Arkansas Literary Festival April 26-29 2 Sessions & Events Jump Girl: The Initiation and Art of a Spirit Speaker Thursday, April 26 Friday, April 27 To Kill a Mockingbird Mayor’s Day of Science and Reading Salicrow has been a professional psychic and a teacher The theatrical version of Harper Lee’s Students meet Austin-based author Jason Gallaher, of metaphysical studies for more than 20 years. She literary classic is presented to a school Whobert Whover, Owl Detective, and Atlanta-based specializes in spirit communication and divination. In her audience in a Lunch & Learn by Argenta illustrator Frank Morrison, Let the Children March. Limited memoir, Jump Girl: The Initiation and Art Community Theater. seating for the public is available. Please contact Austin of a Spirit Speaker, she recounts being Thursday • 10:30 a.m. • Argenta Community Theater Hall, [email protected], for more information. raised in a family with psychic gifts. If Sponsored by Clinton Presidential Center, Museum of time allows she will also present her Then and Now Discovery, City of Little Rock, and Mayor Mark Stodola. mediumship abilities in a condensed View the mixed media fine art and Friday • all day • Clinton Presidential Center and Museum of Discovery Spirit Gallery. illustrations of Frank Morrison. Sponsored Saturday • 10 a.m. • River Market Books & Gifts by Hearne Fine Art. Puff Pastry, Sweet and Savory Thursday • 5:30 p.m. • Hearne Fine Art Join King Arthur Flour’s head bread baker Martin Hillbilly/Cult Philip for a quick tour of puff pastry tips and Blake Perkins’ Hillbilly Hellraisers: Federal Bygone Badass Broads techniques. Philip will read from his award-winning Power and Populist Defiance in the Ozarks “Based on the popular Twitter series of book, Breaking Bread, and answer questions examines the long, deep roots of the same name, Bygone Badass Broads along the way. Tickets are $15, available at resistance to government in the region features 52 remarkable and forgotten ArkansasLiteraryFestival.org. Limited seating. from the late 1800s to the present. trailblazing women from all over the Friday • noon • Eggshells Kitchen Co. Then, Debby Schriver chronicles world.” Loaded with fun illustrations, how Tony Alamo Christian Ministries author Mackenzi Lee’s fresh history Author! Author! prospered there. Based on extensive unveils women who “dared to step Toast the Festival authors at this fete featuring hors interviews and harrowing trips to outside the traditional gender roles of d’oeuvres and libations. Books will be available for compounds, she documents abuse and their time.” Sponsored by ESSE Purse purchase during this party geared for adults. Tickets the group’s gradual adoption of cult-like Museum & Store. are $25 in advance and $40 at the door. Order at behaviors and practices in Whispering in Thursday • 6 p.m. • ESSE Purse Museum & Store ArkansasLiteraryFestival.org. the Daylight: The Children of Tony Alamo Friday • 7 p.m. • Main Library, 5th Floor Christian Ministries and Their Journey to Freedom. Saturday• 10 a.m. • Historic Arkansas Museum Saturday, April 28 The Great American Read Interview Booth Fish Tales Help AETN & CALS promote this Jennifer Case’s Sawbill: A Search upcoming program by telling us the for Place chronicles “her migratory name of your favorite adulthood alongside the similarly book and why you love it. unpredictable history of Sawbill Saturday • 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. • Lodge,” a fishing lodge her Main Library, 1st Floor grandparents ran in northeastern Minnesota. “Stalking unique, maligned, and ugly species I A Literature and Language Critics have called these books “a love while enlightening readers on their ecological roles letter to literature and its power to and conservation statuses,” Mark Spitzer’s Beautifully transcend social barriers” and “a smart, Grotesque Fish of the American West ultimately sparkling and often hilarious valentine to “celebrates the wild and resilient beauty and remaining the content and keepers of dictionaries.” possibilities” of that locale. Paris-based teacher Michelle Kuo’s Saturday • 10 a.m. • Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center Reading with Patrick and Merriam- Ozarkian Gothic Webster lexicographer Kory Stamper’s “The devil didn’t go down to Georgia, he went to Word by Word will steal your heart. Arkansas,” to tell two hauntingly fierce tales that could Saturday • 10 a.m. • Ron Robinson Theater be the spawn of Shirley Jackson and Daniel Woodrell. “Unraveling with the The Queen of Rockabilly Black American Voices ferocity of addiction,” Kelly J. Ford’s All you hard-headed women and cowboy yodelers Former NBA All Star Joe Barry Carroll Cottonmouths explores crime and desire gussy up and scoot to an Arkansas Sounds concert scores with his second book, Black while Jarret Middleton’s Darkansas “has by legendary singer, songwriter, pianist, and American Voices: Shared Culture, it all—sex, song, sadness, and a history guitarist Wanda Jackson. Tickets are $20, available Values, and Emotions, which teems with as dark and twisted as the Ozark at ArkansasSounds.org. memorable passages, bold