Writers in the Library

Posted on April 12, 2013

The Libraries and the Creative Writing Program will sponsor two more Writers in the Library readings this semester. Mark your calendars.

On Monday, April 15, Writers in the Library will host poets Marilyn Kallet and Keith Norris, 7:00 p.m. in the Hodges Library auditorium. Kallet is director of UT’s Creative Writing Program, and Norris, a graduate of the Creative Writing Program, is on the English faculty at Pellissippi State Community College. Kallet will read from her recently published book, The Love That Moves Me. Norris will read from “Backwoods Inferno,” his hilarious backwoods version of Dante’s journey through Hell. The public is invited and is guaranteed to be entertained.

Writers in the Library on Monday, April 22, will feature readings by student winners of UT’s Graduate Writing Prizes. Each year, students in the Creative Writing Program compete for the John C. Hodges Graduate Writing Prizes in fiction and poetry. The Graduate Writing Prizes are made possible by the English department through the John C. Hodges Better English Fund, endowed by the long-time UT English professor and author of the Harbrace College Handbook, for whom the Hodges Library also is named. The public is invited to hear the talented Creative Writing Program candidates.
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Writers in the Library is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Libraries and the UT Creative Writing Program in association with the John C. Hodges Better English Fund. For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, Director, UT Creative Writing Program (mkallet@utk.edu), or Christopher Hebert, Writer-in-Residence, UT Libraries (chebert3@utk.edu).

Writers in the Library Event Brings Together Renowned Poets

Posted on April 5, 2013

***Update: Sadly, Arthur Smith will have to miss this event due to family concerns.***

Two UT faculty members will read at UT’s Writers in the Library and launch their new books on April 15th at 7 p.m. in Hodges Library Auditorium. Dr. Marilyn Kallet, director of UT’s Creative Writing Program, and Arthur Smith, professor of English, are established poets and major American authors.

The reading is historic in that both Smith and Kallet have new books out at the same time and will be doing a reading together. In their most recent works, they incorporate a variety of poems about love, life and loss through their crisp, clean writing styles and expressive personalities.

Kallet and Smith will read from their recently published books: The Love That Moves Me and The Fortunate Era, respectively.

“This is a rare and special treat,” Chris Hebert, the Jack E. Reese Writer in Residence at the UT Libraries said. “Any new book is a memorable occasion, but to have two new books simultaneously — one from each of the beloved poets on our faculty — is a cause for celebration!”

Kallet and Smith have won prestigious awards for their poetry. Smith has received two Pushcart Prizes and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, while Kallet has received the Tennessee Arts Commission Literary Fellowship in Poetry, written 16 books and performed internationally.
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Library Guru to Speak: “It’s Time to Think BIGGER”

Posted on April 2, 2013

Library guru/blogger/technology expert Carl Grant will speak at the UT Libraries on the challenges facing academic libraries. His theme at the talk on Monday, April 8, at 10:00 a.m. in the Hodges Library auditorium will be “Budgets, staffing and collections getting smaller? It’s time to think BIGGER.” The campus community and the public are invited.

Grant has a unique perspective on university libraries, having held positions in academic librarianship as well as senior executive positions in a number of library-automation companies. His articles in the library literature and on his blog (thoughts.care-affiliates.com) address the intersection of new technologies and the values inherent in librarianship. He routinely publishes prescriptions for updating the librarian’s role in the academy.

Grant was recently named to the newly created position of Associate Dean for Knowledge Services and Chief Technology Officer at the University of Oklahoma Libraries, Norman. Prior to that appointment, he was both an independent consultant in library and information science and the Executive Advisor to the Dean of Libraries at Virginia Tech Libraries. He was Chief Librarian of the Ex Libris Group during 2011 and President of Ex Libris North America from July 2008 through 2010. He served on the board of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), where he held offices as treasurer and chair. Under his leadership, NISO underwent a transformation that resulted in a revitalized library standards organization. In recognition of his contribution to the library industry, Library Journal named Grant an industry notable.

Adam Prince at Writers in the Library, April 8

Posted on March 15, 2013

Adam Prince will read at UT’s Writers in the Library, Monday, April 8th at 7 p.m. in the John C. Hodges Library auditorium. The reading is free and open to the public.

Adam Prince’s first book, a short story collection called The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men, is about how men attempt to negotiate between their baroque imaginations and the realities of their actual lives. This book is a dark, comic, nuanced, and sexed-up collection of stories that might be offensive if it didn’t feel so true. It has been called “dangerous as a knife fight” by UT’s own Michael Knight and “both entertaining and insightful” by Publisher’s Weekly.

His award-winning fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, and Narrative Magazine, among others. In 2011, Narrative Magazine named him one of the best twenty new writers. His story “A. Roolette? A. Roolette?” won First Place in Narrative‘s Winter 2010 Story Contest. In addition, Prince was awarded the Wabash Prize for Fiction for work Peter Ho Davies called “notable for its acute observations, wry wit, and delicate characterization.”

