Katherine Angel is the author of Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell, and Daddy Issues. She directs the MA in Creative and Critical Writing program at Birkbeck, University of London, and has a PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again | Nonfiction

The elegant, searching Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again spans science and popular culture, pornography and literature, debates on #MeToo, and consent and feminism, challenging our assumptions about female desire. In this era of renewed attention to violence and power, this book urges that we remake our thinking about sex, pleasure, and autonomy without any illusions of perfect self-knowledge. Only then will we bring about Michel Foucault’s sardonic promise, in 1976, that ”tomorrow sex will be good again.”

Jacob M. Appel is an associate professor of psychiatry and medical education at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York City and is also director of ethics education in psychiatry. He is the author of four novels, including Millard Salter’s Last Day; ten short story collections; an essay collection; a cozy mystery; a thriller; a volume of poems; and a compendium of medical dilemmas. He taught at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop in New York City, and at Yeshiva College, where he was the writer-in-residence.

Who Says You’re Dead | Nonfiction

Who Says You’re Dead? offers up challenging ethical dilemmas and asks readers, What would you do? In short, engaging scenarios, the book takes on hot-button issues that many of us will confront, such as genetic screening, sexuality, privacy, and doctor-patient confidentiality. Appel unpacks each hypothetical with a brief reflection drawing from science, philosophy, and history, explaining how others have approached these controversies in real-world cases. The book is designed to defy easy answers and to stimulate thought and even debate among professionals and armchair ethicists alike.

Kenneth Barnes, an Arkansas native, is a retired professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. His books have won the J.G. Ragsdale Book Award, the Arkansiana Award, and the Booker Worthen Literary Prize.

The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Arkansas | Nonfiction

The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Arkansas: How Protestant White Nationalism Came to Rule a State details how the KKK established a significant foothold in Arkansas in the 1920s, with more than 150 state chapters and tens of thousands of members at its zenith. Propelled by the prominence of state leaders such as Grand Dragon James Comer and head of Women of the KKK Robbie Gill Comer, the Klan established Little Rock as a seat of power second only to Atlanta. The book traces this explosion of white nationalism and its impact on the state’s development.

Andrea Bartz is a Brooklyn-based journalist and author of The Herd and The Lost Night. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Women’s Health, Martha Stewart Living, Elle, and many other outlets. She has held editorial positions at Glamour, Psychology Today, and Self, among others.

We Were Never Here | Fiction

In We Were Never Here, two globe-trotting best friends kill a backpacker in self-defense during a trip through Chile – and it’s not the first time their travels have ended in bloodshed. With the author’s signature take on the complexities of female friendship, this thriller explores how society heaps violence and trauma on female bodies without allowing them to dish it back – and examines how the truth becomes malleable when it comes to our most intimate shared experiences.

Kyle Beachy‘s first novel, The Slide, won the Chicago Reader‘s Best Book reader’s choice award. His short fiction has appeared in Fanzine, Pank, Hobart, Juked, the Collagist, and elsewhere. His writing on skateboarding has appeared in the Point, the American Reader, the Chicagoan, Free Skateboard Magazine, the Skateboard Mag, Jenkem, Deadspin, and the Classical. He teaches at Roosevelt University in Chicago and co-hosts the skateboarding podcast Vent City with pro skater Ryan Lay and others.

The Most Fun Thing | Nonfiction

The Most Fun Thing, a memoir in essays, follows a journey to uncover the hidden meaning of skateboarding and shows how this search unexpectedly led to insights on marriage, love, loss, and American invention.

Marie Benedict is a lawyer with more than ten years of experience as a litigator. A graduate of Boston College and the Boston University School of Law, she is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Only Woman in the Room, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, Carnegie’s Maid, The Other Einstein, and Lady Clementine. All have been translated into multiple languages. She lives in Pittsburgh with her family.

The Personal Librarian | Fiction

The Personal Librarian, co-written with acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray, is a remarkable historical novel about J. P. Morgan’s librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, a Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation.

Swannee Bennett retired as director and curator of Historic Arkansas Museum in 2020 after a career at the museum spanning thirty-eight years. He is the coauthor, with William B. Worthen, of Arkansas Made: A Survey of the Decorative, Mechanical, and Fine Arts Produced in Arkansas, 1819–1870.

Arkansas Made | Nonfiction

Arkansas Made is the culmination of Historic Arkansas Museum’s exhaustive investigations into the history of the state’s material culture. Decades of meticulous research have resulted in this exciting two-volume survey of cabinetmakers, silversmiths, potters, fine artists, quilters, and other artisans working in communities all over the state. These new editions bring the work of Arkansas’s earliest artists and artisans forward to 1950.

Zeba Blay is a film and culture critic who has contributed to publications including the New York Times, the Village Voice, ESSENCE, Shadow and Act, Film Quarterly, and Indiewire. Formerly senior culture writer at HuffPost, Blay explores pop culture at the intersection of race, gender, and identity. Born in Accra, Ghana, she lives in the New York City area.

Carefree Black Girls | Nonfiction

This collection of essays, Carefree Black Girls, delves into the work and lasting achievements of influential Black women in American culture—writers, artists, actresses, dancers, hip-hop stars—whose contributions often come in the face of bigotry, misogyny, and stereotypes. Blay celebrates the strength and fortitude of these Black women while also examining the many stereotypes and rigid identities that have clung to them. In writing that is both luminous and sharp, expansive and intimate, Blay seeks a path forward to a culture and society in which Black women and their art are appreciated and celebrated.

Paige Bowers has had writing featured in TIME, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, People, Allure, and more, and authored The General’s Niece: The Little-Known de Gaulle Who Fought to Free Occupied France. She lives in the Atlanta area with her husband, daughter, and a yellow lab who believes he is a lap dog.

Overnight Code | Nonfiction

Overnight Code: The Life of Raye Montague, The Woman Who Revolutionized Naval Engineering was co-written with “Hidden Figure” Raye Montague’s son, David. The book demonstrates how Montague’s trailblazing mother engineered her way out of the Jim Crow South to become the first person to draft a naval ship design by computer. The book has been featured on Good Morning America and elsewhere.

Kevin Brockmeier, who lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, is the author of eight books of fiction and one memoir. He teaches frequently at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has participated in the Festival each year since its inception.

The Ghost Variations | Fiction

The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories encourages readers to confront the timeless question: What comes after death? Here, in tales that are by turn scary, funny, philosophical, and touching, you’ll find that question sharpened, split, reconsidered—and met with a multitude of answers.

Christopher Brown is the Philip K. Dick, Campbell, and World Fantasy Award–nominated author of Tropic of Kansas, Rule of Capture, and Failed State. He also wrote the foreword to Fantagraphics’ new expanded edition of Tom Kaczynski’s Eisner Award–nominated comics anthology Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse. Brown lives in Austin, Texas.

Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse | Fiction

In this new, expanded edition of Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse, the starting point is arbitrary. From there, the city expands in all directions. At once science fiction, contemporary demonology, occult theory, mutant utopia, and architectural treatise, Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse is a collection of graphic fictions about the contemporary global megalopolis. This groundbreaking collection, originally published in an Eisner-nominated, smaller edition a decade ago, has only proven more prescient and resonant to our contemporary times than ever. For this new edition, Kaczynski created the original stories “Billion Dollar Budget” and “Rediscovery of the Real,” with annotations. A new foreword by science fiction writer Christopher Brown (Tropic of Kansas) is included, along with an entirely new cover design. Tom Kaczynski’s graphic short stories trace a complex space-time trajectory from the smallest corporate cubicle out to farthest fathoms of the multiverse. Occult economics, metaphysical traffic jams, Marxist zombies on Mars, secret architectural societies, designer ghosts from the future, and demographics demons are just a few elements of a new untested future eschatology.

Jennifer Carman is an independent art historian and accredited senior appraiser of American and European fine and decorative arts. She holds an MPhil in the history of art from the University of Glasgow and is a graduate connoisseur of Christie’s Education in London.

Arkansas Made | Nonfiction

Arkansas Made is the culmination of Historic Arkansas Museum’s exhaustive investigations into the history of the state’s material culture. Decades of meticulous research have resulted in this exciting two-volume survey of cabinetmakers, silversmiths, potters, fine artists, quilters, and other artisans working in communities all over the state. These new editions bring the work of Arkansas’s earliest artists and artisans forward to 1950.

Juan Cavia is an art director and illustrator from Buenos Aires, Argentina, who has worked in comics, advertisements, TV, music videos, theater, and feature films (including the Oscar-winning The Secret in Their Eyes).

Ballad for Sophie | Fiction

The graphic novel Ballad for Sophie, written by Filipe Melo and illustrated by Juan Cavia, is a sweeping tale that spans the twentieth century, packed with all the drama of a rock & roll biopic and more twists than a night at the opera. When a young journalist prompts a reclusive musical superstar to finally break his silence, he pours out an astonishing saga of rivalry and regret, starring child prodigies and bitter old men, beautiful dancers and demonic managers, Nazi commandants, compassionate nuns, and lifesaving animals. Melo and Cavia have composed a stunning graphic symphony exploring a lifetime of ambition, betrayal, compassion, anguish, long-buried secrets, and flying pianos.

Victoria Chandler is the curator of collections at Historic Arkansas Museum. She continues the work of Arkansas Made and curates its exhibits and programs.

Arkansas Made | Nonfiction

Arkansas Made is the culmination of Historic Arkansas Museum’s exhaustive investigations into the history of the state’s material culture. Decades of meticulous research have resulted in this exciting two-volume survey of cabinetmakers, silversmiths, potters, fine artists, quilters, and other artisans working in communities all over the state. These new editions bring the work of Arkansas’s earliest artists and artisans forward to 1950.

Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954. Internationally acclaimed for her poetry and fiction, she is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Medal of the Arts, the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation. Cisneros is the author of two novels, The House on Mango Street and Caramelo; a collection of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek; two books of poetry, My Wicked Wicked Ways and Loose Woman; a children’s book, Hairs/Pelitos; a selected anthology of her own work, Vintage Cisneros; Have You Seen Marie?, a fable for adults, with Ester Hernández; A House of My Own, a memoir; and Puro Amor, a bilingual story that she also illustrated. Her most recent book is Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo, a story in English and Spanish. Cisneros is a dual citizen of the United States and Mexico and makes her living by her pen. Sponsored by CALS Adult Programming.

Martita, I Remember You | Fiction

In Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo, a young woman, Corina, leaves her Mexican family in Chicago to pursue her dream of becoming a writer in the cafés of Paris. Instead, she spends her brief time in the City of Light running out of money and lining up with other immigrants to call home. But the months of befriending panhandling artists in the métro, sleeping on crowded floors, and dancing the tango at underground parties are given a lasting glow by her intense friendships with Martita and Paola. Over the years the three women disperse to three continents, falling out of touch and out of mind—until a rediscovered letter brings Corina’s days in Paris back with breathtaking immediacy. Martita, I Remember You is a rare bottle from Sandra Cisneros’s own special reserve, preserving the smoke and the sparkle of an exceptional year. Told with intimacy and searing tenderness, this tribute to the life-changing power of youthful friendship is Cisneros at her vintage best, in a beautiful dual-language edition.

Ash Davidson was born in Arcata, California, and attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has been supported by the Arizona Commission on the Arts and MacDowell. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Damnation Spring | Fiction

Set in the misty old-growth forests on the far-northern coast of California, near the mouth of the Klamath River, Davidson’s debut novel Damnation Spring is the story of Rich Gundersen, a logger obsessed with a redwood tree. He mortgages everything to buy a parcel of giant trees he aims to harvest. After his wife Colleen, a midwife, begins to suspect that herbicides the logging company uses may be behind a troubling pattern of birth defects and miscarriages in the community – including her own – her search for answers threatens to destroy her marriage and tear apart both her family and the tight-knit town.

Amber Edwards and Justin Scott are husband-and-wife collaborators. Edwards, whose mother was reared in the Delta, has directed, produced, and written 19 national PBS documentaries and one theatrical documentary feature. Scott, twice nominated for MWA Edgar Awards, is the author of 37 previous novels, ranging from thrillers to mysteries to sea stories to historical fiction, as well as nine detective adventures in the Isaac Bell series with Clive Cussler, three of which debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

Forty Days and Forty Nights | Fiction

Forty Days and Forty Nights, the duo’s first collaboration, was inspired by the only documentary Edwards never finished, about an extraordinary Arkansas cousin. In this adventure novel, when torrential rain swells the Mississippi River to the brink of deadly rampage, Clementine Price, a young Army Corps of Engineers officer born beside the river (“just a farm girl who got herself to West Point”), draws on science, brutal loss, and a warrior spirit to protect the people and the homeland she loves from a catastrophic flood. Then she discovers that a richly funded domestic terrorist—hiding in plain sight as a pillar of the community—has ingeniously weaponized the looming natural disaster.

Carolyn Ferrell is the author of the novel Dear Miss Metropolitan and the short-story collection Don’t Erase Me, which was awarded the Art Seidenbaum Award of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the John C. Zachiris Award given by Ploughshares, and the Quality Paperback Book Prize for First Fiction. She teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York.

Dear Miss Metropolitan | Fiction

In the fictional Dear Miss Metropolitan, Boss Man is a monster who abducts three high school students, Fern, Gwin, and Jesenia, and holds them captive in a dilapidated house on Amity Lane in Queens . The residents of Amity Lane live in houses that nearly touch one another, but they have missed these girls being tortured under their noses since the nation-wide manhunt to find them went cold .

