Little Rock
Arkansas
Six Bridges Book Festival 2023
Arts and Entertainment
September 8, 2023
From: Six Bridges Book FestivalThe Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) will present the twentieth annual Six Bridges Book Festival from September 25 – October 1, 2023. Named for the six bridges that connect the downtowns in Little Rock and North Little Rock, the Festival bridges communities and brings people together. CALS actively solicits input from a variety of demographic groups with the goal of offering a diverse, inclusive, and widely appealing festival.
The event celebrates reading, literacy, stories, and wordsmithing. Scores of nationally known authors converge on the city to offer panels on a wide variety of topics, from cooking demonstrations to award-winning comedy. Authors also venture into the community for efforts such as Writers in the Schools (WITS), bringing the joy of writing to hundreds of students in central Arkansas.
Since inception, the Festival has been an important showcase for nationally and internationally writers known writers, as well as locally-based talent.
Presenters from past festivals include Ann Patchett, John Waters, Sebastian Junger, Jacqueline Woodson, David Sedaris, Kiese Laymon, Tim O’Brien, Congressman John Lewis, Issa Rae, Mary Roach, Charles Yu, Jericho Brown, Vashti Harrison, TJ Klune, Sandra Cisneros, James Beard Award winners Dorie Greenspan and Vishwesh Bhatt, and critically acclaimed Arkansas authors such as Kevin Brockmeier and Trenton Lee Stewart.
Full 2023 Schedule
SCHEDULE BY DAY
VIRTUAL EVENTS: Monday, September 25 - Wednesday, September 27
SEPTEMBER 25, 2023
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Six Bridges Book Festival: Stephen Aryan
The Judas Blossom is the first installment in a Persian-inspired fantasy trilogy set in the 13th century. It is an imaginative and sprawling epic fantasy reimagining of the Mongol Empire’s invasion of Persia, following the lives and treacherous journeys of four key figures in the heart of war.
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Six Bridges Book Festival: Bart Elmore
Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet travels the rural roads running through the American South that led to our planet-changing global economy. Bart Elmore uses the histories of five Southern firms—Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Walmart, FedEx, and Bank of America—to investigate the environmental impact of our have-it-now, fly-by-night, buy-on-credit economy. Drawing on exclusive interviews with company executives, corporate archives, and other records, Elmore explores the historical, economic, and ecological conditions that gave rise to these five trailblazing corporations.
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Six Bridges Book Festival: Byron Lane & Steven Rowley
Byron Lane is an author, playwright, and screenwriter whose debut novel, A Star is Bored, inspired by his time as assistant to actress Carrie Fisher, was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “wildly funny.” He lives in Palm Springs, California, with his husband, author Steven Rowley (who shares this session at the Fest, talking about his book The Celebrants), and their rescue dogs. In Lane’s Big Gay Wedding, a conservative mother runs a rescue ranch for misfit animals in rural Louisiana and clashes with her gay son when he wants to have a grand wedding on the family farm.
Written with humor and heart, Rowley’s The Celebrants is a moving tale about the false invincibility of youth and the beautiful ways in which friendship helps us celebrate our lives, even amid the deepest challenges of living.
SEPTEMBER 26, 2023
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Six Bridges Book Festival: Darrin Bell & Élodie Durand
Through evocative illustrations and sharp humor, Darrin Bell examines how “The Talk” shaped intimate and public moments from childhood to adulthood. While coming of age in Los Angeles—and finding a voice through cartooning—Bell becomes painfully aware of being regarded as dangerous by white teachers, neighbors, and police officers, and thus aware of his mortality. And now Bell must decide whether he and his own six-year-old son are ready to have “The Talk.”
In Élodie Durand’s landmark nonfiction comic Transitions: A Mother’s Journey—a sympathetic, informative, and moving story of a family’s journey to acceptance—when Anne learns that her 19-year-old is a transgender man, she struggles to understand her son’s new identity.
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Six Bridges Book Festival: Abraham Josephine Riesman
Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America is an investigative biography about how fascism took root in the United States, told through the lens of the life of professional wrestling tycoon Vince McMahon, former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) chairman and CEO.
Sponsored by CALS Adult Programming.
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Six Bridges Book Festival: Ananta Ripa Ajmera & Marita Golden
Inspired by the nine-night fall goddess festival of Navratri from the ancient Vedic spiritual tradition, The Way of the Goddess is an invitation to embark upon your own sacred hero’s journey. Author and spiritual teacher Ananta Ripa Ajmera shares her story of how she overcame trauma and abuse with the spiritual power of love.
