[338]Gathering of Tennessee Writers” at Middle Tennessee State University, Thursday, March 20

March 16, 2008

Contact: Dr. Randy Mackin, rtmackin@mtsu.edu
Tom Tozer, 615-898-2919

MURFREESBORO—Four authors who have written 16 books among them will participate in the first “Gathering of Tennessee Writers” at Middle Tennessee State University, Thursday, March 20, at 4:30 p.m., in the State Farm Lecture Hall of the Business and Aerospace Building. It is free and open to the public.
Sponsored by the MTSU Department of English, with funding made possible through the Virginia Peck Foundation, the evening will feature readings, followed by a panel discussion and a Q&A period on such topics as sense of place, the imagination, and the role of the writer in the global arena.
Guests authors/panelists will include:
-Poet Jeff Hardin, originally from Savannah, Tenn., who teaches at Columbia State Community College and whose work, Fall Sanctuary, won the Nicholas Roerich Prize;
-Tamara Baxter, short story writer from East Tennessee, who teaches at Northeast Community College in Blountville, and is the recipient of the Jesse Stuart Foundation First Author’s Prize in Fiction for Rock Big & Sing Loud, stories from southern Appalachia;
-Wyatt Prunty, Carlton Professor of English at the University of the South and founder and director of the Sewanee Writers Conference, who is the author of eight books, a Guggenheim and Johns Hopkins fellow and a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers; and
- Fiction writer William Gay, from Hohenwald, Tenn., author of four books, whose most recent work, Twilight, was hailed by Stephen King as the best book he read in 2007, which resulted in a second printing of his Southern gothic novel. Gay received a 2007 Ford Foundation U.S. Artist grant.
For more information, e-mail Dr. Randy Mackin, assistant professor of English, at rtmackin@mtsu.edu.

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