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Walking Tour

USE The Map

To use the Literary Knox map, scroll down. You can navigate within the map to select a landmark. Once you've selected a Literary Knox landmark, scroll down the page to read about the site and view an image. Swipe left to view the next landmark, under each landmark photo, scroll up for explanation. This map is powered by The Northwestern University Knight Lab.




“...now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.”

— Cormac McCarthy [From Suttree] —

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about these landmark writers

James Agee

Famous for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) and A Death in the Family (1957), James Agee was born in Knoxville in November of 1909.

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James Agee

Alex Haley

Alex Haley is most famous for The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) and for Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976). He first came to Knoxville to speak at the 1982 World’s Fair.

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Alex Haley

Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville in 1943. Though she moved soon thereafter, she often visited her grandmother at 400 Mulvaney St. Her famous poem “Knoxville, Tennessee” is contained in her first book Black Feeling Black Talk, (1971).

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Nikki Giovanni

Cormac McCarthy

In 1937, at age four, Cormac McCarthy moved to Knoxville with his family where he would spend more than 30 years of his life. His novel Suttree (1992) is a famous look at life in Knoxville circa 1950.

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Cormac McCarthy