ poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Guardian, The New Republic, and others. She’s published two books and has two chapbooks forthcoming. Mills teaches for Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute and she edits The Account, an online literary magazine. Look for Tyler Mills’ books in our online catalog or call us at the Reference Desk at Lawson McGhee Library.

Today's poem, "Oak," appeared in the January 2021 issue of Poetry Magazine. You can read the poem on the Poetry Foundation's website or in the links below.

Links:

Read "Oak"...

Cintia Santana’s work has appeared in the Best New Poets 2020 anthology, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, and many other literary journals. She was awarded fellowships from CantoMundo, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She teaches literary translation, as well as poetry and fiction workshops in Spanish, at Stanford University.

Links:

Read "Ode to the J" and "[F]"

Cintia Santana’s Website 

Interview at The Kenyon Review

Poems at Kenyon Review Online 

“Kintsugi” at Harvard Review Online

Poems at Beloit Poetry J...

Maurice Manning has published seven books of poetry. His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions, won the Yale Younger Poets Award, and his fourth, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.  Be sure to look for books by Manning in our online catalog.

Links:

Read "One View of Time" by Maurice Manning

Bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation

Article in Garden & Gun

Interview at Plume

Manning Reading at the Sewanee Writer's Conference (Video)

Music:

"Just A Memory Now (Ins...

Watch for an upcoming poetry podcast produced by Knox County Public Library. It’s called The Beat.

David Orr, a poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review, describes a common idea that some people have about poetry—that understanding it "is like solving a calculus problem while being zapped with a cattle prod." Or maybe worse, we hear people give (again quoting David Orr) "testimonials announcing poetry’s ability to derange the senses, make us lose ourselves in rapture, dance naked under the full moon, and so forth." We’ll try to avoid all of that. <...

Dr. Melanie Mayes shares the alarm and urgency of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells in this episode of Books Sandwiched In. She explains how the author brings stark realities of our future climate into terrifying focus—the fragility of our situation and the myriad ways that our ability to survive is endangered by the climate we are creating.

Wallace-Wells is a national fellow at the New America foundation and a columnist and deputy editor at New York magazine. He was previously the deputy editor of The Paris Review.

Mayes is a sci...

Dr. Mark McGrail discusses Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy for Books Sandwiched In. Macy reveals the relentless physical, structural and social forces behind the opioid crisis and how to work for the transformational change required to overcome them.

Music credit: "Three Stories" by Blue Dot Sessions, CC BY-NC 4.0

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In this podcast episode, Dave Wells summarizes the key points in Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt. Bestselling author Arthur C. Brooks, president of American Enterprise Institute, shows that abuse and outrage are not the right formula for lasting success. Brooks offers a better way to lead based on bridging divides and mending relationships.

Wells is a Tennessee state coordinator for Better Angels, a national civic  movement to reduce political polarization in the United States by bringing liberals and conservatives together to understand each other beyond stereotypes, teaching practical skil...

In American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment, Shane Bauer weaves a deep reckoning of his experience as a prison guard together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America.

Julie Gautreau, an attorney with the Knox County Public Defenders Community Law Office, adds local context to the issues in this discussion for Books Sandwiched In. "American Prison exposes all the moving parts of our industrialized system of incarceration: its roots in slavery, its disproportionate exploitation of minorities and the poor, the complacency of the justice system and the cynicism of th...

Dr. Maria Fernanda Campa considers the facts revealed in Saudi America: The Truth about Fracking and How It's Changing the World by Bethany McLean.

"In addition to easy access to investment capital, the oil and gas industry enjoys the biggest subsidies of any energy sector—yes, more than renewables," Campa said. "Further, the oil and gas industry is exempted from environmental policies, such as the Clean Water Act, to facilitate and support oil and gas sector production growth rate. However, even with all these economic and political advantages, it is quite interesting to read that the fracking in...

Dr. Kelsey Ellis drives home the point of The Cure for Catastrophe: How We Can Stop Manufacturing Natural Disasters by Robert Muir-Wood in her work on individual behavior responses to tornado warnings.

