Arkatext is the UCA Creative Writing program’s celebration of Arkansas writers, whether they’re a “born-here” or a “come-here.” The week-long festival features readings, presentations, and craft lectures. Contact: Professor Longhorn slonghorn@uca.edu or 501-450-5108
ArkaText 2023
Tuesday, 11 April
Michael X. Wang, Fiction, Lost in the Long March
12:15pm Craft Talk, WTH 331
2:40pm Reading, WTH 331
China, 1934: As the Red Army begins its year-long tactical retreat, the Long March, Yong, a naive orphan, turns to Ping, a sophisticated veteran, for comfort and companionship. Wang’s novel follows the characters forward through the 1970s, revealing how a country’s history is always the story of its people.
Sandy Longhorn, Explore the Power of Poetry, Keystone Conversation
1:40pm, Keystone Steps, Windgate Center
Celebrating National Poetry Month, Longhorn will provide an overview of the power of poetry to bring people together no matter their diverse identities. Participants will have the opportunity to prepare for Poem in Your Pocket Day. This international event asks people to share poems either on social media or in person as a way of forming community.
Wednesday, 12 April
Cassidy Kendall, UCA CRWR Alum, CNF, 100 Things to Do in Hot Springs Before You Die
11:00am Professional Talk, WTH 331
1:00pm Reading, WTH 331
Hot Springs is a unique oasis in Arkansas, and not just because it is a place where ancient thermal water springs thought to be medicinal can be found. There’s a community in Hot Springs that has worked to develop this National Park and the city that surrounds it into what it is today. Kendall’s readers will get a taste of what Spa City has for everyone to enjoy.
Thursday, 13 April
Laura Apol, Poetry, A Fine Yellow Dust
10:50am Craft Talk, WTH 331
1:40pm Reading, WTH 331
In late April 2017, Laura Apol’s adult daughter, Hanna, was lost to suicide. Apol had been conducting workshops on writing-for-healing for more than a decade. Yet after Hanna’s death, she had her own therapeutic writing to do, turning her anguish, disbelief, and love into poems that give voice to grief in the moments it was lived.
ArkaText 2022
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Terry Engel, fiction
9:25 am Craft Talk, Student Center 214
2:40 pm Public Reading, Student Center 214
Terry Engel, author of Natchez at Sunset, earned a Ph.D. in writing from the University of Southern Mississippi, where he studied at the Center for Writers with Frederick and Steven Barthelme and Mary Robison. His work has appeared in a number of literary journals and magazines, and he has received the Transatlantic Review Award, won the Hemingway Days Short Story Writing Contest, and received honorable mention from Pushcart Prize. Engel teaches at Harding University.
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
Publisher’s Panel: David Scott Cunningham (University of Arkansas Press), Danielle Jackson (Oxford American), and Erin Wood (Et Alia Press)
11:00 am Panel Presentation, Student Center 223
Join us for a lively discussion of editing and publishing from the point of view of a university press, a nationally distributed magazine, and a small press. Panelists will make remarks and there will be time for questions from the audience.
Thursday, March 3, 2022
Kai Coggin, poetry
10:50 am Craft Talk, Student Center 214
1:40 pm Public Reading, Student Center 214
Kai Coggin is the author of MINING FOR STARDUST, INCANDESCENT, WINGSPAN, and PERISCOPE HEART, as well as a spoken word album SILHOUETTE. She is a queer woman of color who thinks Black Lives Matter, a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, and the host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, Bellevue Literary Review, Entropy, SWWIM, Split This Rock, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Luna Luna, Blue Heron Review, Tupelo Press, West Trestle Review, and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review.
For a map of the Student Center: https://uca.edu/studentcenter/files/2012/10/SC-2ndFLoor.png
ArkaText 2019
Monday, February 25, 2019
3:00 – 4:30 pm Undergraduate Student Reading, WTH Lobby
Any undergraduate student from UCA is invited to attend and read from their creative works. This will be an open mic; length of reading time will be determined by the number of students wanting to read. We welcome all genres of creative writing.
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Caitlin Hamilton Summie, fiction, winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post Publication Book Award
10:50 am Craft Talk, WTH 331
6:00 pm Public Reading and Book Signing, UCA Downtown
Caitlin Hamilton Summie earned an MFA with Distinction from Colorado State University, and her short stories have been published in Beloit Fiction Journal, Wisconsin Review, Puerto del Sol, Mud Season Review, and Long Story, Short, and elsewhere. Her first book, a short story collection called TO LAY TO REST OUR GHOSTS, was released in August 2017 by Fomite. She spent many years in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Colorado before settling with her family in Knoxville, Tennessee. She co-owns the book marketing firm, Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity, founded in 2003.
