Author
Jared Harvey’s new novel available now
Sep. 24, 2025—Lecturer Jared Harvey‘s latest novel is now available from Asterism Books. Soft Lighting is written almost exclusively in the first-person singular and plural, and stages a motley of narrators (or only one) who respond to one another or who do not, and if not, I wonder whether desire for interpersonal connection withers, or excruciates. There is no...
Lydi Conklin joins the Gertrude C. & Harold S. Vanderbilt Reading Series
Sep. 19, 2025—Assistant Professor Lydi Conklin joined the Gertrude C. & Harold S. Vanderbilt Reading Series on September 4 to share their new novel Songs of No Provenance. In addition to reading from the work, which the Chicago Review of Books called “a great American music novel . . . a lush, wild story, textured with sensory and technical descriptions...
Vanderbilt MFA students featured in Cheekwood Exhibit
Sep. 16, 2025— MFA faculty, students, and alumni are currently featured in the exhibition Verse & Visions at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens. Visit Cheekwood and read the ekphrastic poems of Sydney Mayes, Carson Colenbaugh (MFA ’25), Ajla Dizdarevic, and Assistant Professor Didi Jackson. Verse and Vision,...
Didi Jackson wins 2025 Tennessee Book Award
Sep. 16, 2025—Humanities Tennessee has selected Assistant Professor Didi Jackson’s My Infinity: Poems as the winner of the 2025 Tennessee Book Award for Poetry, calling it “a remarkable book, not only for the phenomenal texture and musicality of its language, but equally for its stunning imagery and metaphorical constructs.” Didi Jackson is the author of the poetry...
Bryan Byrdlong (BA ’15) publishes debut collection of poetry
Sep. 16, 2025— Bryan Byrdlong’s Strange Flowers is a staggering debut that maps the lines and links between the living and undead, ritual and where the speaker belongs. Byrdlong’s exploration of the zombie, from the Caribbean to cocktails, marks what changes us, takes us out of ourselves, and...