Sharon G. Flake’s groundbreaking novel The Skin I’m In brought a bold dimension to literature for young readers and has become required reading in classrooms and communities around the globe. Flake has authored over a dozen books, winning multiple Coretta Scott King Honor Awards, ALA Notable and Top Ten Recommended Books citations, and an NAACP Image Award Nomination, among many accolades.

The Life I’m In | Fiction

In The Life I’m In, we follow the raw, blistering voice of Charlese Jones, who speaks the truths many girls face, offering insight into some of the causes and conditions that make a bully. Turned out of the only home she has known, Char boards a bus to nowhere, where she is lured into the dangerous web of human trafficking and the complex system of men who take advantage of vulnerable teens in the underbelly of society. While Char might be frightened, she is determined to bring herself and her fellow victims back into the light.

Suzi F. Garcia is an executive editor at Noemi Press, where she has edited several award-winning books by emerging and established writers. In addition, she serves as the online editor for the Michigan Quarterly Review and is a guest editor for POETRY. Garcia is a Macondista (an alum of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop) and a former board member for the Latinx Caucus, and she serves as a member of the steering committee for CantoMundo.

A Homegrown Fairytale | Fiction

A Homegrown Fairytale is an chapbook that engages with The Wizard of Oz, a reimagining of coming home after being in a magical land with a girl you love. These poems connect the original fable with ideas of sexuality, mental illness, Latinidad, and more.

Ayana Gray is an author of speculative works and a lover of all things monsters, mythos, and #MelaninMagic. Originally from Atlanta, she now lives in sunny Florida, where she reads avidly, follows Formula 1 racing, and worries over her adopted baby black rhino, Apollo.

Beasts of Prey | Fiction

In this much-anticipated series opener, Beasts of Prey, fate binds two Black teenagers together as they strike a dangerous alliance to hunt down the creature menacing their home—and uncover ancient deadly secrets.

Kaitlyn Greenidge‘s debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, was one of the New York Times Critics’ Top 10 Books of 2016 and a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is the features director at Harper’s Bazaar and a contributing writer for the New York Times, and her writing has also appeared in Vogue, Glamour, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Libertie | Fiction

Libertie, Greenidge’s second novel, is inspired by the life of one of the first Black female doctors in the United States. Coming of age in a free Black community in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, Libertie Sampson is all too aware that her purposeful mother, a physician, has a vision for their future together: Libertie is to go to medical school and practice alongside her. But Libertie, drawn more to music than science, feels stifled by her mother’s choices and is hungry for something else – is there really only one way to have an autonomous life?

Lauren Groff is a two-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, and Fates and Furies, and the short-story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. Groff’s work regularly appears in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and elsewhere, and she was named one of Granta’s 2017 Best Young American Novelists.

Matrix | Fiction

In Matrix, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life. She is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. In this new life, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, and for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters and a conviction in her own divine visions. Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman who history moves both through and around.

Jasmine Guillory is the New York Times bestselling author of six romance novels, including The Wedding Date and The Proposal. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine; Cosmopolitan; Bon Appetit; and Time. She lives in Oakland, California.

While We Were Dating | Fiction

In While We Were Dating, two people realize that it’s no longer an act when they veer off-script in this sizzling romantic comedy. Ben Stephens has never bothered with serious relationships. He has plenty of casual dates to keep him busy, family drama he’s trying to ignore, and his advertising job to focus on. When Ben lands a huge ad campaign featuring movie star Anna Gardiner, however, it’s hard to keep it purely professional. Anna is not just gorgeous and sexy, she’s also down to earth and considerate, and he can’t help flirting a little. Anna is on a mission: to make herself a household name, and this ad campaign will be a great distraction while she waits to hear if she’s booked her next movie. However, she didn’t expect Ben to be her biggest distraction. She knows mixing business with pleasure never works out, but why not indulge in a harmless flirtation?

Zakiya Dalila Harris spent nearly three years in editorial at Knopf/Doubleday before leaving to write her debut novel. Prior to working in publishing, Harris received an MFA in creative writing from The New School. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in Guernica and The Rumpus. She lives in Brooklyn.

The Other Black Girl | Fiction

Urgent, propulsive, and sharp as a knife, The Other Black Girl is an electric debut novel about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing. This whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace.

Vashti Harrison is the #1 New York Times bestselling author-illustrator of Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History, Little Dreamers: Visionary Women around the World, and Little Legends: Exceptional Men in Black History. An artist and filmmaker with a passion for storytelling, she earned a BA in studio art and media studies from the University of Virginia and an MFA in Film/Video from CalArts, where she snuck into animation and illustration classes to learn from Disney and DreamWorks legends. There, she rekindled a love for drawing and painting. Now she uses her love of both film and illustration to craft beautiful stories for children.

Hello, Star | Fiction

Stunningly illustrated by Harrison, Hello, Star (written by Stephanie V. W. Lucianovic) is an inspiring story about a love of science and the importance of empathy. When a young girl learns that a bright light in the sky is coming from a dying star, she promises to keep it company until the light goes out. Every night the girl reassures her friend that she is still there. As the years pass, the girl learns everything she can about planets, space, and the universe, inspired by her dimming friend—until she realizes she needs to do something more. This touching tribute to stars, space, and science celebrates how a small act of compassion can flourish into a life full of meaning and wonder.

Dean Jobb is an award-winning author and journalist. As a professor at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he teaches in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program. He is the author of eight previous books, including Empire of Deception, which the New York Times Book Review called “intoxicating and impressively researched” and the Chicago Writers Association named the Nonfiction Book of the Year. Jobb has written for major newspapers and magazines, including the Chicago Tribune, Toronto’s Globe and Mail, and the Irish Times. He writes a monthly true-crime column, “Stranger Than Fiction,” for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Jobb’s work as an investigative reporter has been nominated for Canada’s National Newspaper and National Magazine awards, and he is a three-time winner of Atlantic Canada’s top journalism award.

The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream | Nonfiction

The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer is structured around a doctor’s 1892 murder trial in London, exposing the blind trust given to medical practitioners, as well as the flawed detection methods, bungled investigations, corrupt officials, and stifling morality of Victorian society that allowed Dr. Cream to prey on vulnerable and desperate women, many of whom had turned to him for medical help. Jobb transports readers to the late nineteenth century as Scotland Yard traces Dr. Cream’s life through Canada and Chicago and finally to London, where new investigative tools called forensics were just coming into use, even as most police departments still scoffed at using science to solve crimes. Even the term “serial killer” was unknown at the time. As a Chicago Tribune reviewer wrote, Dr. Cream’s crimes marked the emergence of a new breed of killer: one who operated without motive or remorse, who “murdered simply for the sake of murder.” For fans of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, all things Sherlock Holmes, or the podcast My Favorite Murder, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream is an unforgettable true-crime story by a master of the genre.

