Parnassus Books, owned by novelist Ann Patchett, has acquired Hooks Book Events, a provider of nonfiction book and author programs for businesses and organizational teams. Hooks Book Events will operate as a division of Parnassus.

The acquisition unites friends Ann Patchett and Perry Pidgeon Hooks, both longtime members of the bookselling/publishing community. It was while she worked at Davis-Kidd booksellers in 1994 that Hooks first got the idea for bringing together authors with business organizations for professional development, training and team-building programs.

After moving to Washington D.C., she founded Hooks Book Events in 2007, partnering with independent bookstores to fulfill bulk orders. Parnassus Books has been a retail partner of Hooks Book Events since 2012.

Hooks Book Events began by offering in-person author programs to D.C.-based organizations. In spring of 2020, the company pivoted to delivering online programs, helping to bring remote teams together during isolating times. Hooks Book Events now serves clients across the country, including Fortune 500 companies, federal government agencies and nonprofits.

VU athletics, Cromwell agree to multiyear deal

Vanderbilt Athletics and Cromwell Media have agreed to a multiyear partnership beginning with the 2023-24 academic year.

102.5 The Game will be the primary flagship station for all Commodore football, men’s basketball and baseball games – along with the Commodore Hour, Vanderbilt’s weekly radio show – with those contests simulcast on 106.3 FM. When conflicts arise due to the Nashville Predators’ schedule, those program’s broadcasts are set to air on 94.9 FM, which will also serve as the home for Vandy women’s basketball.

Vandy’s first game broadcast on 102.5 The Game will be on Aug. 26 when the Dore football team plays host to Hawai’i.

Mirati, Sarah Cannon announce partnership

Mirati Therapeutics, a commercial stage biotechnology company, and Sarah Cannon Research Institute, one of the world’s leading oncology research organizations conducting community-based clinical trials, has announced a strategic partnership aimed at increasing diversity in clinical study recruitment practices.

Nearly 85% of patients living with cancer are treated in community centers, the American Association for Cancer Research reports. Ensuring equitable access to and participation in clinical studies requires improved awareness and targeted efforts to remove systemic barriers that may limit access to clinical studies for underrepresented patient groups.

As part of this partnership, Mirati and SCRI will implement practices and programs focused on removing obstacles to clinical study participation, including expanding physician and patient education and increasing access to community-based clinical trials. Initiatives will be focused on reducing complexities associated with activating clinical trials thereby enabling a greater number of community practices to participate in research studies.

SCRI’s research network brings together more than 1,300 physicians who are actively accruing patients to clinical trials at more than 250 locations in 24 states across the U.S. Mirati will work directly with Development Innovations, SCRI’s full-service, oncology-focused contract research organization, to execute the collaboration initiatives across the SCRI network.

Blattner Tech expands analytics capabilities

Blattner Tech, a leading global provider of predictive transformation services and tools in the data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning industry, has announced its acquisition of a project management solution designed to help companies better manage project risk. The move is part of Blattner Tech’s strategic plan to offer end-to-end solutions that integrate technology, processes, and people.

“We see numerous opportunities to improve the way companies manage large-scale projects by introducing predictive analytics to help project managers ensure projects are completed on time and within budget,” says Russ Blattner, CEO of Blattner Technologies. “With the advancements in technology we are excited to see how machine learning can improve project outcomes.”

Blattner Tech further expounded by announcing their new natural language processing (NLP) and Large Language Model (LLM) capabilities to be added to their project management software, which will enable project managers to ask questions about their projects and receive answers based on predictive analytics. With this new development, project managers will be able to get real-time insights and predictions, improving the accuracy of their decision-making.

This latest acquisition is the fourth in a string of acquisitions by Blattner Tech over the last 12 months.

Nashville tops Fifty Grande live music list

Travel magazine Fifty Grande has announced its first-ever music special feature, which includes a comprehensive ranking of America’s top live music cities and an in-depth look at several cities’ rising music scenes.

The magazine’s readers have spoken, and in a recent survey named Nashville the No. 1 live music city in the nation, followed by New Orleans, New York, Austin and Los Angeles. Several other cities that made the list might surprise some, including Asheville, North Carolina, and Columbus, Ohio.

