Tusculum College to launch newest volume of “The Tusculum Review” on April 16

A launch party for the 2015 edition of The Tusculum Review will be held on Thursday, April 16, preceding the Old Oak Festival. The event is free and open to the public and will be held at 4 p.m. in the Shulman Center Atrium on Tusculum’s Greeneville campus.

The Tusculum Review, the college’s literary journal, features fiction and nonfiction, poetry, drama and art. Copies of the most recent edition will be available at the launch party. Along with the launch of the new volume of The Tusculum Review, the event will feature poetry readings by Susan O’Dell Underwood and Justin Phillip Reed.

Susan O'Dell Underwood

Underwood directs the creative writing program at Carson-Newman University. She and her husband, artist David Underwood, recently started Sapling Grove Press, devoted to discovering new writers and visual artists in the Appalachian region.

She has published two chapbooks, “From” and “Love and Other Hungers.” Her poems are included in a variety of journals and in “The Southern Poetry Anthology Volume VI: Tennessee,” and she has new work forthcoming in “Blue Fifth Review,” “One” andStill.”

J. Phillip Reed

Reed is a South Carolina native and the author of the “YesYes Books” chapbook, “A History of Flamboyance,” which has been finalized for the Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest and will be released this fall. His poems will appear in future editions of “Boston Review,” “Vinyl Poetry,” “joINT,” “PLUCK!,” “Muzzle” and in other publications.

His work has been anthologized in the “Best Undergraduate Writing,” section of “plain china” and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He received his bachelor’s degree in English at Tusculum College in 2013, where he served as assistant managing editor of “The Tusculum Review.” He lives in Saint Louis, Mo., where he is a Master of Fine Arts candidate in the writing program at Washington University.

The event is part of the Old Oak Festival, featuring fine arts and crafts on the Tusculum College campus, April 17-19. The festival offers something for everyone, including music, art, theater and creative writing, as well as gallery and museum exhibits on the Tusculum College campus.

In addition to the launch of “The Tusculum Review,” contributing editors Brent House and Charles Dodd White will be reading on Saturday, April 18, alongside this year’s Curtis Owens Prize winners, Cynthia Conte, a senior creative writing major from Chattanooga; Carnes White, a senior creative writing major from Pike Road, Ala., and Jennifer Frost, a sophomore creative writing major from Friendsville. The Saturday readings will take place at noon and 4:15 p.m. on the Old Oak Festival main stage.

House is an editor for “The Gulf Stream: Poems of the Gulf Coast” and a contributing editor for “The Tusculum Review.” He is a native of Necaise, Miss., where he raised cattle and watermelons on his family’s farm. Slash Pine Press published his first collection, “The Saw Year Prophecies,” and his poems have appeared in journals such as “Colorado Review,” “Cream City Review,” “Denver Quarterly,” “The Journal” and “Third Coast.” New poems are forthcoming in “The Kenyon Review” and other publications.

White was born in Atlanta, Ga., and grew up in both the city and the woods. He is the author of the novels “A Shelter of Others” and “Lambs of Men,” as well as the story collection “Sinners of Sanction County.” White is currently working on a new novel called “Hurt River” and serves as assistant professor at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville.

 

By Ryan M. Barker, senior creative writing and history major from Laurens, S.C.