‘The End of Tennessee’

Writer Rachel Hanson will share her new memoir “The End of Tennessee” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 27, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva.

She will be in conversation with Diamond Forde, who is a poet and assistant professor at the University of North Carolina-Asheville.

“Not a year before I ran away from home at seventeen, I stepped out of the house at dusk, still able to see shrub oaks thinned out for winter, fame flower, too, and dun clay so wet the smell of it seemed settled in my skin.”

So begins Hanson’s debut memoir about growing up impoverished, uneducated and surrounded by violence. In lyrical, fragmented prose, she lays bare the impossible choice between self-preservation and her love for five younger siblings for whom she had become a second mother.

As the years pass, Hanson struggles with guilt for leaving her siblings as she slowly realizes she could not save them. “The End of Tennessee” is a testament to a sister’s love, resilience and determination, a book for anyone who has left one life to create another.

Hanson’s nonfiction has won Best of the Net and earned Notable Mention in Best American Essays. Her nonfiction and fiction can be found in Creative Nonfiction, The Iowa Review, North American Review, Joyland, American Literary Review, Ninth Letter and elsewhere.

Her poetry was selected for Best New Poets and has been published in The Minnesota Review, Juked and Meridian, among other journals. A recipient of the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship in Nonfiction at Colgate University, Hanson is an assistant professor of English at UNC Asheville and directs the Asheville based literary nonprofit Punch Bucket Lit.

Forde’s debut collection, “Mother Body,” won the 2019 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Her newest poetry collection, “The Book of Alice,” is forthcoming from Scribner Books (2026). Her awards and prizes include the Pink Poetry Prize, the Furious Flower Poetry Prize and the College Language Association’s Margaret Walker Memorial Prize.

Forde is a 2022 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow, a Callaloo fellow and a Tin House fellow. Her work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, NELLE, the Tupelo Quarterly and others. She serves as the interviews editor for Honey Literary and holds a PhD from the University of Florida. She is an assistant professor at UNC Asheville.

The event is free and open to the public. 828.586.9499. 

Jenkins to present ‘Women of Courage’

Anne Jenkins will give a reading of her book, “Women of Courage,” at 3 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 24, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva.

Jenkins is a British/South African award-winning artist and writer. She has spent her life traveling and working in various countries. Her careers have ranged from delivering sailboats from the U.K. to the Mediterranean, a personnel officer for a major U.S. Bank covering the Middle East and Africa Division based in Greece, a newspaper reporter and also driving 18-wheelers across the U.S.

Some careers were more hilarious and eventful than others, but Jenkins finally settled into her true calling as an artist and writer. She started as a full-time artist in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2003, but was relocated after Hurricane Katrina to Western North Carolina where she spent five months before opening a gallery in Georgia.

“Women of Courage” details Jenkins’ three major art projects. The book tells her story of working with African women trying to help AIDS orphans, her series on women in difficult situations and her installation piece, “The Underground Railroad,” inspired by the life of Harriet Tubman.

Her book is available at City Lights and Amazon. She can be found on Instagram at @annejenkinsart.

‘Books & Bites’ at Macon library

The next “Books & Bites” gathering will host author Ronnie Evans at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 27, at the Macon County Public Library in Franklin.

Evans will be talking about his most recent book “Brinkley: Goat Glands, Radio and Country Music.” This book is about Brinkley’s humble beginnings in the mountains of Western North Carolina and his quest to become a doctor in Chicago, on the plains of Kansas, down at the southern border in Del Rio, Texas, where he eventually established the world’s most powerful radio broadcast station in Mexico.

He became a multi-millionaire, all the while jousting in the courtrooms with his American Medical Association nemesis, Dr. Morris Fishbein.

Evans will have his books available for purchase by cash or check after the program. Free and open to the public.

For more information, 828.524.3600 or fontanalib.org.