The End of Tennessee (University of South Carolina Press, 2024) by Rachel M. Hanson opens with “Not a year before I ran away from home at seventeen, I stepped out of the house at dusk,” followed by a beautiful passage describing a walk through rural Appalachia on a January night (1). She makes her way down the country road to a neighbor’s house, who was supposedly concerned about how exhausted she seemed and invited her over to “take a break” (Hanson 1). This seemingly considerate display of community is enough to momentarily distract from the foreshadowing introduced in the first sentence. But once she has arrived at the house and the neighbor receives her, the narrative tone quickly shifts as Hanson nervously tells herself that her neighbor “didn’t meant to leave his hands there [on her back] for so long” (Hanson 2). Then, the neighbor gives her “a present on her birthday”: a mini bottle of schnapps and a baggie of crack rocks, with instructions of how to cook it (Hanson 2). The leaden dread of this scene persists throughout End of Tennessee, the heavy weight only building further as we follow the story of a young girl faced with abuse and neglect, who took up the mantle as parent to her siblings—before she makes her escape at seventeen.

The book’s narrative does not unfold carefully; instead, Hanson’s history is presented in fits and bursts of recollection that fall out of order. Hanson cleverly uses the imperfection of memory recall to construct the story: the text takes us back and forth between her childhood, teen years, and adulthood in a parallel to how non-linear the past can seem in our memories. The precise sequence of events becomes less important than the lasting impact the events had on her present, and for a narrative about grappling with the past, this was a perfect format.

The primary thrust of Hanson’s story is how she parented her five younger siblings—their mother was at once controlling and dismissive, their father absent in all ways but physical. It is clear that she loves and genuinely cares for her siblings, but the kernel of injustice nevertheless takes root and grows within. The complicated feelings she has for her siblings—whom she refers to as “the babies”—is most obvious with her brothers. In one scene, she’s reflecting on the time her brother woke her up with “hands that were trying to know my fourteen-year-old body”; then Hanson writes, “It’s confusing though because I still love the child him” (88).

End of Tennessee’s strength is in this plain, unflinching presentation of trauma. Hanson’s writing style is simple and ungarnished, which works to underscore the casual horror of her reality, the way that neglect and outright abuse were so common as to be unnoteworthy.  

The true gravity of her childhood comes forward when she recounts an anecdote of starvation to her partner, laughingly recalling mixing chocolate syrup with pasta and eating it with excitement because it was the first time in a while that she had something other than popcorn to eat. Her tone, as with the entirety of the book, is light, almost dismissive, focusing on the hilarity of chocolate-covered pasta rather than the underlying circumstances. But her partner does not laugh with her. Instead he replies, “When you laugh after telling me things like that, it makes me want to cry” (Hanson 167). When we undergo traumatic events, there are many who respond by making light of it because attempting to process our feelings be just as traumatizing as the original event. But there is a certain relief that comes from an outside observer articulating our hurt: they offer validation to our experience, and this helps to begin the healing.

The End of Tennessee is a memoir—but it is perhaps more accurate to call it a memorial. The very act of remembrance is an attempt to lay the ghosts of the past to rest. Although the events of Hanson’s narrative are tragic, this book is not a tragedy; rather, it’s a survivor’s log of her start-stop journey toward freedom and autonomy. As difficult as it may be to read through some of the events, the stakes are so real that you easily become invested in Hanson’s successes. It does not have a perfect happy ending; it is clear that, although her current partner is a reassuring and understanding presence, there is still much internal work to be done. Hanson’s healing journey is not gentle, but rather like re-breaking a crooked bone with the hope for a cleaner heal. But the work, the healing, is happening, and that, in itself, is a triumph over her pain and trauma.

The book ends with Hanson commenting that “old memories aren’t holding me back in the past as easily they once did, and instead of wanting to punish myself for it as I might have before, somehow I just feel unbelievably relieved” (188). Hanson may have reached the end of Tennessee—but every ending is a new, more hopeful beginning.

The End of Tennessee is available from University of South Carolina Press

Isabeau J. Belisle Dempsey (they/them) is a proud Chicagoan, Belizean, Lesbian, and Capricorn. They hold a BA in International Studies & Spanish and are currently earning an MA in English Literature & Publishing, and they hope to eventually put their obsession with commas to good use as an in-house editor. History book co-author, amateur poet, freelance copyeditor, and generally just along for the ride, you can find Isabeau in your local bookstore surreptitiously fixing the shelves—they were once a bookseller and never quite broke the habit.

