Allen Wier, Author 2Of "Tehano," Gives Reading at APSU March 18

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – As one of Austin Peay State University’s preinaugural activities, author Allen Wier will read from his latest novel, “Tehano,” at 8 p.m., Tuesday, March 18 in Gentry Auditorium, Kimbrough Building. A reception and book signing will follow.

“’Tehano’ is a book with an amazing scope, telling the story of the settling of the West as it took place in Texas. It’s rich and tough and gritty,” said Professor of English Barry Kitterman.

“I don’t think of the Comanche or the Tehanos or the German immigrants or the escaped slaves who came before us in quite the same way as I did before I read this amazing book.”

Published in 2006, “Tehano” is Wier’s fourth novel. His other novels are “Blanco,” “Disappearing as Air” and “A Place for Outlaws.”

He is the author of a story collection, titled “Things About to Disappear,” and his fiction, essays and reviews appear in such publications as “Southern Review,” “Georgia Review,” “Shenandoah” and The New York Times.

A Texas native, Wier currently teaches in the writing program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where graduate students voted him the “most outstanding professor in the classroom.” He also has taught at Longwood College, Carnegie-Mellon University, Hollins College, University of Texas, Florida International University and the University of Alabama.

He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship from the University of Texas and the Texas Institute of Letters.

In a review of “Tehano,” famed author Lee K. Abbott wrote: “This is a novel that sticks. It has the smell of lived life, the rattle of a world long gone. It rouses and compels, not least because Wier has a true yarn, outsize and grand, to tell.

“His is an American West fetched up whole and mythic, more dust and wind and high sky and idiom per page than anything this side of Larry McMurtry.”

For more information about Wier’s reading, which is free and open to the public, contact Susan Wallace, managing editor of Zone 3, by telephone at (931) 221-7031 or e-mail wallacess@apsu.edu.