Taylor Johnson is from Washington DC and now lives in New Orleans. Their work appears in the Paris Review, the Baffler, Scalawag, and elsewhere. Johnson is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and a recipient of the Larry Neal Writers’ Award from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Inheritance | Poetry

Inheritance is a collection of poems that seeks to think through the ways in which language, ownership, and identity collide

Kelly Houston Jones, a native of central Arkansas, is assistant professor of history at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville. In addition to her first book, she is author of several essays concerning slavery and the Civil War era in the western South.

A Weary Land: Slavery on the Ground in Arkansas | Nonfiction

A Weary Land: Slavery on the Ground in Arkansas is the first book-length study of Arkansas slavery in more than sixty years. It offers a glimpse of enslaved life on the South’s western margins, focusing on the intersections of land use and agriculture within the daily life and work of bonded Black Arkansans. As they cleared trees, cultivated crops, and tended livestock on the Southern frontier, Arkansas’s enslaved farmers connected culture and nature, creating their own meanings of space, place, and freedom.

Tom Kaczynski is an Eisner Award–nominated cartoonist, writer, and publisher. He is the author of the Cartoon Dialectics series and the forthcoming Trans Terra graphic novel. His comics have appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Nib and Mome. He is the founder of Uncivilized Books, a boutique publishing house that has published acclaimed and award-nominated graphic novels by Gabrielle Bell, Noah Van Sciver, David B., Joann Sfar, Sam Alden, Sophie Yanow, Craig Thompson, and many others. He also teaches comics at Minneapolis College of Art & Design and the University of Minnesota. He lives in Minneapolis with his partner Nikki, two cats, and a dog.

Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse | Fiction

In this new, expanded edition of Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse, the starting point is arbitrary. From there, the city expands in all directions. At once science fiction, contemporary demonology, occult theory, mutant utopia, and architectural treatise, Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse is a collection of graphic fictions about the contemporary global megalopolis. This groundbreaking collection, originally published in an Eisner-nominated, smaller edition a decade ago, has only proven more prescient and resonant to our contemporary times than ever. For this new edition, Kaczynski created the original stories “Billion Dollar Budget” and “Rediscovery of the Real,” with annotations. A new foreword by science fiction writer Christopher Brown (Tropic of Kansas) is included, along with an entirely new cover design. Tom Kaczynski’s graphic short stories trace a complex space-time trajectory from the smallest corporate cubicle out to farthest fathoms of the multiverse. Occult economics, metaphysical traffic jams, Marxist zombies on Mars, secret architectural societies, designer ghosts from the future, and demographics demons are just a few elements of a new untested future eschatology.

Rev. Christoph Keller III is a graduate of Little Rock Central High School and Amherst College, with a doctorate (Th.D.) from General Theological Seminary in New York. Now retired, he served as dean and rector of Little Rock’s Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. Sponsored in part by Trinity Cathedral.

Getting On Toward Home | Nonfiction

Getting On Toward Home: And Other Sermons by the River is a book of twelve homilies from funerals that provide insights on grief, faith, and hope in face of death.

Ross King is the award-winning author of books on Italian and French art, including Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling.

The Bookseller of Florence | Nonfiction

The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance tells the remarkable story of Vespasiano da Bisticci, a manuscript dealer in fifteenth-century Florence whose clients included kings, popes, and three generations of the Medici family. He reached the summit of his powers as Europe’s most prolific merchant of knowledge when a new invention appeared: the printed book.

TJ Klune is the New York Times bestselling, Lambda Literary Award–winning author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, The Extraordinaries, and more. Being queer himself, Klune believes it’s important – now more than ever – to have accurate, positive queer representation in stories.

Under the Whispering Door | Fiction

A Man Called Ove meets The Good Place in Under the Whispering Door, a standalone adult novel and delightful queer love story that is filled with comedy, grief, and healing. Wallace Price is an “Ebenezer Scrooge” type who takes his life and the people in it for granted. Upon his untimely demise, his soul enters a teashop, where a ferryman named Hugo tries to help him see that there is so much more to life and beyond.

Jean Hanff Korelitz is the author of the novels You Should Have Known (which aired on HBO in October 2020 as The Undoing, starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant, and Donald Sutherland), Admission (adapted as a film in 2013 starring Tina Fey), The Devil and Webster, The White Rose, The Sabbath Day River, and A Jury of Her Peers, as well as Interference Powder, a novel for children. Her company BOOKTHEWRITER hosts pop-up book groups in which small groups of readers discuss new books with their authors. She lives in New York City with her husband, Irish poet Paul Muldoon.

The Plot | Fiction

The Plot, which has been hailed as “breathtakingly suspenseful,” is a propulsive read about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it.

Guy Lancaster is the editor of the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Arkansas Library System, and the author, co-author, or editor of several books on racial violence in Arkansas.

American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching | Nonfiction

American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching draws from the fields of history, philosophy, cognitive science, sociology, and literary theory, and quotes chilling contemporary accounts, to argue that the act of lynching encompasses five distinct but overlapping types of violence. This new framework reveals lynching to be even more of an atrocity than previously understood, showing that mobs did not disregard the humanity of their victims but rather reveled in it, and that they were not simply enacting personal vengeance but manifesting an elite project of subjugation.

Wendy Lower is the John K. Roth Professor of History and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. Lower chairs the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and served as acting director of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the USHMM. Lower is the author of Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine, The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Eastern Galicia, and others. Her book Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields was a finalist for the National Book Award.

The Ravine | Nonfiction

The process of The Ravine: A Family, A Photograph, A Holocaust Massacre Revealed started in 2009, when the acclaimed author of Hitler’s Furies was shown a photograph just brought to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The documentation of the Holocaust is vast, but there are virtually no images like this one of a Jewish family at the actual moment of murder, in this case by German officials and Ukrainian collaborators. Wendy Lower’s forensic and archival detective work concerning the open-air massacres in Ukraine uncovers the identities of mother and children, of the killers – and, remarkably, of the Slovakian photographer who openly took the image, as a secret act of resistance.

Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a poet, screenwriter, performer, and educator. She is the author of peluda. Her work has appeared in the Poetry Project, Vulture, PAPER, Audible, and more. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Dreaming of You | Fiction

Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse centers on a young Latinx poet grappling with loneliness and heartache who decides one day to bring Tejano pop star Selena Quintanilla back to life. The séance kicks off an uncanny trip narrated by a Greek chorus of gossiping spirits as she journeys through a dead celebrity prom, encounters her shadow self, and performs karaoke in hell. In visceral poems embodying millennial angst, paragraph-long conversations overheard at her local coffeeshop, and unhinged Twitter rants, the book reveals an eerie, sometimes gruesome, yet moving love story. Playfully morbid and profoundly candid, this interrogation of Latinidad, womanhood, obsession, and disillusionment grapples with the cost of being seen for your truest self.

Kelli Marks is a self-taught cake decorator turned pastry chef, specializing in wedding cakes. Her interest in baking began early under the tutelage of her grandmother. Her desserts have been featured in numerous local, national, and global publications.