Marita Golden’s The New Black Woman: Loves Herself, Has Boundaries, and Heals Every Day is a guide to radical self-care and healing of body, mind, and spirit. Part inspiration, part resource guide, the book speaks to all women ready to make a commitment to sustaining healthy practices.
SEPTEMBER 27, 2023
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Six Bridges Book Festival: Caroline Dodds Pennock
Caroline Dodds Pennock, one of the world’s leading authorities on the Aztecs, is senior lecturer in international history at the University of Sheffield in England, as well as a public historian, consultant, and writer, appearing in programs from the BBC and Netflix. On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe is a landmark work of narrative history that shatters our previous understanding of the Age of Discovery by telling the story of the thousands of Indigenous Americans who journeyed across the Atlantic to Europe after 1492.
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Six Bridges Book Festival: De’Shawn Charles Winslow
De’Shawn Charles Winslow was born and raised in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His first novel, In West Mills, was the 2019 recipient of the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the 2020 American Book Award, and the 2020 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. Decent People is a novel about how the residents of a fictional North Carolina hamlet cope with a triple murder, and what those murders reveal about classism, racism, and homophobia.
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Six Bridges Book Festival: Rebecca Makkai & Curtis Sittenfeld
New York Times bestseller I Have Some Questions for You is Rebecca Makkai’s most irresistible novel yet: a stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman’s reckoning with her past, with a trans?xing mystery at its heart.
In Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy, Sally Milz is a sketch writer for a live comedy show that airs each Saturday night. When pop music sensation Noah Brewster appears as a musical guest, Sally hits it off with him instantly and sparks seem to fly. But he’s out of her league and this isn’t a romantic comedy—it’s real life…right?
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Six Bridges Book Festival: Ben McGrath
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Ron Robinson Theater, 100 River Market Avenue, Little Rock, AR. 72201
Ben McGrath, longtime staff writer for the New Yorker, wrote his debut book, Riverman, to tell the story of Dick Conant, a modern-day American folk hero who, over the course of more than twenty years, canoed solo along thousands of miles of the country’s rivers.
Sponsored by Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Laura Freeman – Art Reception
5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Pyramid Art, Books, & Custom Framing, 1001 Wright Ave Little Rock, AR. 72206
Attend the open reception for illustrator Laura Freeman’s Framing History exhibition. The exhibition runs September 15 to October 14, 2023.
Sponsored by Hearne Fine Art/Pyramid Art, Books & Custom Framing and Clinton Presidential Center.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Pub or Perish
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Agasi 7 322 Rock St Little Rock, AR. 72202
One of the few events that has been around since the beginning of the Fest… This popular favorite features libations and literature shaken and stirred. What a mix! Limited open mic slots available.
Sponsored by Arkansas Times.
For more information click here.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Chris Cillizza
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Ron Robinson Theater, 100 River Market Avenue, Little Rock, AR. 72201
Power Players: Sports, Politics, and the American Presidency tells all the great stories of presidents and the sports they played, loved, and spectated. While every modern president has used sports to relate to Joe Q. Public, Power Players turns the lens around to examine how sports have shaped our presidents and made for some amazing moments in White House history.
Sponsored by John David Coulter Memorial Fund.
Six Bridges Book Festival: David Grann
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Ron Robinson Theater, 100 River Market Avenue, Little Rock, AR. 72201
Known for his compelling stories, New Yorker writer and bestselling author David Grann has been called “the man Hollywood can’t stop reading,” with his book Killers of the Flower Moon coming to the big screen this fall, with Martin Scorsese as director and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder is a page-turning story of survival and savagery, culminating in a court-martial that reveals a shocking truth.
This program is part of the CALS Speaker Series and honors J. N. Heiskell.
Due to high demand for this event, please limit registration to two tickets per person.
Friday, September 29, 2023
Six Bridges Book Festival: Laura Freeman
10:00 am - 11:00 am
Clinton Presidential Center 1200 President Clinton Ave Little Rock, AR. 72201
In I’m an American by Darshana Khiani, with Laura Freeman’s exuberant illustrations, a classroom of children across many races, cultures, and origins explores the concept of Americanness as they each share bits of their family history and how their past has shaped their own personal American experience.