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Toni Jensen, creative nonfiction
10:00 – 11:00 am Craft Talk/Q&A, WTH 331
1:00 – 2:00 pm Public Reading and Book Signing, WTH Lobby
Toni Jensen is the author of Carry, a memoir-in-essays about gun violence, forthcoming from Ballantine. Her essays and stories have been published in journals such as Orion, Catapult and Ecotone, and have been anthologized widely. Her story collection, From the Hilltop, was published through the Native Storiers Series at the University of Nebraska Press. She teaches in the Programs in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas and in the Low Residency MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is Métis.
Thursday, February 28, 2019
C.C. Carter, poetry
10:50 am Craft Talk/Q&A, WTH 331
1:40 pm Reading, WTH Lobby
Voted one of Go Magazine’s 100 Women We Love 2015, Dr. Carla (C.C.) Carter’s raw and piercing poetry has landed her National Slam titles including the 5th Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Competition and the Behind Our Mask 1st Annual Slam.
Her first collection of poetry, Body Language, was nominated for a 2003 Lambda Literary Award. She released her second full collection of poetry, Body Target to critical acclaim in 2017. Her work has been printed in several anthologies including Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution.
Friday, March 1, 2019
4:00 – 5:00 pm Faculty Reading, WTH Lobby
Dr. M Shelly Conner, Dr. Stephanie Vanderslice, and Dr. John Vanderslice will read.
5:00 – 6:00 pm Graduate Student Reading, WTH Lobby
Graduate students from the Arkansas Writer’s MFA Workshop will read from their current projects. A diverse range of voices and genres will be included.
Sponsored by the Department of Film, Theatre, and Creative Writing in the College of Fine Arts and Communication at UCA.
ArkaText 2018
Monday, February 19, 2018
2:00 – 3:30 pm Undergraduate Student Reading, WTH Lobby
Any undergraduate student from UCA is invited to attend and read from their creative works. This will be an open mic; length of reading time will be determined by the number of students wanting to read. We welcome all genres of creative writing.
Tuesday, February 20, 2018: Rachel Hall, fiction, winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post Publication Book Award
9:25 am Craft Talk or Q&A, WTH 331
6:00 pm Public Reading and Book Signing, UCA Downtown
Rachel Hall is the author of Heirlooms, which has been awarded the 2018 Phillip H. McMath Post Publication Book Award by the creative writing program at UCA. Heirlooms was also selected by Marge Piercy for the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize. Hall’s short stories and essays have appeared in a number of journals including Black Warrior Review, Gettysburg Review, Guernica, and New Letters, which awarded her the Alexander Cappon Prize for Fiction. She has received other honors and awards from Lilith, Glimmer Train, Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ conferences, Ragdale, the Ox-Bow School of the Arts, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Hall is a Professor of English in the creative writing program at the State University of New York at Geneseo where she holds two Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence—one for teaching and one for her creative work.
Wednesday, February 21, 2018: John Andrews, poetry
11:00 – 12:00 Craft Talk/Q&A, WTH 331
2:00 – 3:00 Public Reading and Book Signing, WTH Lobby
John Andrews’ first book, Colin Is Changing His Name, was a finalist for the 2015 Moon City Poetry Prize and was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2017. His work has appeared in Redivider, The Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South, Columbia Poetry Review, Burnt District, and others. He holds an MFA from Texas State University where he served as managing editor for Front Porch Journal. Currently, he is PhD student at Oklahoma State University and an associate editor for the Cimarron Review.
Thursday, February 22, 2018: J. Bradley Minnick, radio
10:50 Craft Talk/Q&A, WTH 331
1:40 Presentation, WTH 211
Bradley Minnick is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the Executive Producer and host of Arts & Letters–a bi-monthly radio program aired on NPR-member station KUAR 89.1 and affiliate stations. Arts & Letters, sponsored by the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities, is in its fourth season and highlights intellectual work–primarily in the South. Minnick also writes, hosts and produces Facts About Fiction–a one-minute radio spot that features stories about writers. Arts & Letters podcasts are available on NPR Podcasts, NPR 1, iTunes, Player FM, and artsandlettersradio.org.
Friday, February 23, 2018 UCA Downtown
6:00 – 7:00 Faculty Reading
Dr. Jennie Case will read from her new book of creative nonfiction, Sawbill. Professor Sandy Longhorn will read from recent poems, several of which were written during her Political Poetry class in Fall 2017.
7:00 – 8:00 Graduate Student Reading
Graduate students from the Arkansas Writer’s MFA Workshop will read from their current projects. A diverse range of voices and genres will be included.
Sponsored by the Department of Film, Theatre, and Creative Writing in the College of Fine Arts and Communication at UCA.