Easy One-Bowl Baking | Nonfiction

Easy One-Bowl Baking: No-Fuss Recipes for Sweet and Savory Baked Goods takes the art of baking and reduces it to only one bowl. Marks teaches readers how to cut corners but not quality as well as create delicious, share-worthy treats that are impressive and fun, but at the same time uncomplicated and mess-free.

John McMahon’s debut, The Good Detective, was called “pretty much perfect” by the New York Times and listed in its Top Ten Crime Novels of 2019. His follow up, The Evil Men Do, was also a New York Times Top Ten Crime Novel for 2020.

A Good Kill | Fiction

In A Good Kill, it has been years since the mysterious deaths of his wife and child, and P.T. Marsh, a police detective in the small Georgia town of Mason Falls, has faced demons both professional and personal. But when he is called to the scene of a school shooting, the professional and personal become intertwined, and he suspects that whoever is behind the crime may be connected to his own family tragedy. As Marsh and his partner Remy investigate the shooting, they discover that it is far from straightforward, and their search for answers leads them to a conspiracy at the highest levels of local government—including within the police force. The stakes in the case become increasingly high, culminating in a showdown that has Marsh questioning everything he knows, and wondering if some secrets are better left undiscovered.

Filipe Melo is an award-winning musician, film director, and author from Lisbon, Portugal. After studying at the Berklee College of Music, he has worked as a jazz pianist, producer, and composer, and written comics for an international audience.

Ballad for Sophie | Fiction

The graphic novel Ballad for Sophie, written by Filipe Melo and illustrated by Juan Cavia, is a sweeping tale that spans the twentieth century, packed with all the drama of a rock & roll biopic and more twists than a night at the opera. When a young journalist prompts a reclusive musical superstar to finally break his silence, he pours out an astonishing saga of rivalry and regret, starring child prodigies and bitter old men, beautiful dancers and demonic managers, Nazi commandants, compassionate nuns, and lifesaving animals. Melo and Cavia have composed a stunning graphic symphony exploring a lifetime of ambition, betrayal, compassion, anguish, long-buried secrets, and flying pianos.

Black create(her) Crystal C. Mercer is a celebrated artist, activist, and poet. She utilizes her media to communicate ancestral messages and social justice narratives. In her latest publication, From Cotton to Silk: The Magic of Black Hair, every thread of her being is woven into a tapestry of Afro-futurism.

From Cotton to Silk | Fiction

In the children’s book From Cotton to Silk: The Magic of Black Hair, quilting is the central medium to reveal a family story that denotes cultural beauty and heritage. The original artwork in the book was woven by hand, reinforcing the historical and traditional techniques of how textiles preserve generational legacies.

Rabbi Rachel Mikva is a professor of Jewish studies at Chicago Theological Seminary and senior faculty fellow of its InterReligious Institute – training leaders who can build bridges across cultural and religious difference for the critical work of social transformation. Sponsored in part by Interfaith Center Arkansas.

Dangerous Religious Ideas | Nonfiction

Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam argues that all religious ideas are dangerous, even those that stand at the heart of faith. Most religious traditions have always understood this peril, and transmitted tools of self-critique that are essential to realizing religion’s power for blessing. The author unpacks these claims and explores the ways that they might shape how we navigate religion in the public square.

Kate Milford is the Edgar Award–winning, New York Times bestselling author of the Greenglass House books, The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book, The Boneshaker, The Broken Lands, The Left-Handed Fate, The Kairos Mechanism, and the forthcoming Rialto and Seacritters! graphic novel series with Lucy Bellwood. She has written for stage and screen, and as a contributing writer at Nagspeake Online has authored scholarly articles on subjects such as self-aware ironmongery and how to make saltwater taffy in a haunted kitchen. She grew up in Riva, Maryland, and now lives in Brooklyn with her family.

In The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book | Fiction

In The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book, a new standalone mystery set in the world of the best-selling Greenglass House series, nothing is what it seems and there’s always more than one side to the story as a group of strangers trapped in an inn slowly reveal their secrets

Adrian Miller is a food writer, James Beard Award winner, attorney, and certified barbecue judge who lives in Denver, Colorado. He is the executive director of the Colorado Council of Churches.

Black Smoke | Nonfiction

Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue chronicles how Black barbecuers, pitmasters, and restauranteurs helped develop this cornerstone of American foodways and how they are coming into their own today. It’s a smoke-filled story of Black perseverance, culinary innovation, and entrepreneurship. Though often pushed to the margins, African Americans have enriched a barbecue culture that has come to be embraced by all. Miller celebrates and restores the faces and stories of the men and women who have influenced this American cuisine. This beautifully illustrated chronicle also features 22 recipes.

David R. Montague is the executive director of online learning and faculty mentoring at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and is a tenured full professor of criminal justice. Montague is the coauthor of the book Travesty of Justice: The Politics of Crack Cocaine and the Dilemma of the Congressional Black Caucus, now in its second edition, and the recently published Overnight Code: The Life of Raye Montague, the Woman Who Revolutionized Naval Engineering, about his mother, cowritten with Paige Bowers.

Overnight Code | Nonfiction

Overnight Code: The Life of Raye Montague, The Woman Who Revolutionized Naval Engineering tells the story of Raye Montague, an ambitious little girl from segregated Little Rock who spent a lifetime educating herself, both inside and outside of the classroom, so that she could become the person and professional she aspired to be.

Victoria Christopher Murray is an acclaimed author who has written more than twenty novels, including Stand Your Ground, an NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Fiction and a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. She holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business.

The Personal Librarian | Fiction

The Personal Librarian, co-written with lawyer and author Marie Benedict, is a remarkable historical novel about J. P. Morgan’s librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, a Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation.

Ethan Nichtern is the author of the acclaimed book The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path, and his “The Road Home” podcast is available on iTunes and Stitcher. Other books include One City: A Declaration of Interdependence and Your Emoticons Won’t Save You. He founded the Interdependence Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to secular Buddhist practice and transformational activism and arts, and served as executive director. For the past 19 years, Nichtern has taught meditation and Buddhist psychology around New York City, North America, and Europe. He is also an avid yoga practitioner and served as Shastri, or Senior Teacher-In-Residence, for the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York. He has been featured on CNN, NPR, ABC/Yahoo News, and elsewhere to discuss Buddhism and meditation. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.

The Dharma of “The Princess Bride” | Nonfiction

Humorous yet spiritually rigorous in the tradition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Tao of Pooh, The Dharma of “The Princess Bride” teaches us how to understand and navigate our most important personal relationships from a twenty-first-century Buddhist perspective. Friendship. Romance. Family. These are the three areas the book delves into, taking as departure points the indelible characters from Rob Reiner’s perennially popular film―Westley, Fezzik, Vizzini, Count Rugen, Princess Buttercup, and others―drawing lessons from the author’s life and his work as a Buddhist educator.

