Award winning author Leanne Tyler will read from her work 7 p.m., Monday, February 8, in the Hodges Library Auditorium.

Tyler’s debut release, Victory’s Gate, was the 2007 American Rose winner of the Through the Garden Gate contest and was released electronically by The Wild Rose Press in December 2007. Finally in December 2009 the Through the Garden Gate anthology is available in print and includes the four winning entries. Founding member of the Smoky Mountain Romance Writers and member of Romance Writers of America, Leanne is a native of Knoxville and a graduate of the University of Tennessee where she has been employed for the last fourteen years.

Distinguished poet Hilda Raz will read from her works Monday, October 26, at 7 p.m. in the Hodges Library Auditorium.

Hilda Raz is the Luschei editor of Prairie Schooner, and professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her most recent books are All Odd and Splendid, poetry from Wesleyan University Press, 2008; What Becomes You, memoir with Aaron Raz Link, published in the American Lives series by the University of Nebraska Press; and What Happens, Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Previous books include Trans (Wesleyan), Divine Honors (Wesleyan), Living on the Margins (Persea), among others.

An informal chat with the author will be held at 3:30 p.m., Monday, October 26, in 1210-1211 McClung Tower. Both events are free and open to the public.

The reading is sponsored by the UT Creative Writing Program in association with the John C. Hodges Better English Fund and Writers in the Library. For more information on this event: mkallet@utk.edu.

Students in UT’s Creative Writing Program compete annually for the John C. Hodges Graduate Writing Prizes in fiction and poetry. Winners will read from their award-winning works at Writers in the Library, Monday, April 13, at 7 pm in the Hodges Library auditorium. The prizes were endowed by the same long-time UT English professor, author of the Harbrace College Handbook, for whom the Hodges Library is named.

This year’s winners are:

FICTION

1st Place: Bradford Tice for “Skin”
2nd Place: Ryan Woldruff for “Of Rain, A River”
3rd Place: Charlotte Pence for “The Table”

POETRY

1st Place: Michael Levan for “Carving Spaces”
2nd Place: Jessie Janeshek for “Love Poem Too Late”
3rd Place: Joshua Robbins for “Sparrows Sold for a Copper Coin & Not One Falls to the Ground”

His enthusiastic commitment to learning did not end with retirement, however. Three years earlier he had begun the task of improving the university’s library collection, and he continued to serve voluntarily as coordinator of library development until his death in 1967.

His 41 years at the University were marked by far-reaching contributions to the study of English literature and the improvement of educational methods. Dr. Hodges’ influence on the teaching of English continues today through his Harbrace College Handbook, the most widely used college text in the country.

Writers in the Library and the UT Women’s Coordinating Council are co-sponsoring a performance of “Exposed,” a play by Jack E. Reese Writer in Residence Kali Meister.

“Exposed” is a cross-genre play featuring monologues, songs, dance, poetry, and scene work featuring Kali Meister, George Pate, Michael Hudson, and Crystal Humphrey Bruaeneur.

The play is a nonfiction journey through Meister’s life, chronicling her survival through incest and sexual violence, consequent struggles with food and body image, and her ultimate coming to terms with being an adult survivor of abuse.

The play is not suitable for younger audiences.

The event will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 8, in Hodges Library auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. For more info e-mail meisterkali@gmail.com.

Novelist and short story writer Richard Bausch will read from his works at Writers in the Library, 7 p.m., Monday, March 9, in the John C. Hodges Library auditorium.

Bausch has published 18 novels and short story collections and he currently holds the Moss Chair of Excellence at the University of Memphis. His books include Real Presence, The Last Good Time, The Fireman’s Wife and Other Stories, Rare and Endangered Species, Hello to the Cannibals, and most recently, Peace. His fiction has appeared in numerous periodicals, including Harper’s, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker and has been represented in anthologies like O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Short Stories.

ON THE PROCESS OF WRITING: “I start writing with an image or a voice, but I don’t know anything when I start. The only thing I know is that I’m starting. And learn it as I go. . . The real artistry comes with rewriting. And that’s where the real work is. But at no time is it a rational thing that I’m doing. It’s at the level of an animal smelling blood. It’s that kind of knowledge. And if it does not surprise me, I don’t trust it.”

ON CREATING CHARACTERS: “It’s all imagination. It’s all made up. I never use any models. There’s an explanation of that . . . it has to do with Flannery O’Connor’s comment that a good story is literal in the same sense that a child’s drawing is literal.”

ON THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN GENRES: “I always write stories, and I write poems, too. I just never sell them to anybody, but I write them. They’re good, too. They never leave the house. They’re too disclosing. I get to hide in the fiction. Once I thought I had a novel and it turned out it was only a short story. I wrote about 800 pages, but it ended up being a short story. And if it ever happens to me again, I Will Go Insane.”

ON TEACHING: “I don’t teach writing. I teach patience. Toughness. Stubbornness. The willingness to fail. . . I love teaching. If I made a trillion dollars I would still teach.”

Writers in the Library presents an evening of performance poetry with hip hop poets Rhea Sunshine and Black Atticus, Monday, March 2, at 7 p.m. in the John C. Hodges Library auditorium.

These two talented young black poets from Knoxville are musicians as well as masters of the spoken word.

Watch and listen to Rhea Sunshine singing and speaking her poem “My Soul Cries Out.”

Listen to Black Atticus’ modulations in “Blues Shoes.”

