United States - August 28th, 2026 - Tim Duning’s Lawton Passage: As Told by a Tennessee Storyteller has received the Literary Titan Book Award, recognizing the memoir’s compelling blend of humor, grief, family history, and small-town Southern storytelling.

Set largely in Lawton, Tennessee, Lawton Passage follows Liam Menschen from childhood in his ancestral country home through adolescence, college, adulthood, loss, and an eventual return to the place that shaped him. Against the backdrop of the 1960s and 1970s, Liam navigates schoolyard mischief, family expectations, faith, friendship, first loves, tragedy, and the complicated truths that often exist beneath carefully polished appearances.

One of the book’s defining storytelling devices is a series of excerpts inspired by Liam’s father’s annual Christmas newsletters. Their polished version of family life provides a revealing contrast to Liam’s memories, where humor, conflict, mistakes, and inconvenient truths create a fuller picture of growing up. The idea grew from Duning’s own family history and his realization that the stories families preserve publicly can differ greatly from the experiences they remember privately.

Literary Titan praised the book for the way its early humor gradually develops into a more reflective and elegiac story. The review highlighted Duning’s ability to capture the rituals, contradictions, and performances of small-town family life while exploring larger themes of memory, race, class, friendship, and loss. Literary Titan described the book as especially suited to readers of Southern memoir, coming-of-age stories, family history, small-town Americana, and nostalgic literary nonfiction.

The award adds to the recognition already received by Lawton Passage, which was also honored with a “Get It” accolade from Kirkus Reviews.

What began as a collection of humorous family stories eventually developed into a deeper examination of closure. Duning has explained that the book’s emotional journey became clearer as he wrote about the deaths of friends and family members, his return to Lawton in 2021, and the realization that home can survive most powerfully through stories rather than through property or place.

Readers can discover Tim Duning’s award-winning Lawton Passage: As Told by a Tennessee Storyteller and purchase the book through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Readers who enjoy heartfelt memoirs, Southern storytelling, family history, and coming-of-age narratives are invited to experience Liam’s journey through a vanished small-town world and the memories that continue to give it life.

About the Author

Tim Duning was born in Nashville and grew up in a small town in Middle Tennessee. He graduated from Rhodes College with a major in Economics and a minor in English. He later earned graduate degrees in International Studies from the University of South Carolina and Finance from Purdue University.

Duning’s writing draws on family history, personal memory, humor, and the culture of small-town Tennessee. The origins of Lawton Passage date to a challenge from his mother, who encouraged each of her children to write their own stories. What began as a series of family recollections ultimately evolved into a wide-ranging memoir about childhood, adulthood, grief, closure, and the stories that preserve a sense of home.

Outside of writing, Duning enjoys exploring new places, music, photography, kayaking, hiking, pickleball, and biking. He and his wife live near their children in Southwest Ohio, where they enjoy spending time with their growing family and the joys of grandparenting.

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