Arts & Letters

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

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.

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 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,

Today on Arts & Letters , we talk with journalist, researcher, and professor Donna Lampkin Stephens. Her book, If It Ain't Broke, Break It: How Corporate Journalism Killed the Arkansas Gazette , published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2015 "offers a firsthand account of how and why the Arkansas Gazette, then the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi River, died after perhaps the country’s last great newspaper war." In this first of a two part series, we explore the history of the

Arkansas musician Tim Anthony follows a rich musical heritage started by his father, Lee, who opened Little Rock's first black-owned record store. J. Bradley Minnick of KUAR's Arts & Letters spoke with the younger Anthony about soul and funk music and its impact on his life growing up in Little Rock in the early '70s.

On this episode of Arts & Letters, we explore the historical fiction of Andrew Malan Milward's collection , I Was A Revolutionary, interrogates historical Kansas from the Civil War to the present through literary fiction and artifacts, including Wikipedia entries, photographs, maps and satirical cartoons. We discuss two stories from Milward's collection: "The Burning of Lawrence" and "O Death." The first story, "The Burning of Lawrence" examines William Clarke Quantrill's raid of Lawrence,

Winner of the 2016 Arkansas Times Musician’s Showcase, the Little Rock-based band The Uh Huhs are certainly friends of KUAR . The band members Zach Hale, Zach Hunter, Tyler Nance and Trent Whitehead recently played during KUAR's Open House on August 16. That day, band mates Zach Hale and Zach Hunter sat down with J. Bradley Minnick to talk about how public policy and popular culture inform their music.

Members of the southern band Radio Birds write about a variety of subjects, but with one rule: no politics. However, these musicians are now breaking that rule, feeling the need to respond to the current political turmoil. J. Bradley Minnick recently sat down with the band, who are currently harmonizing on tour.

This back-to-school season, we highlight a father and son musical team from central Arkansas who spent a large part of their summer playing, practicing and laughing together. Kevin and Gus Kerby sat down in the KUAR studios with J. Bradley Minnick of Arts and Letters. They talked about how playing music together has fostered a good sense of humor and strengthened their relationship.