A Word on Words: The Best of John Seigenthaler’s Interviews

For years the legendary John Seigenthaler hosted A Word on Words on Nashville’s public television station, WNPT. During the show’s four-decade run (1972 to 2013), he interviewed some of the most interesting and most impor-tant writers of our time. These in-depth exchanges revealed much about the writers who appeared on his show and gave a glimpse into their creative pro-cesses. Seigenthaler was a deeply engaged reader and a generous interviewer, a true craftsman. Frye Gaillard and Pat Toomay have collected and transcribed some of the iconic interactions from the show.

Featuring interviews with: Arna Bontemps - Marshall Chapman - Pat Conroy - Rodney Crowell - John Egerton - Jesse Hill Ford - Charles Fountain - William Price Fox - Kinky Friedman - Frye Gaillard - Nikki Giovanni - Doris Kearns Goodwin - David Halberstam - Waylon Jennings - John Lewis - David Maraniss - William Marshall - Jon Meacham - Ann Patchett - Alice Randall - Dori Sanders - John Seigenthaler Sr. - Marty Stuart - Pat Toomay

John Seigenthaler (1927-2014) was born in Nashville, Tennessee. He attended Peabody College and worked as a reporter for the Tennessean. In 1960, he went to work for Robert Kennedy and, in that capacity, was attacked by an angry mob of racists in Montgomery, Alabama. He returned to the Tennessean, where he spent the rest of his career. He hosted the book program A Word on Words.

Patrick Toomay attended Vanderbilt University and played ten years in the NFL. Toomay has written a number of books, including Any Given Sunday.

Frye Gaillard is the author-in-residence at the University of South Alabama. He has written more than twenty books, including With Music and Justice for All: Some Southerners and Their Passions (Vanderbilt 2008). He attended Vanderbilt University.