A monthly series including news about an Arkansas book, author, event, or item of literary interest to Arkansans.
Untold Arkansas: An Anthology.
By Erin Wood
You’re invited to a book launch party for Untold Arkansas: An Anthology at White Water Tavern, 2500 W 7th Street, Little Rock, on Wednesday, December 5 from 6-8pm. There, you can meet several of the book’s contributors who are enriching Arkansas’ creative landscape.
About the book: In this wide-ranging, multigenre compilation, fourteen poets, writers, artists, and photographers explore the richness and complication that infuses Arkansas with its character.
Untold Arkansas: An Anthology ventures into a boxing ring in the Delta, investigates roadside histories, calls forth unspoken messages that shape identity, reveals hidden lives on downtown streets and behind bathroom doors, and offers intimate portraits of everyday Arkansans.
By exploring the dualities of place and our attachments to it, it highlights and holds the tension between surviving and thriving in The Natural State, considering not only how people make do in a land of both opportunity and deprivation, but how our interaction with place marks and transforms us as we grapple with its mysteries.
This collection was born from Et Alia Press’s 2018 Neglected Histories of Arkansas Contest. The art/photography judge was former Executive Director of the Arkansas Arts Center, Todd Herman. Herman chose North Little Rock-based Brandon Markin for his collection “Helena Boxing Club.” The book’s cover image is from Markin’s collection and you can visit him at brandonmarkin.com.
The manuscript judge was HK Hummel (whose co-authored book Short-Form Creative Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology was released November 15 from Bloomsbury). Hummel selected Megan Blankenship’s poetry collection, “Mount Olive.” Blankenship was the recipient of a 2016 Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship.
The collection also features work by Chelsey Becker, Saira Khan, Maxine Payne, Ed Madden, Meikel Church, Justin Booth, Laura Raborn, Wendy Carlisle, Matt White, Joanne Meeks, Bethany May, and Jeannie Fowler Rodriguez Stone.
Untold Arkansas: An Anthology – 11 x 8.5, 68 pages, premium color. $24.95 plus free shipping at etaliapress.com.
A Hot Springs native, Erin Wood is a writer, editor, and publisher in Little Rock. She owns and runs Et Alia Press (etaliapress.com). She is editor of and a contributor to Scars: An Anthology and is currently at work on Women Makers of Arkansas, featuring 50+ women creatives. Wood’s work has appeared in Catapult, The Rumpus, Ms. Magazine’s Blog, Psychology Today, Tales from the South, and elsewhere, and was a Best American Essays notable.
