Husband-and-wife authors Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly will be the featured writers for Writers @ Work sponsored at Chattanooga State Community College.
A series of free events open to the public have been scheduled beginning Monday, April 8, through Thursday, April 11, to hear the couple speak on their book, “The Tilted World,” ask questions of them and get books signed.
“Tilted World,” set in 1927, follows federal revenue agent Ted Ingersol as he and partner Ham Johnson attempt to locate two missing agents in the town of Hobnob, Mississippi. After finding an abandoned baby at the scene of a shootout, Ingersol places the child with a woman named Dixie Clay, not knowing she will eventually help him unravel the town’s secrets of sabotage and murder.
Franklin was born in Dickinson, Alabama, a town of about 400 people. As a non-hunter in a hunting family, he spent his childhood writing, drawing and reading. After moving to Mobile, Alabama, to attend college, Franklin recalls receiving such low marks that his father decided to stop paying his college tuition. To pay for school, Franklin worked a variety of night jobs including a stint cleaning up hazardous waste. It was during this time that he discovered creative-writing classes.
After graduating from the University of South Alabama, he earned his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arkansas, where he met his wife. He currently teaches in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.