Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. "We're born into a world already in progress, like arriving late at a movie. Erin Tocknell, born to Nashville, loved the city in a wide-eyed, child's way, before she had a glimmer of the history that had shaped what she took to be her world. CONFEDERATE STREETS recalls how it feels to wake up to history, to understand you are living right in the midst of it. Not all the lessons are easy, but in Tocknell's telling we come to appreciate the rewards of facing up to the hard facts, of refusing the false glamour of living innocent of history. CONFEDERATE STREETS reminds us what as a nation we seem always to be forgetting, just how far love and understanding and goodwill can take us toward the promised America."—Kevin Oderman

Author City: CHATTANOOGA, TN USA

Erin E. Tocknell grew up in Nashville but received all of her post-secondary education in or near Pittsburgh, earning her undergraduate degree from Carnegie Mellon in 2000 and her M.F.A. from West Virginia University in 2007. A winner of the AWP Intro Award in 2007, she has been published in the Tampa Review, The Southern Review, Ancient Paths, and the Oakland Review. She lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she has the daily privilege of introducing students at The McCallie School to the joys of literature, writing, and rowing.