Visiting writer Rachel M. Hanson—essayist, poet, fiction writer, Director of Punch Bucket Lit, and Temple University Professor—will read from her work, take questions, and sign books on October 16 at 7 pm. Reception to follow.

This event is free and open to the public. For adults and mature teens.

Her August 2024 memoir The End of Tennessee was chosen by the Southern Review of Books as among the Best Southern Books of 2024. The book is a haunting memoir of childhood trauma, building a life, and living with wounds that never heal: 

“Not a year before I ran away from home at seventeen, I stepped out of the house at dusk, still able to see shrub oaks thinned out for winter, fame flower, too, and dun clay so wet the smell of it seemed settled in my skin.” So begins Rachel M. Hanson’s debut memoir about growing up impoverished, uneducated, and surrounded by violence. In lyrical, fragmented prose, she lays bare the impossible choice between self-preservation and her love for five younger siblings for whom she had become a second mother. As the years pass, Hanson struggles with guilt for leaving her siblings as she slowly realizes she could not save them. The End of Tennessee is a testament to a sister’s love, resilience, and determination, a book for anyone who has left one life to create another.

Rachel M. Hanson is the author of The End of Tennessee: A Memoir (University of South Carolina Press, 2024) and recipient of the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship in Nonfiction at Colgate University. Her work has won Best of the Net and the University of Minnesota’s Walter Allen essay prize. Her essay “Ways of Leaving” earned Notable Mention in Best American Essays, and her other essays can be found in Creative Nonfiction, The Iowa Review, Ninth Letter, North American Review, and many other literary journals. Her poetry was selected for Best New Poets and has been published in The Minnesota Review, Juked, New Madrid, and elsewhere. Excerpts from her novel-in-progress appear in Joyland Magazine.

The Behan Arena is on the lower floor of Annie Hogan Byrd at 9 Shiloh Rd., Tuscululum, TN 37745, as seen here on the Tusculum University campus map. Park in the large lot on the side of the building.

Questions? Prof. Kelsey Trom | 423) 636-7300, ext. 5420