Editor's Note

Humanities Tennessee welcomes a new staff member this month. René Dillard, a former public schoolteacher with degrees from Vanderbilt and the University of Chicago, is HT’s director of development. You can find out a bit more about her here. (She’s a fan of reading, dogs, and fireflies — a stellar trio of interests, in our humble opinion.)

Today at the site, Michael Ray Taylor reviews the latest book by David George Haskell, How Flowers Made Our World. “Haskell’s reflections on the natural world inevitably connect readers to deep time, to the slow course of evolution that made humans possible,” Mike writes. “By focusing on one small, typically fascinating aspect of nature, he presents Aha! moments that connect all of life. This time it’s flowers.” 

Bonnie Blaylock’s new novel, The Water Women, is set in 20th-century Sardinia, where three generations of mothers and daughters carry on the ancient art of spinning exquisite cloth from fiber produced by mollusks. Reviewer Tina Chambers notes, “Blaylock brings the island of Sardinia to life with her vivid descriptions of its traditional music, dress, food, and drink, as well as the glorious Mediterranean flora and fauna, especially the ocean that is so loved and honored by the water women.”

In her review of poet Donovan McAbee’s Holy the Body, Emily Choate writes that the collection “depicts a restless faith awake to all the perilous truths of our age, the paradoxes woven into our humanness, the finiteness of our lives. And the lens through which McAbee offers us these subjects is always beauty.”

News Roundup

• Marcus Wicker revealed the cover for his forthcoming poetry collection, Dear Mothership, and had an essay published at Poetry Foundation. 

• V.E. Schwab revealed the cover for Victorious, the final volume on her Villains trilogy.

• David George Haskell discussed How Flowers Made Our World with Nautilus. 

• Nashville readers will be happy to hear that the main branch of the Nashville Public Library, which has been closed since a fire in June, is scheduled to reopen on March 30.