An abecedarian poem is formatted using the sequential alphabet, beginning every new line with each successive letter; the familiar structure of the alphabet acts as a scaffold for communicating the poet’s message. In Children of Rivers and Trees: An Abecedarian (Newfound Press, 2024), Elissa Favero cleverly uses “this alphabet container” (66) to guide the reader through knowledge pathways that span generations. In a confluence of nonfiction prose and poetic expression, Favero explores an intricate weaving of personal familial history, ecology, and culture, particularly Indigeneity.

From the title, I knew Favero would be sharing knowledge about different flora and fauna. Favero details the durability of the birch tree, defines ecology terms such as “endogamy” and “maiden tree.” The first chapter, however, surprised me. “A for Ancestral Plant” opens with a brief history of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s relationship with plants. He kept a garden, collected seeds in the south of Italy, and sought out “the Urpflanze,” an ancestral plant that he believed contained “all possible future plants” (Favero 6). The remainder of this short opening chapter travels through Goethe’s 1790 scientific treatise about the Urpflanze to a 19^th century French illustrator who made a print of an Urpflanze, and ends with a 20^th century neurologist reflecting on his boyhood fascination with ferns. What Favero sets up in these two brief, but loaded, pages is a sense of history, legacy, lineage—and the ways knowledge is shared down the line.

Throughout Children of Rivers and Trees, Favero’s family story blooms with prose that is carefully, brilliantly, strung out like pearls on a string. In “B for Birch,” we learn of her Scottish roots, a great-grandmother from the town of Beith. Favero reflects on the etymology of Beith: “Beth, is associated with the birch tree. Beith, or birch: my own ancestral place, my own ancestral plant” (Favero 8). This interweaving of the natural and the personal persists as Favero continues spelunking her lineage, using ecology as a central framework to understand her findings.

As the book continues, the narrative opens up to explore how the stories we are told inform our understanding of the world—whether it be from our families, or society at large. It is easy to look back on our personal histories and paint our lineage in a romanticized light, but Favero, in her exploration of her family’s past, does not shy away from addressing the scar marks she finds there. She states, “I need to stay alert to the advantages and inequities from which my life has grown” (Favero 49). Favero also asks, “How do we account for ourselves?” (31), which is a direct nod to a larger question that the narrative as a whole poses: How do we grapple with the past that we had no part in shaping? How do we let this knowledge affect us, inform our understanding of our families, ourselves? The truth is a story passed down through generations—how do we take control of that, make sense of a new truth?

Favero’s interweaving of history with cultural notes and personal narrative is wonderfully organized, making for an engagingandinformative read. In addition to the beautifully wrought narrative, the structure of the book also shines. In several chapters, Favero breaks the standard form and wrangles the words into shapes that play into the story she is telling. For example, she creates a branch (or “branching shape”, as she calls it) with the word “dendriform” (Favero 14). The chapter “L for Long Lines Of” begins with a question: “How many generations does it take to make a line long—three, four?” (Favero 32). The answer starts, “I come from,” then the lines break and the words elongate dramatically, splaying letters across the page that puzzle into “drinkers, storytellers, mild eccentrics” (Favero 32-33). The text reads like hearing a person in real life conversation think about their answer and reply as the thought comes to them, with all of the hemming and hawing and natural pausing. Favero’s writing flows as clear as a mountain stream, carrying us easily down the river of her thoughts; she has crafted a gorgeous vessel to transport her stories safely into our hands.

With its invested appreciation of nature and contemplation of our place within the ecosystem, Children of Rivers and Trees takes its place beside Nezhukumatathil’s World of Wonders, Shafak’s Island of Lost Trees, Oliver’s Upstream. In this era of seemingly wanton ecodestruction, Favero invites us to deeply engage with the world around us with an active, intentional eye. As she says, “[l]eaving to let grow is easy” (Favero 30), but the real effort—and, thus, the real reward—comes from taking the time to look at the situation carefully and pruning where needed in order to let the whole body flourish.