In The Cure for Catastrophe, global risk expert Robert Muir-Wood argues that our natural disasters are in fact human ones. Recognizing how disasters are manufactured gives us the power to act. Ellis, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Tennessee, is a hazard climatologist focusing on weather and climate hazards with a holistic approach in an attempt to lessen human risk. Duration: 00:28:10

Dr. Zach McKenney appreciates Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein, calling it "a harrowing account of the human consequences of plant shutdowns and the rippling effects that they have throughout affected communities."

In Janesville, Wisconsin, the nation’s oldest operating General Motors assembly plant shut down in the midst of the Great Recession. With intelligence, sympathy, and insight into what connects and divides people in an era of economic upheaval, Goldstein shows why it’s so hard in the twenty-first century to recreate a healthy, prosperous working class.

"Janesville is not so much an econ...

Does every vote count? Attorneys Julie Gautreau and Tammy Kaousias grapple with the implications of data and laws that challenge voter access and representation. This podcast episode is excerpted from their remarks during the Democracy and the Informed Citizen Symposium on September 28, 2018, sponsored by Humanities Tennessee.

Gautreau is a lawyer practicing with the Knox County Public Defender's Community Law Office. As an outgrowth of her work in indigent criminal defense, she has become involved with several organizations advocating for the rights of incarcerated people.

Kaousias was appointed to the Knox County Election Commission as an E...

Dr. Rocio Huet focuses on what's most important in her assessment of Natural Causes: an epidemic of wellness, the certainty of dying, and killing ourselves to live longer by Barbara Ehrenreich.

Ehrenreich describes how we over-prepare and worry too much about what is inevitable. We may buy expensive anti-aging products or cosmetic surgery, get preventive screenings and eat more kale, or throw ourselves into meditation and spirituality. But all these things offer only the illusion of control. Ehrenreich decides to focus on how to live well, even joyously, while accepting mortality.

This podcast is condensed fro...

Cliff Rodgers, Knox County Administrator of Elections, explains what happened when the county website was attacked during the May 2018 election, and what his employees do to protect the voting machines from tampering. This episode is excerpted from Rodgers' remarks (September 28, 2018) during the Democracy and the Informed Citizen Symposium sponsored by Humanities Tennessee.

Music credit: "Three Stories" by Blue Dot Sessions, CC BY-NC 4.0

Dr. Nick Geidner discusses Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future by Joi Ito and Jeff Howe, who lay out the unprecedented changes in a world that is more complex and volatile today than at any other time in our history.

The mind-blowing transformation in our modern existence to faster, cheaper, and smaller—combined with the immediate connectivity of billions of strangers—has created an unpredictable new world across business and culture, from the public sphere to our most private moments. The authors present nine organizing principles for navigating and surviving this tumultuous period in all facets of o...

If you prefer a battle hymn to an elegy, listen to historian Elizabeth Catte provide the context of her book What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia. Catte explains how Appalachia is not what you may have thought it was, and Appalachia's future doesn't have to be one of depopulation and the desperation of those left behind:

Marshall Stair considers zoning and housing policy in his overview of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein.

"As the City of Knoxville turns its attention to improving the zoning code, I thought it was important for the community to take an historical look at some of the negative consequences of government regulations, specifically attempts to increase segregation," Stair said. "I hope reading and discussing The Color of Law will give us a better understanding of these harmful policies as we modify our code to increase affordability and...

Presidential historian and Tennessean Jon Meacham discussed his book The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels with Senator Lamar Alexander on July 8 in an event sponsored by Friends of the Knox County Public Library and Union Ave Books.

In The Soul of America, Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics by looking back at critical times in our country’s history when hope overcame division. He tells us that what Abraham Lincoln called the­ “better angels of our nature” have found a way to prevail again and again during dark times througho...

Dr. Matt Harris discusses A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer and More Efficient Tax System by T. R. Reid. "Just about every economist and political figure in America agrees these days that our tax code has to be reformed," the author says. Believing we have reached a breaking point, Reid travels around the globe visiting countries like Estonia, New Zealand and United Kingdom to investigate how others tax their residents. Ultimately, he affirms his belief that the United States is capable of a radical reform for a "fairer, simpler and more efficient" tax system.