For the Best Live Music Cities ranking, Fifty Grande surveyed its readers, a group of active and engaged travel, music and food enthusiasts. The reader survey was conducted in December 2022 and results were based on 1,320 respondents. Full story

OneOncology inks 2 independent practices

OneOncology, the national platform for independent oncology practices, has finalized partnership agreements with two practices bringing 11 additional medical oncologists, one palliative care physician, and 15 advanced practice providers onto the platform.

Coastal Cancer Center, which is led by Dr. Emily Touloukian, has six medical oncologists, a hospitalist, and eight advanced practice providers caring for patients at four locations in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina area.

Pacific Cancer Care, which is based in Monterey, California and led by Dr. Zach Koontz, has five medical oncologists, one palliative care physician, and seven advanced practice providers.

Pacific Cancer Care joins the Los Angeles Cancer Network and Medical Oncology Associates of San Diego as the third Golden State oncology practice partner of OneOncology. With the addition of Coastal Cancer Center in South Carolina, OneOncology now has practice partners in 14 states.

Oprah details her TSU graduation path

Oprah Winfrey delighted graduates at her alma mater Tennessee State University, telling the story of how she fell one credit short of graduating as she launched the media career that would make her a household name.

Giving the commencement address at the historically Black university, Winfrey recalled that she was living with her father in East Nashville while attending college, helping out in his store and presenting the weekend news at a Black radio station.

That’s where the lead anchor at CBS affiliate WTVF called her at school to ask if she wanted a job.

“I said, ‘No sir. TV? Not really, sir, because my father says I have to finish school, and school is just too important,’” Winfrey recalls.

She then went back to class and related the conversation to her scene design professor who “looked at me as if I didn’t have the brains that God gave lettuce,” Winfrey says.

He spoke to her father, and Winfrey took the job. Beginning the second semester of her sophomore year, Winfrey arranged to finish her classes by 2 p.m. so she could work at the television station 2:30-10:30 and be home by her father’s 11 p.m. curfew.

By the end of her senior year in 1975, Winfrey’s career was in full swing. So she wasn’t terribly distressed to learn that she was one credit short and would not be able to graduate. But her father would not let go of the topic, asking her for years, “‘When you going to get that degree?’” she says.

Finally in 1988, she was allowed to write a paper and submit some of her shows for the final credit.

“So I got my degree from Tennessee State, right around the time I got my third Emmy,” Winfrey says.

Marigold launches SMS capabilities for Emma

Marigold, a global martech leader focused on delivering relationship marketing solutions that help marketers acquire, grow and retain customers, today announced that SMS is now available for Emma by Marigold customers.

This new, fully integrated offering allows marketers to execute personalized campaigns across email, web and SMS directly from the Emma platform, with no new training or enablement required.

By providing a centralized platform where marketers can use the same contact lists, campaign setup process and reporting for both email and SMS, Marigold helps marketers deliver personalized campaigns faster.

SMS has emerged as a powerful channel for marketers looking to deliver an integrated and engaging customer journey.

Marigold’s 2023 U.S. Consumer Trends Index found that 45% of consumers have purchased directly from an SMS message and 66% use their mobile phones to research products while shopping in store.

Healthcare Resiliency Program gets first grants

The Tennessee Department of Health has announced the first round of grant awards from its $230 million Healthcare Resiliency Program to expand Tennessee’s capacity in delivering quality health care services.

TDH will make $121 million in funding available in the HRP’s first grants awarded to 54 eligible applicants in two broad project areas – Capital Investment, to expand brick-and-mortar health care capacity, and Practice Transformation and Extension, to improve access to health care services.

TDH launched the HRP in November 2022 as a competitive grant program to modernize and transform health care in Tennessee.

TDH’s HRP grants are funded through the American Rescue Plan, which passed Congress in March 2022. Tennessee received $3.9 billion in total ARP funds, and in August 2021, the state’s Financial Stimulus Accountability Group dedicated $230 million in recovery funding to TDH for health care modernization and transformation projects.

TDH continues to evaluate HRP grant applicants and projects and expects a second announcement of grant awards in the coming weeks.