An abecedarian is a poetic format using the alphabet as a guide—but an abecedarian can also be defined as “a beginner, a novice.” We are all abecedarians in some aspect of our lives, a concept that can be intimidating to face. Favero encourages us to be open to learning, to understanding, to growing—from, and with, one another. We are like a vast network of trees: interconnected, reliant on each other for growth. To know our families, our communities, our world, and our very selves, we must be willing to engage with curiosity and open-mindedness.

Children of Rivers and Trees is available from Newfound Press

Isabeau J. Belisle Dempsey (they/them) is a proud Chicagoan, Belizean, Lesbian, and Capricorn. They hold a BA in International Studies & Spanish and are currently earning an MA in English Literature & Publishing, and they hope to eventually put their obsession with commas to good use as an in-house editor. History book co-author, amateur poet, freelance copyeditor, and generally just along for the ride, you can find Isabeau in your local bookstore surreptitiously fixing the shelves—they were once a bookseller and never quite broke the habit. 

But, my absolute need for reading established itself when, at 15, I developed an intractable arm injury leaving me with permanent nerve damage and chronic pain through the right side of my body. Suddenly I found myself wildly limited and with nothing but time on my hands. I drank in all art forms, so much music that my mom asked a doctor about it, but in the end found reading to be the best distraction from my physical pain. 

By engaging my brain in critical and deep reading, I was able to almost forget that I was in any physical pain. Upon this discovery, I read unfathomably voraciously. And I read intensely. “After great pain,” Where’d You Go Bernadette, East of Eden; all of these works became major parts of me, my growth, and my healing. But the book that aided my healing the most was Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up the Ghost. Mantel’s book is a memoir in which she decenters her pain and malady and goes on adventures that I could also experience while living magically. It was a revelatory and freeing moment for me when I realized I too could host dinner parties for cool people and travel the world with a dear friend. All of Mantel’s adventures were adventures I could also participate in––but that didn’t make them any less magical. 

She allowed me to begin to live magically as well. I worked in politics out in Appalachia and in downtown Washington. I attended fashion shows in London and rowed across the UK. Inspired by the friends I made living in London, I began to work towards the kind of life I had always wanted to live––one in which I was surrounded by very cool artists. 

Since that revelation, I also became increasingly interested in the sage wisdom strong works of literature could offer to me. I went into university studying Government, but almost immediately added an English major to my course load. I found I was bribing myself through my Government homework by following it up with English readings. The essays came naturally and easily to me, as did the seminars. I loved any form of reflection on what I was reading and I appreciated being introduced to work I would never have thought to check out on my own.

Since then, I’ve studied the great literary world of Paterson, New Jersey; the reaction and social disruption that came from discovering the Earth was not the center of the universe, and the cosmic universal vibration experienced by the Beats in Wichita. Always a fan of Arab art, I began studying Arabic at St Andrews. I continue to be on the search for wonderful works of literature and looking for the lessons I can learn from each piece. I’m excited to continue to learn and grow, but I’m most excited to help share those important pieces of wisdom with others.

Annabel Phoel is a junior studying English and Government/International Relations between William & Mary and the University of St Andrews, where she currently resides. She is a staff writer on St Andrews’ Not Applicable Magazine and helps on their editorial board. When not writing or studying, Annabel is rowing on various lochs in Scotland.

My bookshelf combines several transcendent young adult series, but also many literary classics, all of which were monumental in my development as a reader. I will never forget checking out Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in my elementary school library. From the moment I opened the page, I was obsessed with the whimsical, strange world that was the Harry Potter universe. After completing the first book, I made my mom take me to the bookstore to look at the rest of the series. While my mom was always somewhat strict about allowing my sister and me to buy things on a whim at a store, books were never off-limits. My momma is to be thanked for my craze for buying books. From there, every time I completed one of the books, I would drag my mom and sister to the bookstore again to purchase the next book in the series. Once I had finished the monstrously large collection, I was convinced I could read anything.

In the sixth grade, it was my class’s turn to make a trip to the library to look at the books in the book fair. I took my time browsing up and down the aisles trying to find the perfect one to take home with me. I passed a small table and looked down to find Suzanne Collins’s novel The Hunger Games. I had heard my classmates talking about the book in homeroom. Nobody seemed to have a negative comment about it, easy to say, I had been influenced. I grabbed a copy and made my way to the checkout. Similarly to the Harry Potter series, the moment I opened the book I wasn’t able to put it down. Every chance I had I was reading. Whether it was on the bus, at the lunch table, or in class, The Hunger Games seemed to follow me everywhere. I was inspired by the novel’s strong female protagonist, Katniss. Her determination and the love she had for her family gave me the courage to wager my own battles through the anxious hallways of middle school.

As I grew up, so did my reading interest and bookshelf. Senior year of high school, my English course was assigned Lord of the Flies. I remember thinking, “What a strange title for a book”. Little did I know that this specific novel would hold memories of my some of first in-depth discussions regarding literature. I was astounded by my teacher and fellow classmate’s commentary. Years later, I still catch myself thinking about the novel and that English class.

While it is almost impossible to pick a favorite novel, there are two that stick out to me, those being The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Both are equally heartbreaking in their own way, which seems to be part of the main criteria when I am evaluating favorites. One thing that all these books have in common is their impact. Every one of them molded me into the reader and person I am today. With every word I read, I gain more self-assurance in my love of literature and the possibility of achieving my dreams. To one day publish my own book and perhaps, if I am lucky, will be able to impact someone like all these books have done for me.

Katherine Carroll is a recent graduate of the University of Tennessee, where she received her bachelor’s degree in English Literature. She has a particularly deep appreciation for Irish literature and works that involve whimsical, lyrical, and natural aspects. In her free time she enjoys going for walks, cooking new recipes, and watching anything related to beauty and skincare. 

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Translation as Prompt,” a workshop led by Rebecca Suzuki on Wednesday, May 14th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress
(password: safta).

It is often acknowledged that the most voracious readers are the best writers because reading brilliant texts can inspire our own. And if translation is the most intimate form of reading, can translation transform our writing in a way we didn’t know possible? Experimenting with translation not only forces us to think deeply about a text, but also about language and its potential to open up doors that lead us to places we hadn’t thought of before. In this workshop, participants will play with translation and learn how to think about translation as a prompt to generate new thinking and writing. No previous experience in translation or fluency in a second language necessary.

While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may
make donations directly to Rebecca Suzuki via Venmo: @Rebecca-Suzuki

Rebecca Suzuki is author of When My Mother Is Beautiful, winner of the 2023 Loose Translation Prize and published by Hanging Loose Press in December 2023. She writes creative nonfiction in a mixture of forms and languages, and her work often focuses on the themes of identity, home, family, lineage, immigration, Asian Americanism, language, translation, and more. Her work has been published in various journals and magazines. She is also a translator from Japanese to English and a faculty lecturer of English at Queens College, CUNY. You can find more information at rebeccasuzuki.com.

This event is brought to you by a grant provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission.

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Darren C. Demaree. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, May 18th, from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with the password “safta”.

Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!

Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-three poetry collections, most recently So Much More (Small Harbor Publishing 2024). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Art Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system. 

While this is a free event, donations can be made to the Sundress Academy for the Arts here.

Each month we split donations with a community partner. Our community partner of the month is Humanities Tennessee. Humanities Tennessee is a non-profit organization working to foster communities that encourage reflection on history, culture, art, and stories. They also work to support public humanities programming by coordinating with grants and media partnerships to provide resources and content to approximately 500,000 Tennesseans every year. Humanities Tennessee commits to celebrating the power of stories in striving for an equitable Tennessee by promoting collaboration, empowerment, community, and equity.

This event is brought to you in part by grants provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission. 

In some small grade, at some small age, in my small hands was placed a manuscript. Handwritten in a child’s unsteady letters on a stack of wide-ruled loose leaf paper, yes, but a manuscript nonetheless. It was a story about a lawyer. Some of the students in my class were collaborating to write it out, and they had neared the end of their work and were looking to move it to the final stage: adding illustrations. And this job had been delegated to me.

I was decently skilled at drawing and was happy to have that noticed, so I gladly took up the task. In order to know what to draw, I first had to read the story. I don’t exactly remember what the words said or how the story went. All I remember is thinking, “Oh, no.” Oh, no, no. Whoever had written this was not a writer. Whoever had written this needed help. And this job would be taken up by me.

I remember pulling out the core elements of the story and reworking it for better flow, rewriting entire sections, and questioning the characters’ motivations. My classmates, of course, didn’t give a damn about all that. After I dutifully drew the requested illustrations, they lost interest in the project entirely. But I’d felt a spark: this was my first real experience with creative writing and I was hooked. Like many writers, I was one of those kids who read books under their desk during class. The local library was my second home. But until working with that lawyer story, I hadn’t realized that I could write stories of my own. After that, I wrote constantly. But it was only now, as I’ve begun to pursue a career in editing, that I’ve realized my love for editing also started from that little stack of loose leaf paper. 

