CALS unveils first spherical of authors for 2024 Six Bridges E-book Competition

Now in its twenty first 12 months, the Six Bridges E-book Competition is returning to Little Rock on Sept. 23-29 for every week of panel discussions, readings, e book signings and extra. Hosted by the Central Arkansas Library System, the competition expects appearances from roughly 50 authors, a few of whom will participate nearly. 

The primary spherical of writer bulletins consists of two Arkansas natives that we’ve been following intently: Garrard Conley and Eli Cranor. The writer of “Boy Erased,” a harrowing yet hopeful bestselling memoir about his time in conversion remedy that was become a 2018 movie, Conley launched “All of the World Beside” — his debut novel and a tragic queer love story between a doctor and a preacher in 18th century Puritan New England — in March. 

Cranor, then again, is thought for writing “propulsive, gritty” thrillers set in Arkansas. (Check out the short story he penned exclusively for the Arkansas Times.) His third novel, “Broiler,” comes out on July 2, and takes place in Springdale, the place an undocumented worker at a Tyson Meals-esque hen plant harbors a revenge plan in opposition to the plant supervisor who unjustly fired him. In an advance overview, Library Journal sung the e book’s praises: “Edwin’s act of revenge is unforgivable, however Cranor’s potential to search out the humanity in all his characters will maintain readers from dropping sympathy, and his unshakable depiction of the brutal situations within the hen plant would make Upton Sinclair proud.” 

College of Arkansas-Fayetteville historical past professor Elliott West — who was named a 2024 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Historical past for “Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion” — and poet Phillip B. Williams — whose debut novel, “Ours,” orbits round a lady with supernatural talents who “annihilates plantations throughout Arkansas to rescue the folks enslaved there” and “brings these she has freed to a haven of her personal creation: a city simply north of St. Louis, magically hid from outsiders” — are additionally on the lineup. Right here’s a bit about the remainder of the presenters who’ve been unveiled to this point:

Kamilah Cole, writer of the younger grownup fantasy So Let Them Burn, an immediate nationwide indie bestseller. 

Brian Fairbanks, writer of Willie, Waylon, and the Boys: How Nashville Outsiders Modified Nation Music Endlessly. 

Margot Livesey, the New York Instances best-selling writer of a set of tales and 9 different novels, together with The Flight of Gemma Hardy and The Street from Belhaven. 

Bettina L. Love, the acclaimed writer of the New York Instances bestseller Punished for Dreaming: How Faculty Reform Harms Black Kids and How We Heal. 

Crystal Wilkinson, the writer of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a culinary memoir, and the recipient of an NAACP Picture Award for Excellent Poetry, an O. Henry Prize, and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. 

Whereas most of Six Bridges’ programming is free, there’s a ticketed fundraiser on the competition’s remaining evening that includes a dialog between Ann Patchett, whose most up-to-date novels are “Tom Lake” and “The Dutch Home,” and illustrator Robin Preiss Glasser.

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