Community Calendar

Conservation on Tap: The Birds of Seven Islands
September 17 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm EDT
at Schulz Bräu Brewing Company

Join Park Ranger Clare Dattilo to learn more about the birds, birding opportunities, and bird research at everybody’s favorite Seven Islands State Park!

Proceeds from this event benefit Discover Life in America, the official science partner of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Visit DLiA.org to learn more.

Free!

Silas House in conversation with Bishop Brian Cole
Union Ave Books is thrilled to partner with the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee to present Silas House for All These Ghosts. This ticketed event will take place on October 7th at 7pm at the Church of the Ascension. The ticket includes a hardcover copy of All These Ghosts and entrance to the event. Get your tickets on the Union Ave Books website!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of eight novels: Clay's Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, The Coal Tattoo, Eli the Good, Same Sun Here, Southernmost, and Lark Ascending. He is a recipient of the 2023 Southern Book Prize, the 2023 Booklist Editors' Choice, two Nautilus Book Awards, the Duggins Prize (the largest award for LGBTQ writers in the nation), and many other honors, including being longlisted for the 2019 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. In 2023 he became Poet Laureate of Kentucky and was a Grammy finalist for writing and producing the first country music video to feature a gay love story. In 2022 he served as a fiction judge for the National Book Awards. His writing has appeared recently in Time, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Bitter Southerner, Garden and Gun, and many other leading publications.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A timely and poignant poetry collection by acclaimed author and former Poet Laureate of Kentucky Silas House, including the poem read at Governor Andy Beshear’s 2023 inauguration.

Silas House is known throughout the South as a quintessential person of letters—a novelist, music journalist, environmental activist, columnist, and as the former Poet Laureate of Kentucky. His first full-length collection of poetry blends his Appalachian upbringing with his ongoing relation to the natural world. Poems of praise for community and the collective appear alongside others tinged with nostalgia and grief when House keenly observes the loss of rural America as he once knew it. Returning to his touchstone subjects, Silas recalls wild places, echoes stories from a lingering and living past, and explores an abiding connection to family, friends, and fellow artists.

Blount Mansion History Lecture Series - Lincoln’s Other Proclamation: The Origin of America’s Thanksgiving Holiday Tradition

Join us for a fascinating evening with Dr. William E. Hardy!

Dr. William E. Hardy is the Lincoln Scholar and Assistant Professor of History, as well as the Executive Director of The Abraham Lincoln Center for Leadership and Public Policy in the Paul V. Hamilton School of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Lincoln Memorial University.

Though Thanksgiving traces its roots to the 1621 Pilgrim harvest feast in Plymouth Colony, the practice of celebrating the holiday in late November was not firmly established until the American Civil War. During his presidency, Abraham Lincoln issued several thanksgiving proclamations to help the nation cope with the tragedy of war while remaining grateful that things were not worse. However, none of these proclamations specified a single day as a national day set aside for prayer.

Then, in October 1863, President Lincoln, prompted by a famed poet, novelist, and editor who had been vigorously pushing for a national Thanksgiving Day for nearly two decades, issued yet another Thanksgiving proclamation that established the modern holiday tradition.

-The special speaking event will be at Blount Mansion Visitors Center, 200 West Hill Avenue, Knoxville TN 37902.
-Limited free parking onsite
-$5 Donation suggested at the door. Cash and card accepted
-RSVP to Rose@BlountMansion.org