Reader, writer, editor; writer, editor, reader; editor, reader, writer—there’s no saying what label I would prioritize in aligning myself with. It all comes down to the same thing anyway: words, words, words; books, books, books. And books, for me, are inescapable.

While earning my BA in International Studies, I found myself assisting a professor with the research for a book she was writing. And then I found myself writing a chapter for her book. And then I found myself co-authoring an entire book with her. Then, after graduating, rather than finding a job in the field I got my degree in, I ended up working as a bookseller in a bookstore I had grown up visiting. I landed in freelance copyediting after a coworker at the bookstore told me he was moving out of the country and asked if I’d be interested in taking up his position at a press he read for.

Eventually, I stopped lamenting my BA “going to waste” (it didn’t, it hasn’t, and it won’t) and started listening to what was being whispered in my ear: go into books, stay in books, live books.

My editorial practice has come a long way since I was eight years old and asserting complete ownership over someone else’s manuscript. When publishing our book, my co-author and I worked with an incredibly warm team who walked in tandem with us and our vision, and it was this specific experience that made me want to go into editing professionally.

I firmly believe that we humans were put on this earth, first and foremost, to chit-chat—to share our stories and perspectives and opinions, whatever form that may take. As a writer myself, I know how daunting it is to share your work publicly. I want to be the kind of editor who uplifts their author, encouraging them to speak their own story candidly with a strong, unwavering voice. Art is communication; art is community; community is everything. We write to be heard, we read to listen. And I, for one, would love to hear what you have to say.

Isabeau J. Belisle Dempsey (they/them) is a proud Chicagoan, Belizean, Lesbian, and Capricorn. They hold a BA in International Studies and Spanish and are currently earning an MA in English Literature and Publishing, and they hope to eventually put their obsession with commas to good use as an in-house editor. History book co-author, amateur poet, freelance copyeditor, and generally just along for the ride, you can find Isabeau in your local bookstore surreptitiously fixing the shelves—they were once a bookseller and never quite broke the habit.

I am an awful gift giver. I have never been good at choosing an item to encapsulate my love for someone, never good at the wrapping of it all, and I always ruin the moment that the recipient tears the paper with frantic explanations as to why I thought the thing inside the box was worth giving. It is always a mess. I look at my bookshelf, though, and all I see are gifts. My friends and family all give books as gifts for birthdays and Christmas, offering our used copies for someone else’s. This Christmas, I gave up Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk for my uncle’s copy of Devil House by John Darnielle, and it sits on my shelf next to Katherine Dunn’s Toad, another one of his gifts.

I like gifting books because they provide the frantic explanation for me. I can give my mom a copy of Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go and let her read about a family that loses and loves and perseveres, and she can respond with Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch to say that this loss, love, and tenacity is as old as I am, starting at birth and growing stronger over the years. That communication is subtle and sometimes hard to see, but it is intimate and real and makes the gift giving a purpose I have always struggled to find. My shelf is full of gifts, messages from my loved ones.

My shelf is also home to books that allow me to escape. My favorite brain candy is a thriller, and my friends and I pass around the same copies until they are cracked and creased beyond recognition. I recently received Lucy Foley’s The Midnight Feast, gifted by a friend who loves to devour a thriller fueled by bad choices. In exchange, I gave her The Guest by Emma Cline. We live several states apart and have lost the luxury of a shared social circle, our daily lives defined by the new friends and environment that college provides, so the books we share fills the gaps. These stories of messes and mistakes become our gossip, our shared experiences shifting from school cafeteria to hardbacks shipped with notes in the margins. 

The bookshelf in my college apartment is missing a lot of my favorites. It is small and hardback books have to sit at an angle to fit. However, it holds messages from the people I love. With every book I receive and cram into these two shelves, I learn something new about my friends and family, and with every book I gift, I share part of myself.

Meg Pinkston is a maker of crafts, stories, and foods from East Tennessee, her creations all heavily influenced by her Appalachian roots. She is a sophomore at the University of Tennessee pursuing a degree in English with a minor in Political Science. In her free time, Meg can be found scuba diving and writing essays exploring the complexities of the American South.