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South Words is a year-long readers series presented by Oxford American, in partnership with the Central Arkansas Library System’s Six Bridges Book Festival. Each event is free to attend; RSVP tickets are required and may be reserved on each event’s page below.
The Presenting Sponsor for South Words is the UCA College of Fine Arts & Communication. Additional season partners include the Clinton School of Public Service, Arkansas Arts Council, Department of Arkansas Heritage, and Villa Vue at SoMa.
Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House
A brilliant, haunting and unforgettable memoir from a remarkable new talent about the inexorable pull of home and family, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East. “Gorgeously written, intimate and wise, Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House is an astonishing memoir of family, love, and survival. It’s also a history of New Orleans unlike any we’ve seen before,
Nate Powell & Van Jensen, Two Dead
Two Dead, a stunning crime noir graphic novel by Nate Powell and Van Jensen, explores intertwining threads of crime, conspiracy, racism, and insanity in the post-World War II Deep South. Powell is the acclaimed DC Comics writer and the artist of the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Award-winning illustrated trilogy March.
Silas House, Southernmost
In this tender novel about judgment, courage, heartbreak, and change, evangelical preacher Asher Sharp offers shelter to two gay men after a flood in a small Tennessee town. In doing so, he starts to see his life anew – and risks losing everything. “An urgent and beautifully written literary thriller about a man on the run that explores themes like the pain of atonement and the necessity of reconciliation,
Leesa Cross-Smith, So We Can Glow
From Kentucky to the California desert, these forty-two short stories expose the glossy and matte hearts of girls and women in moments of obsessive desire and fantasy, wildness and bad behavior, brokenness and fearlessness. “Leesa Cross-Smith is a consummate storyteller who uses her formidable talents to tell the oft-overlooked stories of people living in that great swath of place between the left and right coasts.” —Roxane Gay,