CALS Blogs

Help the Fest go beyond the page with the 2023 Classic in Context. Patrons at the 2021 Fest session chose Stephen King's The Shining for 2022. Join us Sunday, October 30, at 4pm for a discussion with John Hornor Jacobs, followed by the film at 6:30pm. FREE. Also, please take a moment to vote on which classic you’d like to see explored at the 2023 Festival.

Tell us briefly about your book.
My latest is a collection of one hundred very short ghost stories called The Ghost Variations. It was published, after many delays, at the height of the pandemic.

What motivated you to write it?

Friends of the Library Week is October 16 – 22. “Friends of the Library” are individuals who purchase annual memberships and those dues go toward funding some important programming, like the book festival, book club kits and some of the Arkansas Sounds Concerts. At the Central Arkansas Library System, we call them Friends of CALS.

CALS has added a new streaming service! Kanopy is a video-streaming platform dedicated to thoughtful and thought-provoking films

Tell us briefly about your book.
A Lush and Seething Hell is a duology of short novels. It was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy Awards, and it’s an exploration of art and to a certain extent the sort of madness that trauma can bring to artistic pursuits.

Tell us briefly about your book.
What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel is a graphic nonfiction book that explores the stories surrounding the Crescent Hotel’s strange and tragic two years as the Baker Hospital, a Depression-era cancer hospital. The 240-page, fully painted graphic narrative blends oral histories, newspaper articles,

Tell us briefly about your book.
My book is nonfiction and chronicles the 59-year journey of America’s foremost Queen of Gospel, Mahalia Jackson. It takes the reader from her childhood home of New Orleans’s “N***** Town” to Chicago, Illinois—the city that became home to hundreds of thousands of African Americans who joined the Great Migration from the South in search of a better life.

If you haven’t already cleared your schedule for the end of October, you’ll want to make room before you finish planning those Halloween parties. On October 20, 7-8:30 p.m., we’re lighting up the bridges with CALS orange and enjoying live music from the Big John Miller Band, refreshments, and a special Six Bridges beverage provided by Rock Town Distillery.