By Robert Laurence They have a reputation to uphold. Thirty years of publication, on-time and never missed. Multiple recognitions of national excellence by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. Front cover to back, a publication to take pride in. “They” are the editors and writers, the artists and production designers of Connotations, the award-winning literary magazine…
By Robert Laurence Sandra G. Ostrander calls her younger self a “cookie whore,” growing up and doing battle with childhood crisis and teenage adventure in Memphis during the 1950s and 1960s. She has collected her stories and memories of those days into a memoir of a young girl which is, like childhood itself, both chilling…
By Robert Laurence In 1989, Amy Herzberg came to Fayetteville thinking she wouldn’t unpack her bags; her stay would be so short. Today, she’s the Head of Performance, and Director of the MFA Program in Acting at the UA. Ten years later, in 1998, Robert Ford arrived, and is now Director of the MFA Program…
By Robert Laurence In 1963, in Kansas City at the age of 14, Geoffrey Oelsner knows — “senses” would be the wrong word — without being told that his grandmother has a stomach ache. In 2011, in the Evelyn Hills parking lot, Oelsner witnesses a mind-bending telekinetic event, as the locked door of his parked…
By Robert Laurence roberttoddlaurence@uark.edu “A slice of time.” That’s what Adam Vines, assistant professor of English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is looking for in his poems. A slice of time to capture, to describe, to hold up for inspection, before it flees into the past. And not just the moment alone, but…
By Ben S. Pollock Conway is only the latest stop for the peripatetic Englishman Garry Craig Powell, but he has been teaching creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas since 2004. He walks the talk, too — his novel Stoning the Devil was released in August by the British publisher Skylight Press. Powell will…
Staff Report “Nothing squeezes an idea like boundaries,” says Tom Wilkerson, one of nine writers whose work will be featured Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. in An Evening of Flash Fiction at Nightbird Books. The reading will deliver a series of very short stories — 600 words or fewer — in rapid succession, creating the…
By Ginny Masullo On the last Tuesday of every month (except December), the Ozark Poets and Writers Collective hosts a featured reader and open mic. At 7 p.m. this Tuesday, slam poet Houston Hughes is the feature, but he definitely will not be reading to the audience sitting in the Nightbird Books breezeway on Dickson…
By Cat Donnelly “I usually write to a word count. When I do feel inspired, it’s a gift.” — Tom Andes Fiction writer Tom Andes will be featured at the Ozark Poets and Writers Collective meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Nightbird Books on Dickson Street. Andes graduated from Loyola University, New Orleans, and went…
Leigh Wilkerson — poet, beekeeper, nurse, publisher and founder of the Dig In! Food & Farming Festival — is the Ozark Poets and Writers featured reader at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Nightbird Books on Dickson Street in Fayetteville.