On this episode of Arts & Letters, we talk with Nashville-based YA author Jeff Zentner . His book, The Serpent King , is filled with big hearted characters, misfits and miscreants cornered by the crushing weight of destiny, “the ossifying conviction that they are living out some ancient and preordained plan—encoded in blood, built into the architecture of name.” “Nothing stops when we’re gone,” Zentner writes. “The seasons don’t stop. This river doesn’t stop. The lives of the people we love

On this episode of Arts & Letters , we talk with Arkansas novelist and memoirist Cara Brookins about her book, Little Boy Blu, a novel loosely based on the "blue people" of Hazard County, Kentucky, who suffered from methemoglobinemia. This rare hereditary blood disorder results from excess levels of methemoglobin in the blood. It is passed on as a recessive gene, which turns the skin blue. In Little Boy Blu , we explore the hills and hollers, make our way through a copse of trees and into

On this episode of Arts & Letters , University of Central Arkansas writer and professor John Vanderslice talks about his book Days On Fire . The novel explores the tumultuous days of painter Vincent Van Gogh from his early life in Holland to his hospitalization in St. Paul's Asylum in Saint Remy. Along the way, we discuss Van Gogh's many obsessions, including the painter's relationships with religion, women, family and work. Vanderslice reads and describes a series of fictional sketches in

On this episode of Arts & Letters , we talk with columnist and writer, Jay Grelen, whose book Sweet Tea Times Volume 1, Edition 1, collects his popular Sweet Tea newspaper columns, published by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette from 2004-2011, and we debut a brand new Sweet Tea column, never before seen or heard: "The Case of Bozo's Missing Hand." Grelen’s story introduces us to Bozo the Clown, played by Gary Weir, who graced Little Rock television airwaves from 1966 to 1991 in an afterschool

On this episode of Arts & Letters , we take a dive into the streams and rivers of the Ozarks in Arkansas and Missouri to learn the saga of North America’s largest amphibian, the hellbender salamander. Our guide is author, activist, professor and eco-poet Mark Spitzer, whose avant-garde epic poem, GLURK! A Hellbender Odyssey , serves as the basis for our journey. “The plight of this amphibian — an evolutionary phenomenon — has as much to say about humans and our relationship with the natural

On this special holiday episode of Arts & Letters , we uncover true tales of Arkansas's past while touring the streets of Little Rock and North Little Rock inside the Rock Region Metro Streetcar—our “Holly Jolly Trolley.” Along the streetcar rails we enounter a cast of characters, who tell of the cities' history bound up in the brick and mortar of the buildings—filled with ghosts and song. Along the way, we learn about the markets and specialty shops of the Rivermarket's old Arcade Building,

On this episode of Arts & Letters, we talk with writer and teacher Ed Tarkington. His first novel Only Love Can Break Your Heart , published by Algonquin Books in 2016, "happens in moments." The book "explores the city limits of fictional Spencerville, its grassy fields and horse farms, Georgian style homes and stately colonial manses and its inhabitants filled up with guilty ghosts from the past." Secrets, ghosts, old money gone bad, violence and malicious intent are all hallmarks of

Little Rock singer-songwriter Brian Nahlen in his song “Cicada Moon” explores the idea that humans got their sense of rhythm and synchronization from the world of insect sounds that have surrounded our species over the millions of years we’ve evolved. He sat down with J. Bradley Minnick of KUAR’s Arts & Letters to talk about his musical inspiration.

The Virginia-based band Gallows Bound’s music tells of the legend of the Appalachian Blood Witch, whose gnarled finger beckons and portends disaster to all who follow. J. Bradley Minnick of Arts & Letters sat down with the band and filed this musical feature.

The story of the Arkansas Gazette ended on October 18, 1991, with paper's sale to its rival, the Arkansas Democrat . The story shows a typical transformation of an American newspaper from independent, local ownership to remote corporate control that illustrates what happened to many American newspapers in the generation following World War II. Wounded by the fiercest newspaper war in the United States, former publisher J. N. Heiskell's heirs sold the Gazette to the Gannett Corporation in 1986,