We are meeting IN PERSON on the SECOND THURSDAY OF SEPTEMBER  to hear Jack Neely, longtime journalist and author of several books, including, most recently, Knoxville, Tennessee: The Curious Visitor’s Guide, and Historic Bearden: The 200-Year Story of Knoxville’s Fourth Creek Valley.

Jack is executive director of the nonprofit Knoxville History Project. He’ll be talking about KHP’s latest project, a Walking Guide to Knoxville Literature, due out this fall. A labor of love first proposed back in the 1990s, the first-ever handy pocket guide will offer biographical information and excerpts from the works of well-known novelists and poets like James Agee, Nikki Giovanni, Cormac McCarthy, Frances Hodgson Burnett, David Madden, George Washington Harris and others—as well as quite a few surprise curves, including lore about Kurt Vonnegut, Jean-Paul Sartre, Neil Gaiman, Tennessee Williams, and other iconic figures who had at least glancing adventures with this old city of letters, which to some degree was founded as a publishing center. It’ll be downtown-focused, because that’s the part of town authors have written most about, but will connect Haley Heritage Square to what little remains of Fort Sanders’ very lively literary heritage, with references to farther-flung parks.