Claudia Caballero, Executive Director of Centro Hispano de East Tennessee, responds to the book The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of An American Life by Lauren Markham. 

Under mortal threat by the MS-13 gang in rural El Salvador after the civil war, identical twins Ernesto and Raul fled for their lives in 2013. They met the author as students at Oakland International High School where she worked. Dozens of other students also told her their stories of how and why they came to the United States as unaccompanied, undocumented minors. “I thought I knew the...

Dr. John Nolt introduces the themes of his book A Land Imperiled: The Declining Health of the Southern Appalachian Bioregion.

The environment of Southern Appalachia is a collection of complex, interrelated systems that needs care and protection to function in full health. A Land Imperiled is a symptom-by-symptom look at several ecological issues threatening the health of the southern high country, providing examples of how the damage can be reversed to sustain ourselves and our region's natural legacy.

Nolt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, and the author of seven books...

In the summer of 1920, 35 states had ratified the 19th Amendment, 12 had rejected it or refused to vote, and one last state was needed or the amendment might die. After a seven-decade crusade, it all came down to Tennessee; it was the moment of truth for the suffragists, and also for their antagonists, the "Antis." The political freedom of half of the nation was at stake. In The Woman's Hour, Elaine Weiss tells the story of the nail-biting climax of one of the greatest political battles in American history—the fight to ratify the constitutional amendment that gave women the vo...

Is the problem of fake news a new one? Is it the fault of the media, or are we all guilty? In our Truth and Consequences Symposium, panelists from the University of Tennessee's College of Communication and Information look at the history of fake news, the impact of corporate news media consolidation, and the consumption of news through social media. The panelists are Dr. Catherine Luther, Dr. Amber Roessner, and Dr. Nick Geidner.

Dr. Oleg Manaev evaluates the book The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladmir Putin by Masha Gessen in this podcast. I'm really impressed by how Gessen's book flows on multiple tracks, tracing Putin's life back to boyhood, the story of his hometown of St. Petersburg, his KGB experience, and finally the last quarter-century of Russian history," Manaev said. "Even though many interpretations remain controversial, this book helps to understand modern Russia."

Manaev is Global Security Fellow at the University of Tennessee Institute for Nuclear Security.

Dr. Victor Erik Ray discusses the categories of racist ideas explained in Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi. “Stamped from the Beginning is a transformational piece of historical scholarship," Ray said. “This work provides a critical and necessary backdrop for understanding the stunning staying power of racism and the current predicaments surrounding race relations in the United States. This book is an instant classic and fast becoming a go-to text for a deeper understanding of racism.”

Ray is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxvi...

Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City details the crisis in affordable urban housing experienced here in Knoxville. Discussing the problem are four members of the Knoxville Homeless Coalition: Gabe Cline-Snell, Volunteer Ministry Center's Chief Clinical Services Officer; Misty Goodwin, Knoxville-Knox County Community Action Committee's Homeward Bound Program; Bruce Spangler, Chief Executive Officer of Volunteer Ministry Center; Lisa Higginbotham, Knoxville Homeless Management Information System data analyst.

Why do some monuments provoke such powerful emotions while others are forgettable? "Monumental Issues: Thinking about Monuments in Public Spaces" is a presentation by Dr. Jeffrey H. Jackson with additional material by Dr. Ellen K. Daugherty. It provides a broader context for debates about historical monuments and the role these markers play in local communities today. Looking at monuments as both public history and public art helps us understand how we make sense of our past and what role we want our past to play in our common future.

Jackson is the J.J. McComb Professor of...

Dr. Diane Kelly is the Director of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She has numerous research publications and awards, including the Karen Spärck-Jones Award from the British Computer Society Information Retrieval Specialist Group and the Association for Information Science and Technology Research Award. For the Knox County Public Library’s Truth and Consequences Symposium on July 28, 2017, Dr. Kelly's presentation, "How We Interact with the Internet, and How it Interacts with Us," explains what search engines do and the research findings about how they influence our behavior.

