So we are here in Chattanooga for this weekend's Conference on Southern Literature - and my, how it has grown since this writer first attended (a depressingly ancient) 16 years ago. We'll have a more coherent wrap-up at the end of it all - right now there are panels to be seen. (Oh, and stories for next week's issue to be written!) However, we wanted to pass along the news that Knoxville's own Jeff Daniel Marion was presented with the James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South yesterday. (No matter that the awarding of the award was announced months ago - it actually happened yesterday, thus it's news.)
Marion is currently the Jack E. Reese Writer in Residence at the University of Tennessee Libraries. He taught at Carson-Newman from 1969 until he retired in 2002. And he has been a poet longer than that. After Robert Morgan presented him with the award onstage at the Tivoli Theatre, Marion shambled shyly to the microphone. "This is deeply humbling, because I was friends with James Still for a number of years and still treasure those memories," he said. Then Marion launched into two poems from his latest book, 2009's Father. When he read the line, "'Boy, your ole man would shoot the hairs off a chigger's ass,'" the crowd erupted in laughter. (That is, except for a number of prim and proper elderly book-lovers, who earlier had looked askance when Ann Patchett, reading from her upcoming book, had said, via one of her characters, "Fuck." (Oh, and when Padgett Powell said the word "semen" when describing some of the comics of R. Crumb? Well, imagine yourself back in middle school.))
While Marion's reading was brief, the applause for his well-deserved honor was lengthy. And with that, we return to the conference....
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