Tennessee State Museum, 1000 Rosa L Parks Blvd, Nashville, TN 37208, USA

Poet, editor, and educator Ciona Rouse is the author of Vantablack, the first chapbook of Third Man Books (2017). Her poetry has appeared in the journals Oxford American, Wildness, Booth, The Account, Still, Talking River, Gabby Journal, Matter: a journal of political poetry and commentary and other publications. She has been featured on NPR Music and has work selected by Ada Limón for the podcast The Slowdown.

The presidential election of 1844 had it all: an unpopular incumbent forced out of the race, a perennial presidential loser, a candidate whose career appeared to be on life support, a long-shot whose political ideology had been transformed by religious conversion, even a political assassination. Out of this collection of contenders emerged James K. Polk,…

The first book to explore the history of college fight songs as a culturally important phenomenon, From Dixie to Rocky Top zeroes in on the US South, where college football has forged a powerful, quasi-religious sense of meaning and identity throughout the region. Tracing the story of Southeastern Conference (SEC) fight songs from the late nineteenth to the…

In graduate school, Rachel Martin volunteered with a Southern oral history project. One day, she was sent to a small town in Tennessee, in the foothills of the Appalachians, where locals wanted to build a museum to commemorate the events of September 1956, when Clinton High School became the first school in the former Confederacy…

You: The Story is a powerful how-to book for aspiring writers that encourages you to look inward and excavate your own memories in order to discover the authentic voices and compelling details that are waiting to be put on the page. Masterfully weaving in humorous and heartfelt stories from her own life that illustrate an aspect…

Join us as we explore biographies — each with a unique approach — of two legendary Tennessee figures, David Crockett and Timothy Demonbreun. In We Should Soon Become Respectable: Nashville's Own Timothy Demonbreun, Author Elizabeth Elkins sorts through the legends and nails down the facts in order to present the true story of "Nashville's First Citizen." In The…

A gripping and meticulously crafted work of narrative nonfiction, Walk Through Fire: The Train Disaster That Changed America (on-sale February 21, 2023) reconstructs the events of a horrific explosion in 1978 that can still be felt today. The explosion of a tank car full of liquid propane devastated the small town of Waverly, Tennessee, shocked the nation,…

In Title IX, Pat Summitt, and Tennessee’s Trailblazers, Mary Ellen Pethel introduces readers to past and present pioneers—each instrumental to the success of women’s athletics across the state of Tennessee and the nation.

As part of our programming for our exhibition, Painting the Smokies: Art, Community, and the Making of a National Park, Zentner reads from his award-winning young adult novel, In the Wild Light. Life in small-town Tennessee has never been easy. Cash already lost his mother to an opioid addiction and is losing his papaw, who raised him, one…