Rhea Sunshine and Black Atticus are the founders of Black Sunshine Arts & Entertainment, a local consortium of hip hop artists who carry a social message to poetry slams around the country, and who use poetry to touch the lives of young people.

Black Atticus will return to the Hodges Library later this spring as part of our “Evolution of Rock-n-Roll” film series. He will lead the discussion following screening of the film “Rap, Race, & Equality,” Tuesday, April 7, at 7 p.m. in the Hodges Library auditorium.

Two writers with ties to East Tennessee will read from their works at the February 23rd Writers in the Library: poet/young adult writer Connie Green and poet Kristi Maxwell. Readings begin at 7 p.m., Monday, February 23, in the auditorium of the John C. Hodges Library on the University of Tennessee campus.

Connie Jordan Green is both a poet and a writer of stories and novels for young people. Her novels, The War at Home and Emmy (Tellico Books/Iris Press), are both award-winners. The War at Home was placed on the ALA List of Best Books for Young Adults and was nominated to the 1991-92 Volunteer State Book Award Master List. Emmy was selected as a Notable 1992 Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the East Tennessee Hall of Fame for Writers. Green holds a BS from Auburn University and an MA from the University of Tennessee. She has taught creative writing for the University of Tennessee and continues to teach at various workshops. Since 1978 she has written a newspaper column for The Loudon County News Herald. She lives on a farm in Loudon County, Tennessee, with her husband, a retired engineer. They have three grown children and seven grandchildren.

An East Tennessee native, Kristi Maxwell currently lives and writes in Cincinnati, where she is pursuing a PhD in English. She is the author of two books of poems, Realm Sixty-four (Ahsahta Press, 2008) and Hush Sessions (Saturnalia Books, forthcoming in 2009), and also the chapbook Elsewhere & Wise (Dancing Girl Press, 2008). Her most recent awards include the Isabel & Mary Neff Fellowship and the Greta Wrolstad Scholarship for Young Poets to attend the Summer Literary Seminars in Russia. Kristi received a BA in English and a BS in Communications from the University of Tennessee and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Arizona. In her spare time, she practices kung fu with another poet.

The Writers in the Library series is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Libraries and the Creative Writing Program of the UT English Department. For further information, please contact Jo Anne Deeken, head of technical services, UT Libraries, at 974-6913 or jdeeken@utk.edu, or Kali Meister, Jack E. Reese writer in residence, UT Libraries, at meisterkali@gmail.com.

Renowned poet Paul Zimmer will read at Writers in the Library on Monday, February 16, 7 p.m., in the John C. Hodges Library auditorium.

Zimmer worked for forty-five years in book publishing and sales, heading university presses at Georgia, Iowa, and Pittsburgh. After working hours, he still found time to write a significant body of poetry. The author of more than a dozen poetry collections, Zimmer has also garnered many honors and grants including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, inclusion in the National Poetry Series (“The Great Bird of Love”), the Award for Literature from the American Institute of Arts and Letters, and four Pushcart Prizes.

Recent books by Paul Zimmer include Crossing to Sunlight Revisited: New and Selected Poems and two memoirs, Trains in the Distance and After the Fire: A Writer Finds His Place. After the Fire chronicles, among other subjects, Zimmer’s love of jazz and baseball, observing atomic tests during his military service in Nevada, and retirement to his isolated home on 100 acres in rural Wisconsin.

Join us at Writers in the Library to enjoy and celebrate the poet that Hayden Carruth once called “the most consistently entertaining poet of the past 20 years.”

The Writers in the Library series is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Libraries and the Creative Writing Program of the UT English Department. For further information, please contact Jo Anne Deeken, head of technical services, UT Libraries, at 974-6913 or jdeeken@utk.edu, or Kali Meister, Jack E. Reese writer in residence, UT Libraries, at meisterkali@gmail.com.

Don’t miss the launch of Marilyn Kallet’s new poetry collection at the first UT Writers in the Library reading of the spring semester. Dr. Kallet will perform poems from her new collection, Packing Light: New and Selected Poems (Black Widow Press, 2009) on Monday, February 2, at 7 p.m. in the Hodges Library auditorium on the University of Tennessee campus. A reception will follow the reading.

Kallet’s new book includes selections from more than 35 years of writing as well as new poems. Her poetry includes sensual love poems, song sequences, and poems on Jewish identity and the Holocaust.

Of Kallet’s recent poetry, poet Yusef Komunyakaa has written, “Marilyn Kallet’s Circe, After Hours shines with a high-intensity light into the underworld of ordinary lives, creating bridges between the North and the South, America and Europe, as well as a marriage between the brain’s left and right hemispheres – reason and passion. In this marvelous collection, the process of art illuminates life’s path.”

Marilyn Kallet is the author of 14 books, including Circe, After Hours (BkMk Press) and Last Love Poems of Paul Eluard (Black Widow Press). She holds a Lindsay Young Professorship in English from the University of Tennessee, where she directed the creative writing program for 17 years. Kallet has performed her poetry in theaters and on campuses across the United States, as well as in Krakow and Warsaw as a guest of the U.S. Embassy’s “America Presents” program. She teaches poetry in Auvillar as part of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts France program.

This event is co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program in association with the John C. Hodges Better English Fund and by Writers in the Library.

The Writers in the Library series is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Libraries and the Creative Writing Program of the UT English Department. For further information, please contact Jo Anne Deeken, head of technical services, UT Libraries, at 974-6913 or jdeeken@utk.edu, or Kali Meister, Jack E. Reese writer in residence, UT Libraries, at meisterkali@gmail.com.