Five years ago this week, Watkins School of Art, Design & Film held a socially distanced commencement ceremony amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It would the last in the school's 185-year history, as it later merged with Belmont University. Steven Womack taught at Watkins for 25 years, and he details his time there — and the school's demise — in a memoir titled Death of a College.

Before he ever stepped into a college classroom, Steven was a writer (inspired first by Robert Penn Warren) of multiple novels, beginning with Murphy's Fault and including many mysteries after, including a Nashville-set series featuring the detective Harry James Denton, and the newly released stand-alone, Blood Plot.

Guest: Steven Womack

Host: Demetria Kalodimos

Producer: Steve Haruch

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices