Looking to localize your reading list? Then you’ve come to the write place.
We’re highlighting five Chattanooga authors — each belonging to a different literary genre — for our local bookworms to check out.
Pro tip: Keep it local and pick up your next read at one of the Chattanooga bookstores we have listed below.
Fiction: Audrey Keown
Author of the Ivy Nichols Mysteries, Keown’s novels “Murder at Hotel 1911” and it’s sequel, “Dust to Dust”, are puzzling murder mysteries set in historic hotels based in Chattanooga.Keown explores themes of redemption, connection to history, and mental illness in hopes of helping lift the stigma.
Poetry: Ishmael Reed
Reed has published over 30 books of poetry along with countless other works, including “Conjure,” which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and nominated for the National Book Award.Reed was born in Chattanooga and has a collection of poems titled “Chattanooga” about the city. You can read more about his legacy here.
Young Adult Literature: Natalie Lloyd
Lloyd’s first book “A Snicker of Happiness” made the New York Times Bestseller list in 2015. Since then, she has written several other works such as “The Key to Extraordinary,” all with the same magical, adventurous tales for younger readers + those young at heart.
Historical: Roy Morris Jr.
Beginning his professional writing career as a journalist for the then-Chattanooga News-Free Press, Morris Jr. has written several historical novels about the Civil War such as “Fraud of the Century”. Along with his novels about war, Morris Jr. has also written biographies about widely divergent figures like “Gertrude Stein Has Arrived,” “American Vandal: Mark Twain Abroad,” and “Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company.”
Horror: Mason Gallaway
If you’re looking for dark, weird, and scary stories, Gallaway is your guy. His short fiction story “The Black Room” appears in “It Calls from the Doors” + “The Sea Reaches Up” in “It Calls From the Sea: An Anthology of Terror on the Deep Blue Sea” — you might want to leave the lights on while reading these stories.