Nana Nkweti is a Cameroonian-American writer, AKO Caine Prize finalist, and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Walking on Cowrie Shells | Fiction

Walking on Cowrie Shells is a “boisterous and high-spirited debut” (Kirkus starred review) that was named a Most Anticipated Book selection for Brittle Paper, the Millions, and the Rumpus. It focuses on the lives of “hyphenated-Americans” with a multicultural heritage in the United States and Africa. The book spans genres—literary realism, horror, mystery, YA, science fiction—and features complex, fully embodied characters such as tongue-tied linguistic anthropologists, comic book enthusiasts, and water goddesses.

Jennifer Ogle is the collections manager at the University of Arkansas Herbarium. She has worked as a contract botanist and consultant and volunteers her time with organizations focused on urban land conservation and the protection of native plants.

Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of Arkansas | Nonfiction

Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of Arkansas, a field guide designed for outdoor use co-authored by Ogle and Theo Witsell, is an encyclopedic resource for identification and appreciation that will appeal to educators, scientists, conservation professionals, and outdoor enthusiasts. The book’s comprehensive listings of plant photographs, drawings, maps, and cross-reference keys make it a valuable companion for all who appreciate Arkansas flora in rural, urban, and wilderness areas.

Bishop Jake Owensby has authored five books on the spirituality of everyday life. He is the bishop of the Episcopal Church in Western Louisiana, and his blog is hosted at The Christian Century Blog Network. Sponsored in part by Betty Rowland Wittenberg Foundation and Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church.

Looking for God in Messy Places | Nonfiction

Looking for God in Messy Places: A Book About Hope shows how love gives us an inextinguishable hope. Life is messy, and we can get discouraged by setbacks, overwhelmed by busyness, and shaken by worry. Hope is the power that gets us out of bed in the morning and gives us the courage to face adversity.

Helen Oyeyemi is the author of the story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, winner of the PEN Open Book Award, along with seven novels, including Gingerbread and Boy, Snow, Bird, which was a finalist for the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Peaces | Fiction

In Peaces, when Otto and Xavier Shin declare their love, an aunt gifts them a trip on a sleeper train to mark their new commitment—and to get them out of her house. Setting off with their pet mongoose, Otto and Xavier arrive at their sleepy local train station, but quickly deduce that “The Lucky Day” is no ordinary locomotive. As clues and questions pile up, and the trip upends everything they thought they knew, Otto and Xavier begin to see connections to their own pasts, connections that now bind them together. Peaces is about what it means to be seen by another person – whether it’s your lover or a stranger on a train – and what happens when things you thought were firmly in the past turn out to be right beside you.

Lauren Oyler ‘s essays and criticism appear regularly in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the London Review of Books, Harper’s, the Guardian, Bookforum, and other publications. Fake Accounts is her first novel.

Fake Accounts | Fiction

Fake Accounts begins on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration. A young woman snoops through her boyfriend’s phone and makes a startling discovery: he’s an anonymous internet conspiracy theorist, and a popular one at that. Already fluent in internet fakery, irony, and outrage, she’s not exactly shocked by the revelation, but this is only the first in a series of bizarre twists that expose a world whose truths are shaped by online lies. Set in New York and Berlin, the novel challenges the way current conversations about the self and community, delusions and gaslighting, and fiction and reality play out in the internet age.

Nichole Perkins is a writer from Nashville, Tennessee, who examines the intersections of pop culture, race, sex, gender, and relationships. Perkins was an Audre Lorde Fellow at the inaugural Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat and a BuzzFeed Emerging Writers Fellow. She was also a Callaloo Creative Writing Fellow for poetry. She hosts “This Is Good For You,” a podcast that highlights the pleasures of life; co-hosted “Thirst Aid Kit,” a podcast about pop culture and desire, with Bim Adewunmi, a producer at This American Life; and was also a co-host of “The Waves” podcast at Slate, which looked at news and culture through a feminist lens. Her first collection of poetry is Lilith, but Dark.

Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be | Nonfiction

Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be is a collection of essays that highlights one Southern Black woman’s journey to self-realization through the lens of American pop culture, social media, dating, and Southern culture. Examining pop culture’s impact on her life, Perkins takes readers on a rollicking trip through the last twenty years of music, media, and the internet.

Jonathan Petropoulos is professor of European history at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. He received his PhD from Harvard University. He is the author of five books and has served as an expert witness in a number of cases in which Holocaust survivors have tried to recover lost artworks.

Göring’s Man in Paris | Nonfiction

Göring’s Man in Paris profiles Bruno Lohse, one of the most notorious art plunderers in history. Appointed by Hermann Göring to Hitler’s art looting agency in Paris, he went on to help supervise the systematic theft and distribution of more than thirty thousand artworks, taken largely from French Jews, and to assist Göring in amassing an enormous private art collection. By the 1950s Lohse was back in the art dealing world, offering masterpieces of dubious origin to American museums. After his death, dozens of paintings by Renoir, Monet, and Pissarro, among others, were found in his Zurich bank vault and adorning the walls of his Munich home. Jonathan Petropoulos spent nearly a decade interviewing Lohse and continues to serve as an expert witness for Holocaust restitution cases.

Herman Pontzer, professor at Duke University, investigates how our evolutionary past shapes our lives today. He conducted the first measurements of daily energy expenditure in hunter-gatherers and in non-human apes.

Burn | Nonfiction

How many calories do you burn each day? Does exercise help you lose weight? What is the “natural” human diet? Burn examines groundbreaking work with hunter-gatherers, with our great ape cousins, and with populations around the globe to explore the way our bodies use energy and examine how our evolutionary past shapes our lives and our health today.

Nate Powell is an Arkansas native and the first cartoonist ever to win the National Book Award. In addition to his newest book, Powell’s work includes civil rights icon John Lewis’s historic March trilogy, Come Again, and Two Dead. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana.

Save It For Later | Nonfiction

Save It For Later: Promises, Parenthood, and the Urgency of Protest, a memoir/essay hybrid, documents Powell’s experience as a parent helping his children process an ongoing struggle for the survival of democracy. Offering a fresh account of real-time social upheaval through a pandemic and mass mobilization against white supremacy, Powell also focuses on fragile community connections, the mainstreaming of fascist aesthetic in pop culture, and equipping young people with empathy and skills to determine their own roles in an increasingly uncertain future.

Sabeeha Rehman is the author of the memoir Threading My Prayer Rug, which was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and received the San Francisco Book Festival Award. Sponsored in part by Interfaith Center Arkansas.

We Refuse to Be Enemies | Nonfiction

We Refuse to Be Enemies: How Muslims and Jews Can Make Peace, One Friendship at a Time, written with Walter Ruby, focuses on how the two authors overcame their biases about “the Other,” the principles in their respective faiths that unite them, the impact of interfaith dialogue, and their personal experiences and challenges in bringing the two faith communities together. They address sensitive issues that had the potential to divide them, and share a roadmap based on lessons learned.