Sponsored by Hearne Fine Art/Pyramid Art, Books & Custom Framing and Clinton Presidential Center.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Julio Vincent Gambuto One-Man Show
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Ron Robinson Theater, 100 River Market Avenue, Little Rock, AR. 72201
Six Bridges Book Festival: Julio Vincent Gambuto One-Man Show
Author and filmmaker Julio Vincent Gambuto’s viral essay series “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting” sparked a worldwide conversation reaching over 21 million readers in 29 countries. Following up on the series, Gambuto’s debut book, Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!, offers a radical blueprint for how to fight back against the relentlessness of modern life, the coming age of automation, and the stranglehold corporate interests have on our time, focus, money, and power. Gambuto combines elements of his book and background into a one-of-a-kind comic one-man show.
Six Bridges Book Festival: 2023 Festival Party
8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Ron Robinson Theater, 100 River Market Avenue, Little Rock, AR. 72201
Toast the Festival authors at this fête featuring hors d’oeuvres and libations. Geared for adults, the party will also have live music and books available for purchase.
Sponsored by Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Pro Smart Printing.
Saturday, September 30, 2023
Six Bridges Book Festival: Little Readers Rock
10:00 am - 2:00 pm
Children’s Library 4800 W 10th St Little Rock, AR. 72204
In partnership with Junior League of Little Rock.
(All-Day) Outdoor Fair
Enjoy all-day family fun outside with games, inflatables, crafts, roving characters, face painting, music, and special appearances.
10AM-2PM
Community Created Art Project
Create your own collaborative art installation inspired by Natasha Bowdoin’s Spring Song site-specific installation on view at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. Using paper, cardboard, markers, and glue, make your own nature-inspired shape and add it to the Little Readers Rock community installation at Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library. Sponsored By Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
10AM-2PM
Scavenger Hunt
Calling all young explorers! Join us for a library quest to follow clues, solve puzzles and uncover hidden treasures around the children’s library. There’s no deadline to participate, but there is a sweet prize for anyone who completes it.
10AM-2PM
Tommy Terrific’s Wacky Magic
A magic trunk contains a huge comic book full of magic tricks representing classic comic book superheroes. The audience guides Tommy through a fun, interactive adventure. Along the way, kids discover how books inspire imagination and make their favorite superheroes come to life.
10-10:30AM
ARTivity
This educational art activity celebrates Hispanic Heritage Awareness and revolves around axolotls and their meaning in Hispanic culture.
10:30-11AM
Lunch
Grab something to eat on site before engaging in more activities.
11-11:30AM
SNACKtivity
Come by for a fun and delicious session on crafting the perfect easy snack.
11:30AM-12PM
Flurffy and Friends
Join the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts’ puppet-in-residence, Flurffy, and his puppet friends for a drop-in, interactive storytime. Flurffy and Friends will lead you through an impromptu immersive experience of puppetry, music, storytelling, and art. Sponsored by Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
11:30AM-1:30PM (roving)
Laura Freeman
A second opportunity to see Laura Freeman’s program on I’m an American by Darshana Khiani, featuring Freeman’s exuberant illustrations. In Khiani’s book, a classroom of children across many races, cultures, and origins explores the concept of Americanness as they each share bits of their family history and how their past has shaped their own personal American experience. Sponsored by Hearne Fine Art/Pyramid Art, Books & Custom Framing and Clinton Presidential Center.
12-12:30PM
STEMtivity
Ready for high-flying fun? Join us to create a paper masterpiece and then compete in a friendly competition to see who can get their plane to soar the furthest.
12:30-1PM
Reading Dragons
Unleash your imagination by designing trading cards as part of CALS’s Reading Dragons program, which encourages kids. Attend this session to learn how to join.
1-1:30PM
Museum of Discovery
In Awesome Science, a presentation by the Museum of Discovery, witness swirling vortexes and be amazed by the coolest cryo demonstrations around!
1:30-2PM
Six Bridges Book Festival: Writing Workshop 1
10:00 am - 11:00 am
Rock It! Lab 120 River Market Ave Little Rock, AR. 72201
Join CALS’s Deb Moore and the Writing Circle for an Exquisite Corpse activity, a collaborative game with origins in the Parisian Surrealist Movement. Drop in and add your unique sentence or phrase to an evolving piece of collaborative and creative writing. Breakfast treats, too!
