The Hooten Hollers

Apr 30, 2024 | Review

That sweaty night the Conservatory was full of young punk rockers, as it usually was, whose intentions were to get too drunk to care about the sound quality or even the performances. The wretched but beloved dump of a venue in Oklahoma City always smelled like old...

William Least Heat-Moon – Columbia, Missouri

Sep 17, 2021 | Literary Landscapes, Missouri, Nonfiction, Novelists, Personal Essay, Volume 2, Writers of Color

William Least Heat-Moon River-Horse PavilionColumbia, Missouri By Kit Salter In March 1995, my wife Cathy and I went to wish Godspeed to Columbia, Missouri, resident William Lewis Trogdon as he was leaving for New York City to begin a 103-day nautical journey, which...

William Gass – St. Louis, Missouri

Sep 11, 2021 | Literary Landscapes, Missouri, Novelists, Volume 1

William Gass ParkviewSt. Louis, Missouri By Devin Thomas O’Shea The epigraph of The Tunnel reads, “The descent to hell is the same from every place,” but William Gass chose to set his magnum opus in a leafy suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, called Parkview. Parkview is...

Naomi Shihab Nye – Ferguson, Missouri

Sep 11, 2021 | Literary Landscapes, Poets, Schools, Volume 1, Writers of Color

Naomi Shihab Nye Central Elementary SchoolFerguson, Missouri By Taylor Fox There’s a haunted feeling that comes with walking around an empty schoolyard. Barren playgrounds and darkened windows convey emptiness, dejection. It’s unnatural for playgrounds to go quiet....

Henry Bellamann – Fulton, Missouri

Sep 11, 2021 | Literary Landscapes, Missouri, Novelists, Volume 3

Henry Bellamann Brick District PlayhouseFulton, Missouri By Alex Dzurick The 1940 novel Kings Row once so offended residents of Fulton, Missouri, that you couldn’t find a copy on the shelves of the local library. You could, however, in the very same town, find a copy...