Margaret Renkl is the author of Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, where her essays appear weekly. Her work has also appeared in Guernica, Literary Hub, Proximity, and River Teeth, among others. The founding editor of Chapter 16, a daily literary publication of Humanities Tennessee, and a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Carolina, she lives in Nashville.

Graceland, At Last | Nonfiction

Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South, a patchwork quilt of personal and reported essays, highlights some other voices of the South, people who are fighting for a better future for the region: a group of teenagers who organized a youth march for Black Lives Matter; an urban shepherd whose sheep remove invasive vegetation; church parishioners sheltering the homeless. Throughout, readers will find the generosity of spirit and deep attention to the world, human and nonhuman, that keep readers returning to her columns each Monday morning.

Mary Roach is the author of five bestselling works of nonfiction: Grunt, Packing for Mars, Stiff, Spook, and Bonk. Her writing has appeared in Outside, National Geographic, and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications.

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law | Nonfiction

What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A grizzly bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law suggests that answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology. Roach tags along with animal attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and “danger tree” faller-blasters. She travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalayas to St. Peter’s Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. Along the way, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature’s lawbreakers. Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and mugging macaques, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.

Dianna Rostad was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Her parents and extended family come from the ranches of Montana and the farms of Arkansas. She raised three kind human beings, and when they began to test their wings, she took to writing with a passion, completing Southern Methodist University Writer’s Path program. A favorite task of her creative endeavors is the discovery and research of people and places where her novels are set. Now living in Florida, she continues to write big-hearted novels for audiences everywhere.

You Belong Here Now | Fiction

You Belong Here Now illuminates the 1920s in vivid detail, with colorful anecdotes, legends, and songs of the orphan trains. Hard work, wild horses, old grudges, and shared tragedies breathe truth and life into this time period, capturing the atmosphere and essence of the natural world in Montana.

Walter Ruby is an activist in Muslim-Jewish relations who has organized hundreds of twinning events bringing together thousands of Jews and Muslims in countries around the world. A veteran journalist, his articles have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Jerusalem Post, and Forward. Sponsored in part by Interfaith Center Arkansas.

We Refuse to Be Enemies | Nonfiction

We Refuse to Be Enemies: How Muslims and Jews Can Make Peace, One Friendship at a Time, written with Sabeeha Rehman, addresses how the two authors overcame their biases about “the Other,” the principles in their respective faiths that unite them, the impact of interfaith dialogue, and their personal experiences and challenges in bringing the two faith communities together. They address sensitive issues that had the potential to divide them and share a roadmap based on lessons learned.

Suzanne Simard is a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia. Hailed as a scientist who conveys complex, technical ideas in a way that is dazzling and profound, Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence. Her work has influenced filmmakers (the Tree of Souls in James Cameron’s Avatar), and her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide. Sponsored by Rebsamen Fund.

Finding the Mother Tree | Nonfiction

Finding the Mother Tree explains why we should collectively change the way we see and think of trees. An expert ecologist who has lived her entire life immersed in forests and has dedicated her life to researching them and protecting them, Simard believes the scientific community needs to adopt a symbiotic model that prioritizes collaboration over competition. Only through collaboration can we face the global challenges of the environmental crisis, global warming, and the deforestation boom we are currently living in. By understanding the important roles of Mother Trees, we can change how we view forests and honor the important role they play in our lives.

Michael Farris Smith is an award-winning writer whose novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists from Esquire, NPR, Southern Living, Book Riot, and numerous others, and have been named Indie Next List, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of the Month selections. He has been a finalist for the Southern Book Prize, the Gold Dagger Award in the UK, and the Grand Prix des Lectrices in France, and his essays have appeared in the New York Times, Bitter Southerner, Garden & Gun, and more. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and daughters.

Nick | Fiction

In Nick, The Great Gatsby’s narrator Nick Carraway is pulled out of the shadows and into the spotlight in this masterful look into his life before Gatsby. Charged with enough alcohol, heartbreak, and profound yearning to paralyze even the heartiest of golden age scribes, this book reveals the man behind the narrator who has captivated readers for decades.

Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney is the author of the instant New York Times bestselling novel The Nest, which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and named one of the best books of the year by People, the Washington Post, NPR, Amazon, and others. Sweeney’s work has been translated into more than 28 languages, and she has been a guest on Today, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and NPR’s All Things Considered. The Nest has been optioned by AMC Studios and is in development as a limited series. Sweeney holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Good Company | Fiction

In Good Company, Flora Mancini has been happily married for more than twenty years. But everything she thought she knew about herself, her marriage, and her relationship with her best friend, Margot, is upended when she stumbles upon an envelope containing her husband’s wedding ring—the one he claimed he lost one summer when their daughter, Ruby, was five. Flora and Julian struggled for years, scraping together just enough acting work to raise Ruby in Manhattan and keep Julian’s small theater company—Good Company—afloat. A move to Los Angeles brought their first real career successes, a chance to breathe easier, and a reunion with Margot, now a bona fide television star. But has their new life been built on lies? What happened that summer all those years ago? And what happens now?

Courtney E. Thompson is an assistant professor of the history of science and medicine and U.S. women’s and gender history at Mississippi State University. She has published articles and essays in Isis, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Social History of Medicine, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Endeavour, and Perspectives on History.

An Organ of Murder | Nonfiction

An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America takes the reader into the courtroom, the prison, and the city street to reveal how phrenology, the nineteenth-century science of the mind, shaped theories and treatment of the criminal in the past, as well as the lingering influence of this science on assumptions about good and bad behaviors in the present.

Sidney Thompson is the author of Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves: The Bass Reeves Trilogy, Book One, which was named an Arkansas Gem by the Arkansas Center for the Book. Thompson holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arkansas and a PhD in African-American narratives from the University of North Texas.

Hell on the Border | Fiction

Hell on the Border is the second in Thompson’s trilogy of historical novels narrating the extraordinary life of Bass Reeves, the former slave from Arkansas who became the greatest lawman of the American West.

Abby Turner is a food blogger, speaker, and writer who encourages people to challenge the cultural stereotypes surrounding singleness and loneliness and argues that community should be intentionally developed and protected through all seasons of life. She holds degrees from Ouachita Baptist University and Baylor University, has been featured on regional TV shows and podcasts, and writes a blog: “A Table Top Affair.”

The Living Table | Nonfiction

The Living Table encourages people to stop wasting time waiting for the perfect family, house, or table and to start opening their home, cooking for friends, and building their tribe.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio has written about immigration, music, beauty, and mental illness for the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New Republic, Glamour, Elle, Vogue, n+1, and the New Inquiry, among others. She lives in New Haven with her partner and their dog. She is a graduate of Harvard University and a doctoral candidate in the American Studies program at Yale. She is the first undocumented finalist for a National Book Award. CALS Speaker Series program honoring J. N. Heiskell.