photographs, hollers…” Thursday • 7 p.m. • Ron Robinson Theater and exquisite African art. Sponsored by Department of Arkansas Heritage. Saturday • 10 a.m. • Main Library, Fribourgh Room Wanda Jackson Uncensored Saturday • 10 a.m. • Main Library, Darragh Center Poetic Justice The inimitable Wanda Jackson, “who gave Elvis his Does writing have the power to change growl,” gives an intimate talk about her life and About Family someone’s life, even someone in her autobiography, Every Night Is Saturday Night: Anne Fadiman’s The Wine Lover’s prison? See a short film and meet A Country Girl’s Journey to the Rock & Roll Hall of Daughter “is a poignant exploration of love, Ellen Stackable and Hanna Al-Jibouri, Fame. The special guest moderator is Rolling Stone ambition, class, family, and the pleasures of two of the people behind the Oklahoma- contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis. the palate.” David Giffels’ Furnishing Eternity based nonprofit that teaches incarcerated Friday • noon • Main Library, Darragh Center is also about family and about confronting mortality, surviving loss, and finding resilience in one’s roots. women the joys of poetry. Saturday • 10 a.m. • Roberts Library, Room 124 Saturday • 11:30 a.m. • Ron Robinson Theater Sessions & Events 3 Unf*ckology American Runway Southern Women “Finally stop fear from being your boss and put an end Booth Moore’s gorgeous American Runway: 75 Years Whether you seek a “quietly contemplative, to your lifelong social suckage” with Amy of Fashion and the Front Row captures “the celebrity- thought-provoking” novel about family, a Alkon’s Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to packed front row illuminated by the flashing cameras of yarn about “friendship and forgiveness,” Living with Guts and Confidence. Alkon, photographers. The hours of frenetic energy backstage” or a life-affirming tale of “an aging pug “a virtuoso of making science accessible to “ten minutes of live theater and named Teddy Roosevelt,” this Southern and fun,” delivers a “no-nonsense, no- pure fashion bliss.” Moore, who has trio is captivating. Come meet Julie coddling, no-airy-fairy-BS approach to covered the industry for more than two Cantrell, Perennials; Liz Talley, Come the subject.” decades, is senior fashion editor at The Home to Me; and Annie England Saturday • 11:30 a.m. • Main Library, Darragh Center Hollywood Reporter. Noblin, Pupcakes. Saturday • 1 p.m. • Main Library, Darragh Center Saturday • 1 p.m. • Roberts Library, Room 124 The Way Forward Carmen Maria Machado, author of Race & Religion Carnival of Now National Book Award finalist Her Body Ijeoma Oluo, a self-professed Internet Wonderblood is set in “an apocalyptic and Other Parties, joins her friend, Berlin- yeller, “uses anecdotes, facts, and wasteland where warring factions compete based Bennett Sims, author of White a little humor” in her visceral “user- for control of the land in strange and Dialogues, for this “literature striding into friendly examination of race” that dangerous carnivals…Politics and survival genre” panel. These “incantatory, cerebral, provides “tools to help create personal are at the center of this ravishing novel” by and profoundly unnerving” stories “will and societal transformations.” Julia Whicker. All the Names They Used for delight you, hurt you, and astonish you Daisy Khan is “the voice of a God brazenly tackles the dangerous forces as only the smartest literature can.” modern Muslim woman who broke that shape our lives, from censorship and Saturday • 11:30 a.m. • Historic Arkansas Museum all barriers to become a leader terrorism to technology and online dating. in a faith community that is often These alluring stories by Anjali Sachdeva Rich and Thrilling considered oppressive to women.” fuse science, myth, and imagination into Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, So You Want to Talk About Race and questions about current predicaments. calls Paper Ghosts “[an] artful and Born with Wings make a dynamic Saturday • 1 p.m. • River Market Books & Gifts elegiac psychological thriller. duo indeed. Sponsored by Rebsamen [Julia] Heaberlin brilliantly combines Poems for a New Communion Fund. travelogue with a heartbreaking portrait Lisa Dordal, Mosaic of the Dark, Molly Saturday • 1 p.m. • Ron Robinson Theater of the damage done by childhood.” Set McCully Brown, The Virginia State Colony in the Big Easy, Nathaniel Rich’s King America’s Excalibur for Epileptics and Feebleminded, and Zeno is “wildly imaginative,” offering a A Sure Defense: The Bowie Knife in Jacob Shores-Arguelo, Paraíso, use ritual, “distinctive mix of music, race, and history, America provides an overview of folklore, religion, science, and even history at a moment when the Spanish Flu and the Bowie knife’s role in American to explore death, family, sexuality, grief, a series of ax murders terrified residents. With an artful history, the evolution of its form including Arkansas’ anguish, and redemption, ultimately urging blend of humor, suspense, and noir, Rich folds facts into contributions, the beauty and artistry of these historic readers to a new communion.