In 1930, a remote corner of southwest Arkansas witnessed the discovery of cinnabar, the ore from which mercury is extracted. Upon the arrival of "the metal of a thousand uses," a wave of hope and ambition swept through the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains as mercury mining promised economic revival for the struggling state. Despite the known ......
In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of trees both as allies in the fight against climate change and as sources of emotional well-being. In nineteenth-century America, against a backdrop of accelerating deforestation much like today's, writers and artists found emotional solace and symbolic meaning in the woods, ......
Frank Stanford's The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You is a truly original Southern epic with immense cultural and creative range. Revered by a devoted cult following since it was first published posthumously in 1978, the poem unfolds over more than fifteen thousand lines without stanza breaks or punctuation, creating an unstoppable ......
Frank Stanford’s The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You is a truly original Southern epic with immense cultural and creative range. Revered by a devoted cult following since it was first published posthumously in 1978, the poem unfolds over more than fifteen thousand lines without stanza breaks or punctuation, creating an ......
The Arkansas Gazette began with a printing press being floated up the Arkansas River in 1819. Until its demise following a long, bitter, and very public newspaper war in 1991, it was inextricably linked with the state's history, reporting on every major Arkansas event. Looking Back at the Arkansas Gazette, knowledgeably and intimately edited by ......
Originally published in 1924 and long out of print, this book tells the story of the Mosaic Templars of America (MTA), a famous Black fraternal organization that was founded by John E. Bush and Chester W. Keatts (both former slaves) in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the late-nineteenth century. The organization originally provided illness, death, and ......
Winner of the 2006 Booker Worthen Literary Prize and the 2004 Ragsdale Award A dominating spirit of public service animated the life of Sidney Sanders McMath (1912-2003), the thirty-fourth governor of Arkansas. Promises Kept, completed and published when McMath was in his nineties, tells his story in his own words-from the piney hills of South ......
Samuel Piccone's Domestica firmly plants its feet at the fraught intersection of inheritance and the escape from it. Across these interrogative poems, the routines of marriage, parenthood, and faith reside in a place where "every garden is erased / by the thrum of impermanence." If "silence is the earth's way of embracing us / in whatever ......
Finalist, 2026 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Following in the footsteps of poets like Hanif Abdurraqib, John Murillo, and Robert Hayden, Raphael Jenkins's Paper Pistolconsiders tenderness, heteronormativity, male friendship, grief, and the various violences implemented by and against Black men. Channeling a multitude of speakers, this collection ......
