Inductees/Honorees by Year
2024
Fiction:
Patricia Hudson Journalism:
Elizabeth (Betty) Bean Lifetime Achievement:
Richard Powers Nonfiction:
Paul Brown Poetry:
Kristi Maxwell Songwriting:
Maggie Longmire Award for Outstanding Contribution to East Tennessee Culture and Literacy:
Tom Parkhill Emerging Writer Award:
Anna Laura Reeve Songwriting (Posthumous):
Russell Smith Nonfiction (Posthumous):
Bernadotte Schmitt Journalism (Posthumous):
John Hightower Journalism (Posthumous):
Ruth Hale Journalism (Posthumous):
William Rule |
Patricia Hudson’s 2022 novel, Traces, is a retelling of the Daniel Boone saga from the perspective of Boone’s wife and two oldest daughters. Her other books include The Carolinas and the Appalachian States, a volume in the Smithsonian Guide to Historic America series, and Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia. She was a contributing editor at Americana magazine for over a decade and a frequent contributor to Southern Living. An ardent environmentalist, her current environmental passion involves cultivating native plants to support endangered pollinators. Patricia is the proud mother of two grown daughters. She lives in Fountain City with her husband, photographer Sam Stapleton, and two rescue dogs.
Betty Bean got her start in journalism at the Halls Shopper, moved to The Mountain Press in Sevier County, and then was hired by The Knoxville Journal, where she covered politics, courts, crime, and Cas Walker. She spent three winters in Nashville writing about state government. Shortly after the Journal closed on New Year’s Day 1992, Bean accepted a better-paying job up North, then decided she couldn’t leave Knoxville. A few months later, she went to work at alt-weekly Metro Pulse and eventually ended up afflicting the comfortable again at a re-invented Shopper-News. Altogether, she has logged 40 years reporting Knox-area news. Betty grew up in Fountain City and the Ritta Community and is a graduate of Holston High School and the University of Tennessee.
Richard Powers is the author of thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow, a fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award. He won the W.H. Smith Literary Award for best novel of 2003, and the Ambassador Book Award in 2004. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award. He has twice been a finalist for the Man-Booker Prize. The Overstory was awarded the William Dean Howells Medal and the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Powers makes his home in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, where he is an avid hiker and a student of the incredible diversity of life in the Southern Appalachians.
Paul F. Brown works as a freelance writer specializing in higher education content and copywriting, history, and agriculture. He is the author of Rufus: James Agee in Tennessee (UT Press, 2016) and Windrock Land Company: 150 Years of Coal Fortune, Tragedy, Renewal, and Recreation in the Cumberland Mountains (Knoxville History Project, 2022). He also has written articles for the Knoxville History Project and the Journal of East Tennessee History. Born in Knoxville, Paul spent much of his childhood and early adult years in Southern California. After returning to Tennessee, he taught music at a public school in Morgan County for 10 years. Meanwhile, he became interested in Knoxville history, largely through Jack Neely’s writings. He lives in Knoxville with his wife, Jessica, and their two sons.
Kristi Maxwell is the author of eight books of poems, including Goners (Green Linden Press, 2023), which won the Wishing Jewel Prize; My My (Saturnalia Books, 2020); Realm Sixty-Four (Ahsahta Press, 2008), which was named editor’s choice for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series; and Hush Sessions (Saturnalia, 2009), named editor’s choice for the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Kristi is an associate professor of English at the University of Louisville. A 2022-23 American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellow and former Elliston Poetry Fellow, Kristi holds a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Arizona. Kristi was born and raised in Cleveland, TN.
Maggie Longmire spent her early childhood in LaFollette, Tennessee. Singing for family and school events led to singing folk songs in the 1960’s and folk rock in the 70’s on Cumberland Avenue as a student at UT. She joined the Lonesome Coyotes in the 1970’s, performing regionally, including at the 1982 World’s Fair. Maggie’s passion for songwriting emerged when she took a break from performing to be the designer and co-owner of a leather business. Her first CD of original songs, Teachers and Travelers, was released in 2001. In 2008, Maggie collaborated with her brother John Longmire to create Granddaughters--An Americana Opera, exploring life in Campbell County in the early 1900’s. 2017 brought the release of Baby It’s Time. Recently her songwriting has turned to environmental activism.