Prince is currently at work on a novel that takes place in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Born and raised in Southern California, Adam Prince has since lived in New York, South Korea, Arkansas, Nicaragua, and Knoxville, Tennessee. Prince received a PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and he’s currently the 2012-2013 Tickner Fellow at the Gilman School. He is married to the poet Charlotte Pence.

The author will also hold a Q&A session for all interested students, 3-4 p.m., Monday, April 8, in 1210 McClung Tower.
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Re-imagine the Library With Us

Posted on March 14, 2013

Dennis Clark will speak to the campus community on the topic “Re-imagining Library Services” on Monday, March 18, 10:00 a.m. in the Hodges Library auditorium. Clark is Associate University Librarian for Public Services at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), the largest research university in Virginia.

Clark’s involvement in the design of a $50 million library addition at VCU has included re-imagining the library service model as well as re-invigorating outreach efforts.

Prior to his current appointment, he was Head of Public and Research Services at Texas A&M University Libraries. In addition, he has extensive experience as a music librarian, including positions at Vanderbilt University, where he was Director of the Wilson Music Library and Samford University. At Vanderbilt, he co-founded the Global Music Archive, a streaming repository of traditional music, and conducted field work and recording in Uganda. He remains an advisor to the Archive.

Clark serves on the editorial board of Public Services Quarterly, and he has published on the evolving roles of library services and technology in Library Hi-Tech and Performance Measurement and Metrics, among others.

UT Library Celebrates Gift of an 18th Century Text

Posted on March 8, 2013

The public is invited to an event celebrating a special gift to the University of Tennessee Libraries on the evening of Thursday, March 14, at the John C. Hodges Library on the UT campus.

University of Tennessee Library Friends and guests will gather to learn about the antecedents of a rare 1725 pamphlet written by one of Louis XV’s gardeners on a subject that references the Appalachian region.

Each year the Library Friends group pools undesignated donations to make a single gift to the UT Libraries. This year’s gift from the Library Friends is a pamphlet recording a disputation among learned 18th century physicians on a Quaestio Medica — a medical question — “Whether or not the Apalachine drink from America is healthful?”

Bernard de Jussieu, the presenter of the remarks recorded in this pamphlet, belonged to a prominent French family that included a number of distinguished botanist-gardeners of the 18th and 19th centuries. Successive generations of the de Jussieu family served as directors of the famous botanical garden of the French kings, the Jardin du Roi. Bernard de Jussieu was Sub-demonstrator of Plants at the royal garden under Louis XV. He and his two brothers — Antoine, who was director of the Jardin du Roi, and Joseph, who traveled the world seeking new botanical specimens to ship back to the king’s garden — are as renowned among botanists as their contemporary Carl Linnaeus.

In the 18th century, voyages of colonial expansion or botanical exploration resulted in an influx of new plant species sent back to Europe for cultivation in botanical gardens. The new plant material helped spur advances in plant taxonomy like the classification schemes of Linnaeus and Bernard de Jussieu.

At the March 14 event, guests will hear from an expert on the history of botanical excursions into the New World. Ronald H. Petersen, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, will give a talk at 6:30 p.m. in the Hodges Library auditorium.

Specializing in the fungi, botanist Ron Petersen has described the mushrooms and their relatives from the Smoky Mountains and many other places on earth. One of his avocations, however, has been the natural history of the Southern Appalachians. He has published accounts of botanical penetration of the mountains in the 1830s and ’40s, the survey of a line marking the boundary between the Cherokee Nation and the spreading early colonial pioneers, as well as (with UT librarian Ken Wise) a natural history of Mt. LeConte. His most ambitious project has been New World Botany: Columbus to Darwin (2001), tracing botanical exploration and knowledge in and about the New World over five centuries.

The public is invited to a reception in the Jack E. Reese Galleria at 5:30 p.m., followed by Dr. Petersen’s talk at 6:30 p.m. The rare Quaestio Medica pamphlet will be on display in the Libraries’ Special Collections department.

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Free Range Video Contest Now Accepting Entries

Posted on March 8, 2013

Students, faculty, staff: Create a short video documentary (or mockumentary, if you prefer) and enter the library’s Free Range Video Contest. Registration closes March 22, and entries are due April 2.

The Studio in the Hodges Library Commons is sponsoring the contest. Pioneering documentary maker John Grierson defined the documentary as “the creative interpretation of actuality.” That quote inspired the theme of this year’s contest — The Compelling Real.

The video contest is open to all members of the UT community — students, faculty, and staff. Entrants can borrow a camera and get technical help in the Studio.

A panel of faculty, students, and library staff judges the entries. A video screening and awards ceremony will be held in April. During the screening, the audience will get a chance to vote live for the audience favorite.

The Studio started the Free Range Video Contest in 2005. Over the years, contest themes have varied, from issues of national importance (such as the 2008 Presidential campaign) to topics that reflect campus initiatives (such as UT’s “Make Orange Green” and “Civility” campaigns). Thanks to the Studio, everyone on campus has access to the tools needed to participate in the video contest.