Six Bridges Book Festival: Stacey Mei Yan Fong – Cooking Workshop
10:00 am - 11:00 am
Eggshells Kitchen Co. 5501 Kavanaugh Blvd Little Rock, AR. 72207
Come bake pie number one in the 50 Pies, 50 States journey with author Stacey Mei Yan Fong as she chats about all things American, pie, and, most of all, the friendships that made her decide to call this country her home. Limited seating. Get your ticket today!
Six Bridges Book Festival: Rachel Louise Martin & Monica Potts
11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Ron Robinson Theater 100 River Market Avenue Little Rock, AR. 72201
In A Most Tolerant Little Town, historian Rachel Louise Martin weaves together over a dozen perspectives to tell the forgotten story of the first school to attempt court-mandated desegregation in the wake of 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education decision.
In Monica Potts’s New York Times bestselling memoir The Forgotten Girls, an acclaimed journalist tries to understand how she escaped the confines of her small town in Arkansas while her brilliant friend could not, illuminating the unemployment, drug abuse, sexism, and evangelicalism killing poor, rural white women all over America.
Sponsored by CALS Main Library Renovation Architects: Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects, Wer Architects, Stocks Mann Architects.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Eli Cranor & Michael X. Wang
11:30 am - 12:30 pm
UA Little Rock Downtown 333 President Clinton Avenue Little Rock, AR. 72201
Arkansas author and columnist Eli Cranor’s second novel, Ozark Dogs, is a Southern noir thriller about a decades-old blood feud between two families in a small Arkansas town.
Michael X. Wang’s Lost in the Long March is an unflinching debut novel set against the backdrop of Mao’s Long March and its aftermath. Set in China in 1934 and going into the 1970s, the novel features naive orphan Ping, who has fallen in love with Yong, a true believer in Mao and the Marxist ideology.
Sponsored by WordsWorth Books and Riggs Cat.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Writing Workshop 2
11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Rock It! Lab 120 River Market Ave Little Rock, AR. 72201
Whether you’re an aspiring writer or just interested in how the writing process works, don’t miss this unique opportunity to talk shop with Quinn Connor, author of Cicadas Sing of Summer Graves, and CALS’s Jasmine Jobe.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Susan Gravely – Cooking Workshop
11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Eggshells Kitchen Co. 5501 Kavanaugh Blvd Little Rock, AR. 72207
Join VIETRI founder Susan Gravely as she prepares recipes and shares stories from her new memoir and cookbook, Italy on a Plate, a loving tribute to 40 years of Italian travels and friendships. Limited seating. Get your ticket today!
Sponsored by At Home in Arkansas.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Jermaine Fowler
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Ron Robinson Theater 100 River Market Avenue Little Rock, AR. 72201
In the instant New York Times bestseller The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth, Jermaine Fowler takes a sweeping survey of human history to show how Black humanity has been erased and relate how its recovery can save the humanity of us all.
This program is part of the CALS Speaker Series and honors Rabbi Ira Sanders.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Hilary Leichter & Ben Purkert
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
UA Little Rock Downtown 333 President Clinton Avenue Little Rock, AR. 72201
In Hilary Leichter’s Terrace Story, Annie, Edward, and their daughter find a beautiful terrace hidden in the closet of their cramped apartment. But every bit of extra space has a hidden cost, and the terrace sets off a seismic chain of events, forever changing the shape of the world.
Ben Purkert’s debut novel The Men Can’t Be Saved tackles a haunting question: What do our jobs do to our souls? In this startlingly original examination of work, sex, addiction, religion, branding, and ourselves, Seth is a junior copywriter whose latest tagline just went viral. He tries to discover his spiritual self by day, while popping illegal prescription pills by night and straying farther from salvation.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Regina Black & Nikki Payne
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Rock It! Lab 120 River Market Ave Little Rock, AR. 72201
Regina Black’s The Art of Scandal is a steamy contemporary romance about a Black trophy wife who agrees to fake a perfect marriage for her cheating husband’s political campaign in exchange for a large divorce settlement but starts questioning her life choices when she falls for a handsome young artist.
In Nikki Payne’s debut novel Pride and Protest, hailed as “incandescent” by the Washington Post, a woman goes head-to-head with the CEO of a corporation threatening to destroy her neighborhood in this fresh and modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Sandra A. Gutierrez – Cooking Workshop
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Eggshells Kitchen Co. 5501 Kavanaugh Blvd Little Rock, AR. 72207
Share an hour with Sandra A. Gutierrez, acclaimed food journalist, professional cooking instructor, recipe developer, and author of Latinísimo: Home Recipes from the Twenty-One Countries of Latin America. Limited seating. Get your ticket today!