New York Times best-selling author and journalist Wendell Potter has covered Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court. After a long career in health insurance public relations, he had a crisis of conscience and blew the whistle on a corrupt industry in his book Deadly Spin. His latest book is Nation on the Take. For the Knox County Public Library’s Truth and Consequences Symposium on July 28, 2017, Potter’s presentation is entitled “Fake News, Profit-driven Media, and Confirmation Bias.”

Stephanie Welch found bad news and good news in the book Toward the Healthy City: People, Places, and the Politics of Urban Planning by Jason Corburn. With “healthy city planning” based on participatory action, coalition building, and ongoing monitoring, Corburn hopes to address health disparities caused by the built environment and the policies that shape it. Welch was Community Development and Planning Director of the Knox County Health Department (Recorded September 19, 2012).

Jack Neely is Executive Director of the Knoxville History Project and one of Knoxville’s most popular writers. As part of the library's Truth and Consequences Symposium, he reviews the development of newspaper journalism in Knoxville and looks back at major news events in East Tennessee. Sponsored by the Jane L. Pettway Foundation and the Knox County Public Library Foundation. 

"How intelligent are non-human animals? Do they have self-awareness? Do they have deep relationships with one another in ways that echo our own relationships? These kinds of questions have been asked by humans for centuries," says Dr. Todd Freeberg, Professor of Psychology and adjunct scholar in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee. He reviews Beyond Words: How Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina.

John Rawls warns against a political life dominated by dogmatic fanaticism or apathetic resignation. The University of Tennessee Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy and the Knox County Public Library invite you to participate in a study of his book, Justice as Fairness: A restatement. Each podcast episode is in a discussion format facilitated by a University of Tennessee faculty member with expertise on Rawls's work. No previous knowledge of Rawls's work is expected.

This is part five, The Question of Stability, with Dr. David Reidy of the Department of Philosophy (recorded February 22, 2010).

John Rawls warns against a political life dominated by dogmatic fanaticism or apathetic resignation. The University of Tennessee Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy and the Knox County Public Library invite you to participate in a study of his book, Justice as Fairness: A restatement. Each podcast episode is in a discussion format facilitated by a University of Tennessee faculty member with expertise on Rawls's work. No previous knowledge of Rawls's work is expected.

This is part four, Institutions of a Just Basic Structure, with Matt Deaton of the Department of Philosophy (recorded February 15, 2010).

John Rawls warns against a political life dominated by dogmatic fanaticism or apathetic resignation. The University of Tennessee Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy and the Knox County Public Library invite you to participate in a study of his book, Justice as Fairness: A restatement. Each podcast episode is in a discussion format facilitated by a University of Tennessee faculty member with expertise on Rawls's work. No previous knowledge of Rawls's work is expected.

This is part three, The Argument from the Original Position, with Dr. Iris Goodwin of the College of Law (recorded February 8, 2010).

John Rawls warns against a political life dominated by dogmatic fanaticism or apathetic resignation. The University of Tennessee Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy and the Knox County Public Library invite you to participate in a study of his book, Justice as Fairness: A restatement. Each podcast episode is in a discussion format facilitated by a University of Tennessee faculty member with expertise on Rawls's work. No previous knowledge of Rawls's work is expected.

This is part two, Principles of Justice, with Dr. Otis Stephens of the College of Law (recorded February 1, 2010).

John Rawls warns against a political life dominated by dogmatic fanaticism or apathetic resignation. The University of Tennessee Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy and the Knox County Public Library invite you to participate in a study of his book, Justice as Fairness: A restatement. Each podcast episode is in a discussion format facilitated by a University of Tennessee faculty member with expertise on Rawls's work. No previous knowledge of Rawls's work is expected.

This is part one, Fundamental Ideas, with Professor Joseph Cook of the College of Law (recorded January 25, 2010).

Kim Trent, Executive Director of Knox Heritage, surveys the trends of preservation and how they're playing out in Knoxville in this discussion of Past and Future City: How Historic Preservation is Reviving America’s Communities by Stephanie Meeks and Kevin C. Murphy.