The Studio is open until midnight, six nights a week, so there are plenty of hours for filmmakers to perfect their craft. However, the registration deadline is fast approaching!

Contest details are available at s.lib.utk.edu/freerange. Questions? Call the Studio at 974-6396.

T Cooper at Writers in the Library, March 11

Posted on February 25, 2013

T Cooper will read at UT’s Writers in the Library, Monday, March 11th at 7 p.m. in the John C. Hodges Library auditorium. The reading is free and open to the public.

T Cooper is the author of three novels, including The Beaufort Diaries and Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes. His most recent book is Real Man Adventures, a chronicle of the writer’s transsexual journey presented through a collage of letters, essays, interviews, artwork, and conversations exploring what it means to be a man. T Cooper maintains a sense of humor as he takes us through his transition into identifying as male — even publishing the letter he wrote to his parents to inform them that he “wasn’t their daughter anymore.” It’s a brash, wildly inventive, and comic exploration of the paradoxes and pleasures of masculinity.

Cooper is also the editor of an anthology of original stories entitled A Fictional History of the United States (with Huge Chunks Missing). T’s work has appeared in a variety of publications and anthologies, including the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Believer, One Story, Electric Literature, and others.

T has adapted and produced a short film based on his graphic novel The Beaufort Diaries. The animated short, directed by the book’s illustrator Alex Petrowsky and starring actor David Duchovny, was an official selection at several film festivals, including Tribeca Film Festival, South By Southwest, the New Orleans Film Fest, the Worldwide Short Film Festival, and the Anchorage International Film Festival.

T Cooper was born and raised in Los Angeles, attended Middlebury College in Vermont, and taught high school in New Orleans before settling in New York City in 1996. He earned an MFA from Columbia University. T enjoys vintage airplanes, M*A*S*H, the great outdoors, world peace, and anything to do with pit bull advocacy. He lives with his family in New York and in the South.

The author will also hold a Q&A session for all interested students, 2-3 p.m., Monday, March 11, in 1210 McClung Tower.

T Cooper’s reading is co-sponsored by UT’s Lambda Student Union.

Read a review of Real Man Adventures at Chapter 16: a community of Tennessee writers, readers and passersby (brought to you by Humanities Tennessee).
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Valerie Laken at Writers in the Library, Feb. 25

Posted on February 13, 2013

Valerie Laken will read at UT’s Writers in the Library, Monday, February 25th at 7 p.m. in the John C. Hodges Library auditorium. The reading is free and open to the public.

Valerie Laken is the author of the short story collection Separate Kingdoms (Harper, 2011), and the novel Dream House (Harper, 2009). She holds degrees in English and Russian from the University of Iowa and in Creative Writing and Slavic Literature from the University of Michigan. Originally from Rockford, Illinois, Valerie Laken has traveled throughout the world. She has worked and studied in Moscow, Prague, Krakow, Madison, and now teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the Creative Writing program.

Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Writer, and The Chicago Tribune. Her honors include a Pushcart Prize, an Anne Powers Prize, two Hopwood Awards, a Missouri Review Editors’ Prize, and an honorable mention in The Best American Short Stories.

Her short story collection Separate Kingdoms has been met with wide acclaim. The Chicago Tribune praises its “fine craftsmanship and powerful insight” and Library Journal calls it “vivid and evocative.” Likewise, her novel Dream House has been widely praised. The Kirkus Review says Laken “handles the fraught subjects of class, race, and family bonds with equal candor and sensitivity” and author Charles Baxter calls Dream House “sexy, sharp-eyed, and deeply haunted all at once.”

The author will also hold a Q&A session for all interested students, 3-4 p.m., Monday, February 25, in 1210 McClung Tower.

Thomas Lynch at Writers in the Library, Feb. 11

Posted on January 30, 2013

Thomas Lynch will read at UT’s Writers in the Library, Monday, February 11th at 7 p.m. in the John C. Hodges Library auditorium. The reading is free and open to the public.

Thomas Lynch is the author of five collections of poems and three books of essays, including Skating with Heather Grace, Still Life in Milford, and The Undertaking. He is also the author of the novella and story collection Apparition & Late Fictions. His most recent book is The Sin-Eater: A Breviary which has been called “powerful, unsettling, and full of grace.”

Lynch’s work has been the subject of two films, including PBS Frontline’s The Undertaking, which won a 2008 Emmy Award. The Undertaking is a chronicle of small-town life and death told through the eyes of a poet who is also an undertaker. It notably won the Heartland Prize for nonfiction, the American Book Award, and was a Finalist for the National Book Award. The Kirkus Review praises its “eloquent, meditative observations on the place of death in small-town life” and the New York Times Book Review says “Lynch shows himself to be a master of the essay form.”

Lynch’s essays, poems and stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Granta, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Paris Review.

He lives in Milford, Michigan, where he has been the funeral director since 1974, and in Moveen, County Clare, Ireland, where he keeps an ancestral cottage.

The author will also hold a Q&A session for all interested students, 3-4 p.m., Monday, February 11, in 1210 McClung Tower.

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