BTÌìÌÃ

ArkaText is the BTÌìÌÃCreative 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, as well as the awarding of the .ÌýContact: Professor Longhorn slonghorn@uca.edu

ArkaText 2026: April 6 – 9

Monday, April 6

, CNF, Life and Death of the American Worker

11:00am Ìý Craft Talk, WTH 331

3:00pm Ìý Reading, WTH 331

Alice Driver is a James Beard Award-winning investigative journalist from the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. She is the author of Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company. In 2024, the book won the Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize from Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.Ìý In 2025, the book was shortlisted for the Brooklyn Library Prize alongside works by Pulitzer Prize winner Mosab Abu Toha and Windham Campbell Prize winner Alexis Pauline Gumbs.Ìý In 2025, Driver participated in The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center Residency, whose former residents include Maya Angelou and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona, where she is an investigative journalist at The Beam, a new investigative newsroom housed within the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism.Ìý

Tuesday, April 7

, Poetry

12:15pm Ìý Craft Talk, WTH 331

2:40pm Ìý Ìý Reading, WTH 331

Toni Garcia-Butler (he/they) is a poet and community artist. He believes artists play a unique role as cultural historians. Through facilitation, Toni encourages self-empowerment through DIY publishing, personal narrative, and creative joy. Their work centers their people: Black, Filipino, southern, queer, and everyone existing within the intersections. Garcia-Butler has published work in Closet Cases: Queers on What We Wear (under former name), {new words press}, beestung mag, and several independent & self-made zines. His chapbook, DIY BODY, is forthcoming from Sibling Rivalry Press (June 2026).Ìý

Wednesday, April 8

BTÌìÌÃCreative Writing Club Open Mic

5:00pmÌý Ìý WTH 211

Join us for a celebration of creative works at UCA. Open to undergraduate and graduate students from any major/minor, writing in any creative genre! Participants will receive 5 minutes at the mic (excerpts of longer works are welcome). To sign up for a spot in advance, email Erick Montoya (emontoya@cub.uca.edu); walk-up readers will also be encouraged on the night of the event. Everyone is invited to join the audience to support our gifted creative writers.

Thursday, April 9

Frank Thurmond, Fiction, Winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award

10:50am Ìý Craft Talk, WTH 331

1:40pm Ìý Ìý Reading, WTH 331

Frank Thurmond grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and his books include the memoir Before I Sleep: A Memoir of Travel and Reconciliation (Et AliaPress); a short fiction collection titled Ring of Five: A Novella and Four Stories (Et Alia Press); his poetry chapbook Remembrance and Other Poems (Braddock Avenue Books); and Lottie Deno: A Novel of the Civil War & the American Southwest (Parkhurst Brothers Publishers). He is most recently the editor of Tales of the Arkansas Frontier (Parkhurst Brothers Publishers) by the late Jon Cash. Thurmond teaches literature, writing and music at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

 

ArkaText 2025: February 25 – 27

Tuesday, February 25

, YA Novelist, Strong Like You

10:50am Ìý Craft Talk, WTH 331

12:15pm Ìý Reading, WTH 331

 

T.L. Simpson is an award-winning journalist and novelist living in Arkansas. He is currently the editor of his hometown paper, The Courier. His fiction draws from his experiences growing up in the Ozarks, covering both sports and crime. Simpson lives in the Arkansas River Valley, between the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains with his wife and four children. His debut contemporary YA novel Strong Like You is out now. His next novel, Cope Field, due out in April, received , was named one of their most anticipated YA reads of Spring 2025 and was one of five books they highlighted as must adds to your TBR.

 

Wednesday, February 26Ìý

, Book Artist & Binder

12:00pm Ìý Craft Talk, WTH 331

3:00pmÌý Ìý ÌýWorkshop, WTH 331

 

Lesha Shaver holds an MFA in Poetry from Purdue University and is a practicing traditional hand bookbinder and member of the Guild of Book Workers. Her love of bookbinding began in Memphis where she took private lessons and continued her education in the form of an apprenticeship in Albuquerque, New Mexico at Against the Grain Books with additional advanced training at J&B Quality Bindery in Little Rock, Arkansas and the School for Formal Bookbinding in Plains, Pennsylvania. She opened Little Mountain Bindery in 2005 where she enjoys teaching community-based classes in book arts and caring for books of all kinds.Ìý

 

Thursday, February 27Ìý

, Winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award in Poetry

1:40pmÌý Ìý Craft Talk, WTH 331

6:00pmÌý Ìý Award Ceremony and Reading, WTH 331

 

Katie Hartsock grew up around Youngstown, Ohio, where Mill Creek Park remains one of her favorite places in the world. She is the author of (2023) andÌý (2016), both from . She is an associate professor of English at Oakland University, where she teaches creative writing, English literature, and classical mythology. Hartsock holds a PhD in Comparative Literary Studies from Northwestern University, an MFA from the University of Michigan, and a BA in English Literature with a minor in Classics from the University of Cincinnati.

 

Sponsored by the Department of Film, Theatre, and Creative Writing and the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Central Arkansas

 

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, BTÌìÌÃCRWR 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 ÌýÌýCraft Talk, Student Center 214

2:40 pm ÌýÌýPublic Reading, Student Center 214

Terry Engel, author ofÌýNatchez 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),Ìýand Erin Wood (Et Alia Press)

11:00 amÌý 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 amÌý ÌýCraft Talk, Student Center 214

1:40 pmÌý Ìý ÌýPublic Reading, Student Center 214

Kai Coggin is the author ofÌýMINING FOR STARDUST,Ìý INCANDESCENT,ÌýWINGSPAN, andÌýPERISCOPE HEART, as well as a spoken word albumÌýSILHOUETTE. 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—. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming inÌýPOETRY, 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,Ìýand elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor atÌýThe Rise Up Review.

For a map of the Student Center:Ìý/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 BTÌìÌÃis 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 ÌýÌýCraft Talk, WTH 331

6:00 pm ÌýÌýPublic Reading and Book Signing, BTÌìÌÃDowntown

Caitlin Hamilton SummieÌýearned an MFA with Distinction from Colorado State University, and her short stories have been published inÌýBeloit Fiction Journal, Wisconsin Review, Puerto del Sol,ÌýMud Season Review,ÌýandÌýLong Story, Short,Ìýand elsewhere. Her first book, a short story collection calledÌýTO LAY TO REST OUR GHOSTS, was released in August 2017 byÌýFomite.ÌýShe spent many years in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Colorado before settling with her family in Knoxville, Tennessee. She co-owns the book marketing firm,ÌýCaitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity, founded in 2003.

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Toni Jensen, creative nonfiction

10:00 – 11:00 amÌý Craft Talk/Q&A, WTH 331

1:00 – 2:00Ìý pmÌý Public Reading and Book Signing, WTH Lobby

Toni Jensen is the author of ÌýCarry, 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, Ìýand 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 amÌý ÌýCraft Talk/Q&A, WTH 331

1:40 pmÌý Ìý ÌýReading, 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 pmÌý ÌýFaculty Reading, WTH Lobby

Dr. M Shelly Conner, Dr. Stephanie Vanderslice, and Dr. John Vanderslice will read.

5:00 – 6:00 pmÌýÌýGraduate Student Reading,ÌýWTH 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 CollegeÌýof Fine Arts and Communication at UCA.