“Stephanie Meeks makes a compelling case for creating great cities through historic preservation and she shares strategies that can guide us along the way,” Trent said.  “She also addresses the challenges we all face in preservation since the work touches on so many aspects of our communities: history, economics, urban planning, diversity, transportation, affordable housing, sustainabili...

Dr. Rebecca Klenk shares her appreciation of Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay. "Provocative, gut wrenching and hilarious, Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist is a strikingly insightful collection of essays on life and popular culture for our times," Klenk said. "Engaging everything from The Hunger Games to rape culture to competitive scrabble to her favorite color (pink) to trigger warnings with verve and razor-sharp wit, Gay blends intimate personal narrative and astute cultural analysis into a powerful statement on the relevance of feminism."

Friends of the Knox County Public Library, Union Ave Books, the Knox County Public Library, and the East Tennessee Historical Society present an evening with award-winning author Nathaniel Philbrick discussing his book Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution. (Recorded May 16, 2017. The audio quality improves about three minutes into this recording.)

Dr. Michelle Commander and panelists Tatia Harris, Andrew Swafford, and Renee Kesler respond to the neo-slave narrative Kindred by science fiction writer Octavia Butler. 

Kindred follows Dana Franklin, a Black woman of 1970s California, who is transported back in time to the plantation of her ancestors, a white slaveowner and the freeborn woman he buys. Dana struggles to survive the brutality and understand all of her kindred and the complexities of the communities they inhabit. Published in 1979, Kindred is taught in high school and college classes.

Sam Venable shares anecdotes and some personal reactions to Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance in this episode of the Books Sandwiched In podcast (edited from his January 25 remarks). This compelling memoir looks at the struggles, attitudes and dysfunction in an economically declining area of America. Vance was born in rural eastern Kentucky, but grew up largely in Rust Belt Ohio. Although his grandparents succeeded in generational upward mobility—they moved north for manufacturing jobs that are now disappearing—the family continued to struggle in the middle class with the s...

Dr. Stuart Brotman discusses Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World by Timothy Garton Ash in this episode of Books Sandwiched In. Ash offers a deeper understanding of issues such as corporate control of communication, influence of money, role of whistle blowers, possible threats to national security, and more.

 "Today, there is a great power struggle over the shape, terms and limits of global freedom of expression that is raging around us—both inside the smartphones in our pockets and inside our heads," Brotman said. Dr. Brotman is Distinguished Endowed Professor in the School of Journalism and...

Jackie Clay and Ronni Chandler discuss the education reforms proposed in the book Rac(e)ing to Class: Confronting Race and Poverty in Schools and Classrooms by H. Richard Milner. "Both poverty and race are impacting the educational experiences of our most vulnerable and marginalized students who depend on school for so much more than academic success," Chandler said. Clay is an instructor with the University of Tennessee College of Social Work, and Chandler works with Project GRAD Knoxville.

Tammy Kaousias discusses the book Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman, which details the struggle and increasingly intense backlash against the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Kaousias says “this struggle is going on right now, and each one of us is a living participant and creator of this historical struggle.” Kaousias was appointed to the Knox County Election Commission as an Election Commissioner in the 2013–2015 term. Her legal work includes the area of restoration of rights for those with criminal records and advising candidates on qualification issues.

When Jimmy Hoffa said to Frank Sheeran "I heard you paint houses," they both understood the code—to paint a house is to kill a man. Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett gives his take on the book "I Heard You Paint Houses": Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran and the Inside Story of the Mafia, the Teamsters, and the Last Ride of Jimmy Hoffa by Charles Brandt (recorded October 19, 2016). This compelling history presents Sheeran's deathbed confession as a ruthless man who was not just a high official of the Teamsters Union, but also a Mafia assassin. 

Mayor Burchett has serv...

Dr. Annette Mendola responds to Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande in this podcast of a Books Sandwiched In program (recorded June 22, 2016).

Dr. Mendola comments, "The American healthcare system has ardently pursued heroic, lifesaving technologies. It has been less invested in helping people preserve the things that matter most to them in life, such as mobility, relationships, meaningful activity, and being at home. Gawande encourages us to question the way medicine is produced and consumed, and to ask ourselves what we really want from healthcare."

Dr. Mendola’s experience as...