Poet Jeff Daniel Marion will be Jack E. Reese Writer in Residence at the University of Tennessee Libraries for the 2010-2011 academic year. As Writer in Residence, Marion will organize the Writers in the Library series of readings in the John C. Hodges Library.
“I am thrilled that Jeff Daniel Marion will represent the UT Libraries at our literary events this year,” said Dean of Libraries Barbara Dewey. “We are offering UT students the opportunity to interact with a distinguished poet and eloquent Tennessee voice. Furthermore, everyone is invited to our Writers in the Libraries series to meet Jeff Daniel Marion and to hear some of our exceptionally talented regional authors read from their works.”
Marion grew up in Rogersville, Tennessee, and now lives in Knoxville. From 1969 until his retirement in 2002, he taught creative writing at Carson-Newman College, where he was poet-in-residence, director of the Appalachian Center, and editor of Mossy Creek Reader.
Marion has published eight collections of poetry, and his poems have appeared in over 75 journals and anthologies. Ebbing & Flowing Springs: New and Selected Poems and Prose, 1976-2001 was the winner of the 2003 Independent Publishers Award in Poetry and was named Appalachian Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association, as well as being one of three finalists for the Benjamin Franklin Award. His latest collection, Father, was awarded the 2009 Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize.
Other recognitions include the first Literary Fellowship awarded by the Tennessee Arts Commission in 1978, the Appalachian Writers Association’s Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature Award in 2002, and an Educational Service to Appalachia Award from Carson-Newman College in 2005. He has served as poet-in-the-schools in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia, was twice poet-in-residence for the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Humanities, and in 1998 was Copenhaver Scholar in Residence at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia.
Marion founded The Small Farm, one of the region’s most distinguished poetry journals, which he edited from 1975 to 1980. For twenty years he operated Mill Springs Press, producing chapbooks and broadsides from handset type on a Vandercook proof press.
As Writer in Residence, Marion will have access to the resources of the UT Libraries and a quiet retreat in the Hodges Library to work on his current projects, new collections of poems and memoir essays. His appointment begins August 1, 2010.
The position of Writer in Residence was established in 1998 and in 2005 was named in honor of the late Jack Reese, a former chancellor of the university, longtime UT English professor, and avid support of the UT Libraries and the local writing community.
For further information contact Jo Anne Deeken, head of technical services and digital access at the UT Libraries at 865-974-6913 or jdeeken@utk.edu.
The UT Libraries welcomes three new librarians: Diversity Librarian Residents Rabia Gibbs and Kynita Stringer-Stanback and our new Archivist, Alesha Shumar.
Stringer-Stanback is a 2009 graduate in library science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has worked in academic and public libraries, in both technical and public services. A fluent Spanish speaker, she has taught and studied in Latin America. She arrived in Knoxville with numerous ideas for outreach to underserved communities. 
Our new Archivist, Alesha Shumar, comes to UT from her position as Helen Clay Frick Foundation Archivist at the University of Pittsburgh. The Frick Foundation Archives contains materials relating to coal and steel magnate Henry Clay Frick, whose fortune funded the Frick Art Museum in Pittsburgh and New York’s famous Frick Collection of art. Shumar earned a masters of library and information science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2008. At UT she will acquire, preserve, and provide research access to the archives that document the history and scholarship of the university.
The UT Libraries’ Special Collections have relocated to the Hodges Library and will reopen on Monday, August 3. Special Collections will be open to the campus community and the general public in Room 121, John C. Hodges Main Library, 1015 Volunteer Blvd., 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
