Jim Squires or Crockett White: Clarksville Writers’ Conference Keynote Speaker and Author of “West End” Inspires Writers
June 6, 2016
Clarksville, TN – James D. “Jim” Spires wrote West End under the pen name Crockett White. He is also author also of Read All About It: The Corporate Takeover of America’s Newspapers (Times Books, 1993), Secrets of the Hopewell Box (Random House, 1996), Bigger ‘n Texas (2013), Horse of a Different Color (2002, after his Horse Monarchos won the 2001 Kentucky Derby), and Headless Horsemen (2009).
Squires, a Nashville native, was city editor at The Tennessean, editor and executive vice-president of the Orlando Sentinel, and also at the Chicago Tribune, winning nine Pulitzer Prizes under his leadership.
Jim Squires
Montgomery County Historical Society to have author Sue Freeman Culverhouse speak at June 15th meeting
June 12, 2015
Clarksville, TN – Tennessee author Sue Freeman Culverhouse will speak on the life of Robert Penn Warren at the Monday, June 15th, 2015 meeting of the Montgomery County Historical Society. The 7:00pm meeting will be held at the South Guthrie Community Center.
Warren was born in Guthrie, Kentucky, in April, 1905; his childhood home is now a museum. Robert Penn Warren completed his senior year at Clarksville High School where he wrote for the Purple and Gold, the school literary magazine.
Author Sue Freeman Culverhouse (right) with author Amy Greene (left).
APSU graduate Conor Scruton to study poetry at summer house of Robert Frost
April 23, 2015
Clarksville, TN – A small, white house located on a farm in New Hampshire, the property now known as The Frost Place served as American poet Robert Frost’s summer home from 1915 through 1938.
It was on that humble plot of land where Frost formed many of the poems that would eventually earn him, among other honors, a Congressional Gold Medal and four Pulitzer Prizes. In 1977, 14 years after his death, the farmhouse was transformed into The Frost Place and became a retreat for emerging American poets.
English student Conor Scruton composes a poem on a typewriter in APSU’s Harned Hall on Monday, April 13, 2015. (Beth Liggett, APSU)
Learn about Tennessee Authors in Sue Freeman Culverhouse’s “Tennessee Literary Luminaries”
January 13, 2014
Clarksville, TN – Sue Freeman Culverhouse, long a staff-writer for ClarksvilleOnline.com, features eleven Tennessee authors in her new book. Tennessee Literary Luminaries: From Cormac McCarthy to Robert Penn Warren (The History Press, Charleston, SC, 2013). Her author website, www.sueculverhouse.com, links her readers to information about the book and her upcoming blog.
“I’m tired of people outside Tennessee believing that we’re all wearing overalls without a shirt, chewing tobacco, going barefoot, toting six-shooters, and living off road kill,” Culverhouse admits. “I want our youngsters to be proud of the literary heritage these and other Tennessee writers have contributed to the world of literature. All of the authors in my book have interesting lives in addition to having written not-to-be missed books.”
Tennessee Literary Luminaries by Sue Freeman Culverhouse
Tennessee Literary Luminaries Author, Sue Freeman Culverhouse, to hold book signing at APSU November 12th
November 11, 2013
Clarksville, TN – Sue Freeman Culverhouse, staff writer for Clarksvilleonline.com, has just released her new book, Tennessee Literary Luminaries: From Cormac McCarthy to Robert Penn Warren (The History Press, Charleston, SC, 2013).
Already receiving rave reviews, Tennessee Literary Luminaries encompasses the biographies of 11 Tennessee authors: Robert Penn Warren, Alex Haley, Cormac McCarthy, William Gay, Peter Taylor, Eleanor Ross Taylor, Alice Randall, A. Scott Pearson, Bud Willis, Amy Greene and Marshall Chapman.
Tennessee Literary Luminaries book by Sue Freeman Culverhouse
Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s Hank Hung the Moon is Great Reading
June 17, 2013
Rheta Grimsley Johnson
Clarksville, TN – If you haven’t read Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s books, you’re missing several great reads. Her latest, Hank Hung the Moon (NewSouth Books, Montgomery, Alabama: 2012), is a description of the influence of Hank Williams on Southern life and Southerners in particular
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, Johnson writes a column that appears in about 50 newspapers throughout the U.S. She has reported for United Press International, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Some of her other awards include the Ernie Pyle Memorial Award for human interest writing, the Headliner Award for commentary, and the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Distinguished Writing Award for commentary.
“Hank Hung the Moon” by Rheta Grimsley Johnson.
Robert Penn Warren Circle attracts nationally-known scholars
April 26, 2013
Robert Penn Warren
Clarksville, TN – Robert Penn Warren is the only writer to date with three Pulitzer Prizes, two in poetry and one in fiction. In 1980, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter, and in 1986, Warren was named the first Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the Library of Congress.
His senior year was spent at Clarksville High School prior to his attending Vanderbilt University. Although he had been appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy, he was unable to enter school there because during the summer, his brother had tossed either a stone or piece of coal that landed in Robert Penn’s eye; this eventually resulted in blindness and the removal of his left eye. While at Vanderbilt, Warren became a member of a writers’ group known as The Fugitives and the rest is history. [Read more]
Eighth Clarksville Writers’ Conference 2012: Marianne Walker Reveals the Love Story of Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh
June 25, 2012
Clarksville, TN – Petite Marianne Walker scooped the entire literary world when she discovered primary material not available to the other three writers who had penned biographies of Margaret Mitchell. Starting out on a quest to seek information about John Marsh, a native of Mayfield, Kentucky not far from Mrs. Walker’s home, she found a wealth of letters between Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh that his family members had saved.
According to amazon.com, Marianne Walker, a native of Monroe, Louisiana, is a retired professor of English and Philosophy at Henderson (Kentucky) Community College. Walker is the author of “Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: The Love Story Behind Gone With the Wind” and “When Cuba Conquered Kentucky.” She has written for the New York Times and The Louisville-Courier-Journal Sunday Magazine. Walker and her husband, Ulvester, live in Henderson, Kentucky.
Marianne Walker at the 2012 Clarksville Writer’s Conference
Eighth Annual Clarksville Writers Conference is June 7th and 8th with Pulitzer Prize Winner Alex S. Jones as Keynote Speaker
May 11, 2012
Clarksville, TN – The Clarksville Arts and Heritage Development Council is pleased to announce the Eighth Annual Clarksville Writers Conference, being held June 7th and 8th, 2012, on the campus of Austin Peay State University.
We are very honored to have as this year’s keynote speaker Alex S. Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author of Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy, and co-author of The Patriarch: The Rise and Fall of the Bingham Dynasty with Susan E. Tifft.
Jones, who is currently the director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, will speak at the conference banquet at the Clarksville Country Club on the evening of Thursday, June 7th. [Read more]
Robert Penn Warren and the High School Connection
April 25, 2012
Robert Penn Warren
Clarksville, TN – Ask the average college-bound high school student who Robert Penn Warren is and you might hear that the student has no idea that he was a writer.
Most probably the student wouldn’t be able to tell you that Warren was a graduate of Clarksville High School in 1921 or that he was born in Guthrie, Kentucky.
Even fewer would know that he is uniquely the winner of three Pulitzer Prizes, one for fiction and two for poetry; no other Pulitzer Prize winner can claim this accolade. [Read more]
