# Table of Contents

### **Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies** 

##### (formerly Kansas Quarterly)

*Arkansas Review*, Vol. 55, No. 3 (December 2024)

[**The California Story (fiction)** ](https://kb.astate.edu/books/volume-55-issue-3-december-2024/page/the-california-story)...................................................... **163**  
by Mary Troy

**The Big Piney (poetry)** ............................................................ **172**  
by Darren Morris

**A Brief Autumn Hunt (fiction)** .................................................... **174**  
by Brad Cobb

[**Aftermath (poetry)**](https://kb.astate.edu/books/volume-55-issue-3-december-2024/page/aftermath) ............................................................... **178**  
by Michele Parker Randall

**The Understudy (fiction)** ......................................................... **179**  
by Ian Woollen

**Star Dimmed: A Boomer Elegy (or where the Whiteness went) (poetry)** ......... **184**  
by LC Gutierrez

**Envisioning a Storyworld at the Crowley’s Ridge Raceway (photo essay)** ....... **186**  
by Gregory Hansen

**Four Poems (poetry)** .............................................................. **206**  
 Unnaming the River  
 Country Music  
 Bass Rising at Dusk  
 Worm-Digging, Early Autumn  
by Jordan Escobar

[**Lucky (creative non-fiction)**](https://kb.astate.edu/books/volume-55-issue-3-december-2024/page/lucky) ..................................................... **209**  
by Stephanie Vanderslice

**Female Mayfly of the Delta (poetry)** ............................................. **213**  
by Farah Art Griffin

[**The Communion (poetry)**](https://kb.astate.edu/books/volume-55-issue-3-december-2024/page/the-communion) .......................................................... **214**  
by Floyd Collins

[**Carey (fiction)** ](https://kb.astate.edu/books/volume-55-issue-3-december-2024/page/carey)................................................................ **216**  
by Mary McAlister Randlett

**Two Poems (poetry)** ............................................................... **222**  
 Cricket and the Cosmos  
 Telephone  
by Clay Matthews

**Delta Sources and Resources** ...................................................... **224**  
 The Miss-Lou Military Museum and Veterans Welcome/Information Center  
 107 Jefferson Davis Boulevard  
 Natchez, Mississippi, 39120  
by Roscoe Barnes III

**Reviews** ........................................................................ **232**  
 Thurmond, *Lottie Deno: A Novel of the Civil War & the American Southwest*, reviewed by  
 Khem Aryal

 Hendrix, *Peep Light: Stories of a Mississippi River Boat Captain*, reviewed by Gregory Hansen

 Madden, *A pooka in Arkansas*, reviewed by Bryan L. Moore

**Contributors** ................................................................... **239**

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## **Contributors**

**Khem Aryal** is a writer, editor, and a teacher of writing. His fiction has appeared in such journals as *The Pinch, Isthmus, Reed, South Carolina Review,* and *Pangyrus*. He is the author of *The In-Betweeners: Stories* (2023 Braddock Avenue Books) and the chapbook *His Grandma Blues* (2022 Belle Point P), as well as the editor of *South to South: Writing South Asia in the American South*, a collection of stories and essays by authors of South Asian descent in the U.S. (2023 Texas Review P). He is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Arkansas State University, where he also serves as creative materials editor of *Arkansas Review*.

**Roscoe Barnes III** is a native of Indianola, Mississippi, and is the cultural heritage tourism manager for Visit Natchez. Barnes’s articles have appeared in scores of newspapers, magazines, and academic journals, and he is the author of several books, including *F.F. Bosworth: The Man Behind ‘Christ the Healer’* (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009); and *Off to War: Franklin Countians in World War II* (White Mane Publishing, 1996). In addition to being an independent scholar and award-winning journalist, Barnes is vice president of the Mississippi Historical Society and a trustee of the Natchez Historical Society. Barnes holds a PhD in Church History and Church Polity from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and an MA in Religion from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg.

**Brad Cobb** is a native of the Arkansas Delta. He currently resides in England, Arkansas. This is his fourth story to be published by *Arkansas Review*.

**Floyd Collins** holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Twentieth-Century Literature from the University of Arkansas. He has authored several volumes of poetry, including *My Back Pages: The Teresa Poems* (2022). *The Living Artifact*, a selection of his essay-reviews, appeared in 2021. Most recently *Waking Past Midnight: Selected Poems*, a career retrospective, was published by Stephen F. Austin State UP in 2023.