Tom Parkhill is the Founding Artistic Director of the Tennessee Stage Company. He is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and has been a full-time professional theater artist since 1975. He has worked as an actor, stage manager, production manager, stage carpenter, and director. He founded the Tennessee Stage Company and the Strand Street Theatre in Galveston, Texas. Tom has been a company member with the Charlotte Shakespeare Company, Flatrock Playhouse, Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre, Playhouse on the Square, South Carolina Rep, Arkansas Rep, and Cumberland County Playhouse among others. He has been in over a hundred national, regional, and local commercials and has been cast in feature films, video, television, and radio.
Anna Laura Reeve is the author of Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility (Belle Point Press, 2023). Winner of the 2022 Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry, Anna Laura was also a finalist for the Greg Grummer Poetry Contest, the Ron Rash Award, and the Heartwood Poetry Prize. She won the Knoxville Writers Guild 2019 poetry contest. Her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Salamander, Terrain.org, and other publications. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee and a three-time Best of the Net nominee. She is a graduate of the master’s program in literature and poetry writing at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Anna Laura lives with her daughter and husband in Knoxville. She is a self-described native plant nerd and an advocate for sustainable agriculture.
Russell Smith (1949-2019) grew up in Lafayette, Tennessee, and moved to Knoxville in the late 1960’s, where he co-founded the band Fatback. One night while sitting in the original Ruby Tuesday restaurant, Smith watched a couple meet for what he imagined was a romantic tryst and wrote the song “Third Rate Romance.” After Fatback relocated to Memphis and were renamed the Amazing Rhythm Aces, the song became the group’s first hit. In 1976, the Aces won a Grammy for Country Performance by a Group with Smith’s “The End Is Not in Sight.” When the Aces disbanded in the early 1980’s, Smith began a solo career and became a successful songwriter, penning hits for Randy Travis and other country music singers. Smith died in 2019 from cancer at age 70.
Bernadotte Schmitt (1886 - 1969) was the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Coming of War, 1914, a detailed account of the causes of World War I. Born in Strasburg, Virginia, Schmitt grew up in the Fort Sanders neighborhood of Knoxville, where his father was a mathematics and classics professor at the University of Tennessee. He attended UT and became the state’s first Rhodes Scholar in 1904. He attended both Merton College, Oxford University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison for post-graduate degrees. As a historian, Schmitt focused on European and diplomatic history and served as a Professor of Modern European History at the University of Chicago from 1924 - 1946. Schmitt was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
John Hightower (1904-1987) was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and correspondent. Born in Coal Creek, Tennessee (now Rocky Top), he attended the University of Tennessee before starting his journalism career at the Knoxville News Sentinel in 1931. Hightower joined the Associated Press in 1933, where he covered the Navy and State Departments during World War II, including the atomic bombing of Japan and the development of radar. In 1952, he won the Sigma Delta Chi award for distinguished Washington correspondence. That same year, Hightower also won the Pulitzer and the Raymond Clapper Award, making him the first reporter to earn those three major awards in the same year. He retired to Santa Fe and taught journalism at the University of New Mexico.
Ruth Hale (1887-1934) was a journalist and women’s rights activist. Born in Rogersville, Tennessee, Hale began writing for the Hearst Bureau in Washington, DC, when she was eighteen. She wrote for several influential newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Public Ledger, the New York Times, Vogue, the Chicago Tribune, and Vanity Fair. Hale was also a popular socialite and theatrical publicist and was a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Outside of her journalism career, Hale is best remembered as cofounder of the Lucy Stone League, a feminist organization which fought for the rights of women to own property, receive paychecks, and register to vote using their maiden names even after marriage. She is buried in her East Tennessee hometown.
William Rule (1839-1928) was the founder and editor of The Knoxville Journal (originally the Knoxville Chronicle), which was published from 1870 until 1991. Rule lived his entire life in Knox County, except while serving as a Union officer in the Civil War. Following the Civil War, Rule served as editor of the Knoxville Whig, before founding the Knoxville Chronicle to maintain a tradition of bipartisan press in the Antebellum South. Rule served as Mayor of Knoxville in 1873 and again in 1898. Rule also cowrote and edited the 1900 edition of the Standard History of Knoxville. He was editor of the Journal from its inception in 1870 until his death in 1928, at which point Time Magazine named him the oldest active editor in the United States.
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2023
2022
Journalism:
William B. Scott
(Posthumous)
2021
2019
2018
2017