Tennessee holds an MFA from North Carolina State University and a BFA from Stephen F. Austin State University. Tennessee, a 2022 Gregory Djanikian poetry scholar, has been featured in Best New Poets, POETRY, THRUSH, and elsewhere. Her debut literary fiction novel, Girls with Long Shadows, will be published by HarperCollins May 6th, 2025. She lives and teaches in Houston.
Advanced Praise for Girls with Long Shadows
GWLS in Media
'Girls with Long Shadows, Tennessee Hill’s riveting debut novel, is a brilliant, engrossing portrait of three sisters and the bonds of love and betrayal. Babies A, B, and C—triplet girls whose mother died young—move from a plural unity to their splintered selves within a town where the chorus of voices and history provide an emotionally charged backdrop for all that plays out. Hill is a gifted talent and I look forward to more.' — Jill McCorkle, New York Times bestselling author of Old Crimes and Life After Life
'Singular, striking, and sly, Girls with Long Shadows seduced me from its first sentence to its last. This book has so much scathing beauty in it I could feel the scrape of a knife on every page. What a delicate, hot-blooded tempest of a debut.' — Amy Jo Burns, author of Mercury
'Girls with Long Shadows is like nothing I've read before, yet achingly familiar in its complex portrayal of sisters, identity, and teenage girlhood. Atmospheric, addictive, a beating heart of a book. Tennessee Hill writes like a dream.' — Julia Fine, author of What Should Be Wild and Maddalena and the Dark
'A poetic, haunting, haunted novel—as suspenseful as it is lyrical. Within a sisterhood that's more like self-replication, Girls with Long Shadows maps the shimmering contours of identity and unfolds the kinds of damage only our most beloved can do to us. Baby B and her sisters moved and unsettled me and worked their way deep under my skin.' — Clare Beams, author of The Garden
'With bewitching lyricism and intimacy, Tennessee Hill invokes the rivalries, secrets, and betrayals that swirl around the near-mythic Binderup triplets in small-town South Texas. These sweltering summer days on the bayou seethe with fury and lust and shared grief, along with a tender evocation of the desire to be seen and known. Girls with Long Shadows is a scorcher of a first novel, stupefyingly good.' — Bryn Chancellor, author of Sycamore
Selected Poems
Third Coast: “How Not To” Fall 2023
Mid-American Review: “Rabbit Test” Volume XLII, Issue 2
The Southampton Review: “At a Party with Buzz Aldrin” & “Anti-Pastoral” (print) Vol. XVII, Issue 31
The McNeese Review: “Lyric Sister” (print) Spring 2023, Vol. 60
Southern Humanities Review: “Sometimes, Farm Boy” http://www.southernhumanitiesreview.com/5534-sometimes-farm-boy-by-tennessee-hill.html
Arkansas International Journal: “Father in the Pasture” (print) Spring 2022
Nimrod International Journal: “A Lifetime Trapped in Peach Brine” (print) Spring 2022, Vol. 65, No. 2
Conduit: “At the Wedding, An Old Flame Tells Me” (print) Summer 2022, No. 32
THRUSH: “WE BUY BROKEN GOLD” https://www.thrushpoetryjournal.com/march-2022-tennessee-hill.html
Adroit Journal: “Crater Heart,” “Train Through Memory,” & “Banquet Scene” https://theadroitjournal.org/issue-forty-one/tennessee-hill/
fugue: “My Boy, My Boy” (print) Summer 2002, Issue 62
POETRY: “Driving Home from Keyworths” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/156064/driving-home-from-keyworths
Beloit Poetry Journal & Verse Daily: “Night Coyote” http://www.versedaily.org/2020/nightcoyote.shtml
Porter House Review Editor’s Prize in Poetry 2020: “Cricket Noon” https://porterhousereview.org/articles/cricket-noon/
minnesota review Fall 2020: “May Babies” (print) Issue 95
Best New Poets 2018: “Stripling’s Florist Pharmacy” (print)
Selected Prose
Bellevue Literary Review: “Wiggler” Spring 2024
The Boiler: “St. Michael’s Maryland” https://theboilerjournal.com/2018/09/24/tennessee-hill/
Sonora Review: “Spiking is for Parties” https://sonorareview.com/2019/07/16/spiking-parties-tennessee-hill/
Jenny Mag: “The Boy Who Thought He Was a Glass of Orange Juice” http://www.jennymag.org/spring-17-issue/the-boy-who-thought-he-was-a-glass-of-orange-juice
Get in Touch
Literary Agent: Elizabeth Pratt at Trellis Literary
Film & TV Rights: Ali Lefkowitz at Anonymous Content
Upcoming Events
Brazos Bookstore (Houston, TX): May 7th @ 6:30pm
Quail Ridge Books (Raleigh, NC): May 21st @ 7pm