The Undocumented Americans | Nonfiction

The Undocumented Americans, named by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2020, was selected as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, Time, NPR, the New York Public Library, the LA Times, Book Riot, Vulture, and the School Library Journal. At a time when the fabled American Dream is turning into a nightmare for so many, this is an incandescent and fearless indictment against the dark systemic forces of racism and immigration injustice. Part memoir, part journalism, part testimonio, it looks well beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the Dreamers, and allows the individuals profiled to be seen more fully as vibrant, complex, and dignified human beings. In her relentlessly probing voice, the author combines sensitive reporting with her own experiences as an undocumented writer to show the love, magic, heartbreak, insanity, and vulgarity that infuse the day-to-day lives of housekeepers in Miami, Ground Zero cleanup workers in New York City, day laborers in Staten Island, families facing deportation in Ohio and Connecticut, and immigrants in Flint, Michigan, who struggle to access clean water.

Dawnie Walton’s work explores identity, place, and the influence of pop culture. Formerly an editor at Essence and Entertainment Weekly, she has received fellowships in fiction writing from MacDowell and Tin House, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev | Fiction

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is a fictional oral history about an interracial rock & roll duo on the early 1970s New York scene. The novel follows their rise, their fall, and the dark secret that comes to light when they consider reuniting for a tour.

Rhona Weaver had a thirty-five-year career in agricultural appraisal and founded a program for at-risk children. She graduated from the University of Arkansas and lives with her husband, Bill Temple, who is retired from the FBI, in West Little Rock. Her first book draws on her deep admiration for the men and women in our law enforcement community.

A Noble Calling | Fiction

A Noble Calling is pure fiction, but it could be pulled from today’s headlines. At Yellowstone National Park, FBI agents and park rangers face a murderous militia, a determined assassin, and a self-styled prophet, and a rookie agent must overcome adversity and danger to find redemption. The book was awarded the 2021 Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book in Fiction by the Independent Book Publishers Association.

Lisa Wells is a nonfiction writer and poet from Portland, Oregon. Her debut collection of poetry, The Fix, won the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her essays and poems have appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, Granta, The Believer, n+1, and other publications. She lives in Seattle and is an editor at The Volta and Letter Machine Editions. Sponsored in part by Christ Episcopal Church.

Believers | Nonfiction

Believers introduces trailblazers and outliers from across the globe who have found radically new ways to live and reconnect to the Earth in the face of climate change. Blending reportage, memoir, history, and philosophy, the book opens up seemingly intractable questions about the damage we have done and how we might reckon with our inheritance. Believers demands transformation: If the Earth is our home, if our home is being destroyed—how then shall we live?

Dr. Leana Wen is an emergency physician, public health professor at George Washington University, contributing columnist for the Washington Post, and CNN medical analyst who served as Baltimore’s health commissioner, where she led the nation’s oldest continuously operating public health department. She is the author of the patient advocacy book, When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests. Wen lives with her husband and their toddler and baby in Baltimore.

Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health | Nonfiction

Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health is an insider’s account of public health and its crucial role―from opioid addiction to global pandemic―and an inspiring story of Dr. Leana Wen’s journey from struggling immigrant to being one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People. In gripping detail, Wen lays bare the lifesaving work of public health and its innovative approach to social ills, treating gun violence as a contagious disease, for example, and racism as a threat to health. Ultimately, she insists, it is public health that ensures citizens are not robbed of decades of life, and that where children live should not determine whether they live.

Ted Widmer grew up in New England and attended Harvard University. He was a speechwriter and senior adviser in the Clinton White House, and has written extensively on American history since then. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and is Distinguished Lecturer at Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York.

Lincoln on the Verge | Nonfiction

Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington tells the dramatic story of America’s greatest president discovering his own strength to save the Republic. As a divided nation plunges into the deepest crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln boards a train for Washington and his inauguration—an inauguration Southerners have vowed to prevent. Lincoln on the Verge charts these pivotal thirteen days of travel, as Lincoln discovers his power, speaks directly to the public, and sees his country up close.

Theo Witsell is the ecologist and chief of research for the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission. He co-edited the Atlas of the Vascular Plants of Arkansas and serves as a regional reviewer for the Flora of North America Project.

Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of Arkansas | Nonfiction

Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of Arkansas, a field guide designed for outdoor use co-authored by Witsell and Jennifer Ogle, is an encyclopedic resource for identification and appreciation that will appeal to educators, scientists, conservation professionals, and outdoor enthusiasts. The book’s comprehensive listings of plant photographs, drawings, maps, and cross-reference keys make it a valuable companion for all who appreciate Arkansas flora in rural, urban, and wilderness areas.

Jacqueline Woodson is the author of more than two dozen award-winning books for young adults, middle graders, and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a three-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. She was named Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation in 2015 and was also named the 2018 Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress. Woodson’s New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, was the 2014 National Book Award Winner and also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor Award, the NAACP Image Award, and the Sibert Honor Award. Her first adult novel in twenty years, New York Times bestselling novel Another Brooklyn (Harper/Amistad), was a 2016 National Book Award Finalist. In 2018, Woodson published Harbor Me, her first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming. Harbor Me and The Day You Begin, Woodson’s picture book that was published the same year, were both New York Times bestsellers. Sponsored by the Fest’s Book Club Campaign.

Red at the Bone | Fiction

Her two most recent books are Red at the Bone, for adults, and Before the Ever After, for youth. Red at the Bone was an NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) finalist for outstanding literary work in fiction. A stirring novel-in-verse, Before the Ever After explores how a family moves forward when their glory days have passed and the cost of professional sports on Black bodies.

William B. Worthen retired as director of Historic Arkansas Museum in 2016 after a forty-four-year career at the museum. He is the coauthor, with Swannee Bennett, of Arkansas Made: A Survey of the Decorative, Mechanical, and Fine Arts Produced in Arkansas, 1819–1870 and the coauthor, with Mark D. Zalesky, of A Sure Defense: The Bowie Knife in America.

Arkansas Made | Nonfiction

Arkansas Made is the culmination of Historic Arkansas Museum’s exhaustive investigations into the history of the state’s material culture. Decades of meticulous research have resulted in this exciting two-volume survey of cabinetmakers, silversmiths, potters, fine artists, quilters, and other artisans working in communities all over the state. These new editions bring the work of Arkansas’s earliest artists and artisans forward to 1950.

Charles Yu is the author four novels, including Interior Chinatown, which won the 2020 National Book Award for fiction. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe was a New York Times Notable Book and a Time magazine best book of the year. He received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award and was nominated for two Writers Guild of America Awards for his work on the HBO series, Westworld. He has also written for shows on FX and AMC. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Wired, which described his writing as “Entertaining … Like a friend who stops by unexpectedly with a bunch of mind-bending tales to share.” CALS Speaker Series: Fred K. Darragh program. Co-sponsored by Arkansas Humanities Council.

Interior Chinatown | Fiction

Interior Chinatown is a satirical novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play. Author Emily St. John Mandel calls it “… wrenching, hilarious, sharp, surreal, and above all, original.”