Six Bridges Book Festival: Harrison Scott Key & Hannah Pittard
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Ron Robinson Theater 100 River Market Avenue Little Rock, AR. 72201
Harrison Scott Key is the executive dean at Savannah College of Art and Design and is the author of three books, including The World’s Largest Man and Congratulations, Who Are You Again?, the inspiration for his TEDx talk, “The Funny Thing About the American Dream.” How to Stay Married tells the hilarious, shocking, and spiritually profound story of the author’s journey through hell and back when infidelity threatens his marriage.
Hannah Pittard’s We Are Too Many: A Memoir [Kind of] is an unexpectedly funny, unflinchingly honest, and genre-bending memoir about a marriage-ending affair between the author’s husband and her charismatic best friend.
Sponsored by Oxford American.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Susan Wels
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
UA Little Rock Downtown 333 President Clinton Avenue Little Rock, AR. 72201
The deeply researched true-crime odyssey An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President’s Murder tells the interlocking stories of the Oneida Community and its radical founder, John Humphrey Noyes; eccentric newspaper publisher Horace Greeley; the gloomy, indecisive President James Garfield; and Garfield’s demented assassin, who was connected to all of them in surprising ways.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Karin Lin-Greenberg & Terah Shelton Harris
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Rock It! Lab 120 River Market Ave Little Rock, AR. 72201
Exploring how the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are inextricably bound to the places we call home, Karin Lin-Greenberg’s novel You Are Here is a keenly perceptive and deeply humane portrait of a community in transition.
Terah Shelton Harris’s debut novel One Summer in Savannah features a young poet who returns home to run her father’s bookstore and finds she must protect her gifted daughter—and herself—from the powerful family of the man who raped her, something made even more difficult when she falls in love with his twin brother.
Sponsored by Friends of CALS.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Elizabeth McKenzie & Glenn Taylor
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Ron Robinson Theater 100 River Market Avenue Little Rock, AR. 72201
In Elizabeth McKenzie’s slyly humorous novel The Dog of the North, Penny Rush has problems. But she is a virtuoso at what’s possible when all else fails. In Penny’s quest for a fresh start, there will be a road trip in the Dog of the North, an old van with gingham curtains, a piñata, and stiff brakes. There will be questions: Why is a detective investigating her grandmother, and what is “the scintillator”? And can Penny recognize a good thing when it finally comes her way?
A novel set in West Virginia, Glenn Taylor’s The Songs of Betty Baach follows the lives of the Baaches of Keystone and the Knoxes of Mosestown as they twist and connect in a tale of survival and retribution that crosses three centuries.
Special guest moderator Jay Jennings, editor of Charles Portis: Collected Works.
Sponsored by CALS Foundation.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Juliana Lamy & Jennifer Maritza McCauley
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Rock It! Lab 120 River Market Ave Little Rock, AR. 72201
Playful, kinetic, and devastating in turn, Juliana Lamy’s You Were Watching from the Sand is a story collection written in a mixture of high lyricism, absurdist comedy, and Haitian cultural witticisms.
Jennifer Maritza McCauley’s When Trying to Return Home is a dazzling debut short-story collection spanning a century of Black American and Afro-Latino life in Puerto Rico, Pittsburgh, Louisiana, Miami, and beyond—and an evocative meditation on belonging, the meaning of home, and how we secure freedom on our own terms.
Sponsored by UA Little Rock School of Literary and Performing Arts.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Donovan X. Ramsey & Erin Sharkey
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
UA Little Rock Downtown 333 President Clinton Avenue Little Rock, AR. 72201
Weaving together riveting research with the voices of survivors, Donovan X. Ramsey’s When Crack Was King is a crucial reevaluation of the crack epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s and a powerful argument for providing historically violated communities with the resources they deserve.
