By Katie Hannah
Having started as Director of the University of Tennessee (UT) Press in April 2024, I thought it might be a good idea for me to make some connections across the state at the University of Tennessee’s five campuses. University Press Week, November 11-15, 2024, presented a great opportunity to do so.
I wound up visiting four campuses: UT Martin, UT Southern, UT Chattanooga, and the flagship campus (where the press is located), UT Knoxville. (I didn’t get to the medical school in Memphis—maybe next year!)
Since the press is part of UT Libraries, I started by reaching out to the library deans across the system, and they and their events staff helped me arrange everything. Working with them was great, because they could identify what events might work best in their respective areas. I mined our mailing lists for folks who lived in the area to help boost attendance. If you’re considering doing a tour of this kind within your state or university system, I wholeheartedly recommend it. There’s help, and enthusiastic interest, everywhere you turn!
At Martin, a rural campus in northwest Tennessee some 330 miles from our press offices, Dean Erik Nordberg, a member of our editorial board, and I held an afternoon publishing Q&A, where university and community members learned more about the press and publishing—and some of them brought some interesting book ideas! UTM’s radio show, Campus Connection, interviewed me while I was there, and I met with the new Director of African American Studies and learned about the dissertation she’s preparing for publication. In the evening, the university library hosted a book talk with Jim Johnson, author of our Reelfoot Lake: Oasis on the Mississippi and Rivers Under Siege: The Troubled Saga of West Tennessee’s Wetlands, which was well attended and entertaining, as Johnson regaled us with tales of growing up on Tennessee’s only natural lake, formed by an earthquake that caused the Mississippi River to run backwards in 1811.
Driving into Pulaski, home of UT Southern and known to many as the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan, I caught sight of a statue of a soldier wearing a slouch hat out of the corner of my eye. I assumed that it was a Confederate monument. During the course of my visit, I learned that in fact it is a statue called “Resurrection of Valor,” honoring the US Colored Troops who fought in the Federal Army. I also learned that, when the KKK recently wanted to come back to the birthplace, the entire city of Pulaski—including the Walmart—shut down so that the organization would have zero support. While on campus, I was gratified to see a display of university press books in the library and was treated to a tour of the campus by the library dean Richard Madden. With his help and that of librarian Jessica Barber, I hosted an evening panel on publishing that included Ken Vickers, an editorial board member and author of our biography of Tennessee novelist T. S. Stribling, and Zach Kinslow, a contributor to an edited volume on President James Polk and the director of the Clement Railroad Hotel Museum in Dickson, Tennessee. As so often happens when I travel in the South, I met a woman, a former academic dean, who had known my father-in-law, the late writer Barry Hannah, and as also often happens, she had plenty of tales to relate about his work and his exploits.
The morning of my birthday, I drove to Chattanooga—130 miles, a mountain range, and a time zone away—where the good people of UTC Library had set up a delightful display of university press books. With the help of the library events staff and new dean Tim Gritten, I hosted a publishing Q&A in the library, attended by the former chancellor, two editorial board members, and a roomful of interested faculty members. After a nice dinner with my son and his partner, who live in Chattanooga, I collapsed at my hotel!
The next morning, I returned to Knoxville—where of course there was work to be done! Still, we weren’t done with the tour yet! That evening, the library hosted a publishing panel consisting of three press authors—Georgiana Vines, prominent Knoxville journalist and author of East Tennessee Newsmakers; Gilya Schmidt, author of our frontlist title Hazzan Mordecai Gustav Heiser: An Artist, His Art, and the Cantor Tradition in America; and Reed Massengill, nephew of convicted murderer Byron de la Beckwith and author of Portrait of a Racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers (and a forthcoming book on Greta Garbo and director Clarence Brown). The authors shared advice on writing and publishing, and entertained the audience with wonderful stories. I think we were able to raise the profile of the press across the state, educate people on the publishing process, and champion the mission of the university press. In all, I covered about eight hundred miles and met dozens of great people who make the UT system work!
Katie Hannah is Director of the University of Tennessee Press.