**Jordan Escobar** is a professor and Lecturer in the Warren College Writing Program at University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the chapbook *Men With the Throats of Birds* (CutBank Books). He is a 2023 winner of the St. Botolph Emerging Artist Award and a 2022 Djanikian Scholar in Poetry with the *Adroit Journal*. He has received scholarships from the Community of Writers and the Fine Arts Work Center. His poetry has been recently published in *The Common, Ninth Letter,* and *Prairie Schooner*. His poetry has been publicly displayed at the Albright-Knox Art Museum, Mosesian Center for the Arts, Boston City Hall, and Watertown City Hall.

**Farah Art Griffin’s** poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in *Pleiades, The American Journal of Poetry, Constellations, Storm Cellar, Iron Horse Literary Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Poetry South, The Perch, Plexus, The New Verse News, Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational,* and elsewhere, and was featured in exhibition in the North Dakota Human Rights Arts Festival. She holds an EdM in Arts in Education from Harvard University and is a recipient of the Altman Writers of Color Scholarship from the Hudson Valley Writers Center and a grant from the Writers Happiness Movement.

**LC Gutierrez** is a product of many places in the Southern USA and the Caribbean. An erstwhile academic, he now writes, teaches and plays trombone in Madrid, Spain. His work is recently published or forthcoming in *Notre Dame Review, Sugar House Review, Trampoline Journal, New York Quarterly, Ponder Review, Delta Poetry Review* and *Ballast Journal*. He is a poetry reader for *West Trade Review*.

**Gregory Hansen** is Professor of Folklore and English at Arkansas State University where he also teaches in the Heritage Studies PhD Program. He recently co-edited *Sustaining Support for Intangible Cultural Heritage* and he has published on roots music, public folklore, and a range of topics. He recently was inducted as a Fellow of the American Folklore Society.

**Clay Matthews** has published poetry in journals such as *American Poetry Review, Image, Kenyon Review, Appalachian Review, The Southern Review,* and elsewhere. He is the author of several collections of poetry, and his next collection, *Birds Sing, Anyway*, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. He currently lives in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and teaches at Elizabethtown Community & Technical College.

**Bryan L. Moore** is Assistant Chair of the Department of English, Philosophy, and World Languages; Professor of English at Arkansas State University; and Poetry Editor for *Arkansas Review*. He is the author of *Ecology and Literature: Ecocentric Personification from Antiquity to the Twenty-first Century* (2008) and *Ecological Literature and the Critique of Anthropocentrism* (2017), as well as numerous scholarly articles.

**Darren Morris** is an artist who has lost much of his sight to retinitis pigmentosa. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. His poems are forthcoming at the *American Poetry Review, the Yale Review, Southern Indiana Review,* and *Connecticut River Review* as the winner of the Connecticut Poetry Society’s 2024 Experimental Poetry Contest. He lives in Richmond, Virginia.

**Michele Parker Randall** is the author of *Museum of Everyday Life* and *A Future Unmappable*. Her works can also be found in *Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, Tampa Review,* and elsewhere.

**Mary McAlister Randlett’s** first published short fiction appeared in *Calyx Journal* in the Summer/Fall, 2023 issue. Her work was nominated for a 2024 Pen/RJ Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She has lived much of her life beside the Mississippi River and makes her home in St. Louis. Her work as a psychologist and couple therapist brought her to write stories and essays about families. Her poetry appeared in literary magazines at an earlier time.

**Mary Troy** is the author of six books of fiction–four collections of short stories and two novels: *In The Sky Lord*, the latest one, a collection of connected stories, is just out from Braddock Avenue Books. Her other books are *Swimming on Hwy N, Beauties, Cookie Lily, The Alibi Cafe and other stories,* and *Joe Baker Is Dead*. She has won the USA Book award for literary fiction, the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award, a Nelson Algren award, a William Rockhill Nelson award, and more. Mary has published dozens and dozens of short stories in *Boulevard, Story Magazine, New Letters, Moon City Review, River Styx,* and more. Her books have been reviewed widely and well, including in the *New York Times Sunday Book Review*.

**Stephanie Vanderslice,** Director of the Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop at the University of Central Arkansas and Professor of Creative Writing, has published eight books, most recently *Teaching Creative Writing: The Essential Guide* (Bloomsbury) and *The Lost Son* (Regal House). She lives in Conway, Arkansas, and Quillan, France.

**Ian Woollen** lives to write in Bloomington, Indiana. His recent short fiction has appeared in *Panorama, OxMag,* and *Millennial Pulp*.

Arkansas Review 55.3 (December 2024)