Erin Sharkey’s A Darker Wilderness is a vibrant collection of personal and lyric essays in conversation with archival objects of Black history and memory. In its pages, luminary writers reflect on the significance of nature in their lived experience and on the role of nature in the lives of Black folks in the United States.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Stacey Mei Yan Fong, Susan Gravely, & Sandra A. Gutierrez
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church 1000 N. Mississippi St. Little Rock, AR. 72207
Each pie in Fong’s 50 Pies, 50 States: An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the United States through Pie is a whimsical tribute that encapsulates a state’s unique flavors and honors its culture. With recipes organized like the all-American road trip we’ve all wanted to complete, this book is a journey through the wonders of pie for bakers of all skill levels—and also the story of one extraordinary woman who chose to make this place her home.
In her debut cookbook, Italy on a Plate, Gravely celebrates forty years of her lifestyle brand VIETRI and explores what makes Italy so magical: its staggering beauty, unparalleled style, artistic legacy, and incredible food.
In Latinísimo: Home Recipes from the Twenty-One Countries of Latin America, Gutierrez shares more than 300 everyday dishes—plus countless variations—that home cooks everywhere will want to replicate. Divided by ingredient and featuring an extensive pantry section that establishes the fundamentals of Latin American cooking, Latinísimo brings together real recipes from home cooks throughout Latin America.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Christian Cooper
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Ron Robinson Theater 100 River Market Avenue Little Rock, AR. 72201
Equal parts memoir, travelogue, and primer on the art of birding, Better Living through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World tells the story of Christian Cooper’s extraordinary life leading up to the now-infamous incident in Central Park and shows how a life spent looking up at the birds prepared him, in the most uncanny of ways, to be a gay, Black man in America today.
Sponsored by Alan Ross Kumpe Memorial Endowment and Rebsamen Fund.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Andrew Sean Greer & Justin Torres
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Ron Robinson Theater 100 River Market Avenue Little Rock, AR. 72201
Andrew Sean Greer is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of six works of fiction, including the bestsellers The Confessions of Max Tivoli and Less. In the Less sequel Less Is Lost, for Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis have Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him zigzagging across the country.
Justin Torres’s extraordinary novel of creative imagination, Blackouts, mines lost histories?personal and collective. Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator trade stories?moments of joy and oblivion?and resurrect lost loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes.
Sponsored by Dr. Elizabeth Fletcher Dishongh Charitable Trust.
Sunday, October 1, 2023
Six Bridges Book Festival: Classic In Context Film Screening
1:15 pm - 3:15 pm
Ron Robinson Theater 100 River Market Avenue Little Rock, AR. 72201
Six Bridges Book Festival: Classic In Context Film Screening – For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf
Immediately following the Classic In Context noon discussion with Miller Williams prizewinning poet Shaina Phenix, we will screen Tyler Perry’s film adaptation of the Ntozake Shange book, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf.
Make sure you vote for the 2024 Classic in Context.
Sponsored by Dr. Elizabeth Fletcher Dishongh Charitable Trust.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Pie Contest
2:45 pm - 5:00 pm
The Root Café 1500 Main St Little Rock, AR. 72202
To participate in the Traditional Pie Bake-Off and Recipe Swap Competition, entrants should be at The Root Café at 2:45PM with their best pie and copies of the recipe. Spectators should arrive at 3PM.
Monetary and other prizes will be awarded, and the restaurant will be open during the event as well. Special guest judge Stacey Mei Yan Fong, 50 Pies, 50 States.
Sponsored by The Root Café.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Kevin Brockmeier
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Ron Robinson Theater 100 River Market Avenue Little Rock, AR. 72201
The Ghost Variations is a collection of 100 very short stories about ghosts, hauntedness, and the afterlife. Brockmeier will be reading from new work.
Sponsored by Windstream.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Maureen Corrigan on Banned Books
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Ron Robinson Theater 100 River Market Avenue Little Rock, AR. 72201
For more than twenty years, Maureen Corrigan has been the book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air. She is also a columnist for the Washington Post as well as the Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism at Georgetown University, where her courses are very popular and her lectures have been described as “brilliant,” “hilarious,” “passionate,” and “eloquent.” She is the author of Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books and So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures, which was named one of the ten best books of 2014 by Library Journal. Corrigan knows a lot about books considered too dangerous to read and is the author and presenter of “Banned Books; Burned Books: Forbidden Literary Works”—a unique program on the subject of book bannings and burnings in America and Great Britain.
Sponsored by Fred K. Darragh, Jr. Foundation and Little Rock Public Radio
Date: September 25 - October 1, 2023
Location: Online and Various locations in Little Rock, AR
Click here for more information