Table of Contents
Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies
(formerly Kansas Quarterly)
Arkansas Review, Vol. 57, No. 1 (April 2026)
At the Bottom of Devil's Kitchen Lake, 1927 (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
by Susan Isaak Lolis
What Comes of Four Days' Rain (After moving states away) (poetry) . . . 10
by Dixie L. Partridge
A Town Built on Sand: Primitive Accumulation and Reciprocal Recognition
in Harry Hamilton's Watch Us Grow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
by Guy Lancaster
Anxious Waters (poetry). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
by Maudie Bryant
Ghost Stories (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
by William Hawkins
ain't no place left to go (poetry) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
by Vincent A. Cellucci
Bob, Willie, and Mike (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
by Justin McKee
Free-Lancing, I Interview a Woman Who Operates a Quarter-Million Dollar
Chicken House with the Company's Representative Standing Right Behind
Her (poetry) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
by Samuel Prestridge
How to Bleed Quietly in Public (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
by Matthew Hand
Louisiana Purchase (poetry) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
by Margo Davis
Delta Days (poetry) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
by Mark Dozier
Playing House (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
by Norma Barksdale
A Tall Thin Black Saxophonist of Indeterminate Age in the French
Quarter (poetry) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
by LC Gutierrez
Everything you know, your soul (poetry) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
by Caris Uşoară
Miss Moby Dick (poetry) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
by Kalina Smith
How This Can Go (poetry) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
by Drew Rollins
After You, Mom (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
by Russell K. Cardwell
Hauntings (photograph) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
by Stasha Cole
Reviews. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
McWilliams, The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford, reviewed by Floyd Collins
Zheng and Ferris, Soulful Dancer: Photographs & Poems, reviewed by Allison Wiltshire
Randolph, Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America's Jim Crow Countryside,
reviewed by Kodi Roberts
Core and Hasson, Tennessee Samplers: Female Education and Domestic Arts,
1800-1900, reviewed by Gregory Hansen
Contributors
Eudora A. is a lifelong Arkansan with a BA in Creative Writing and an MFA on the way at the University of Central Arkansas. She is a Poetry Reader and the Script Editor for Arkana. She has previously been published in the Vortex Magazine of Literature and Fine Art. She loves alliteration and writing on queer experiences, growing up in the south, the majestically mundane, and the wildly weird.
Norma Barksdale is a writer from Oxford, Mississippi. She has her MFA from the University of Montana, and her fiction has been published in the Ekphrastic Review.
Maudie Bryant is a poet and multidisciplinary artist whose work explores memory, identity, and the disquiet beneath the surface of human experience. A graduate of the University of Louisiana Monroe (MA English), her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Statement Magazine, Trampoline, and 3Elements Review. She lives in Shreveport, Louisiana, where she balances full-time work, motherhood, and her creative practice.
Russell K. Cardwell is a retired newspaper editor and reporter who worked at five daily newspapers over a thirty-five-year career. He wrote news stories, features, music and book reviews, and covered the Atlanta Braves and Falcons for three years. He was 2009 Employee of the Year at the Tampa Tribune for writing the first feature on a local atheist group in the 135-year history of the newspaper. His short story, “Buddy’s Diary,” was published in Killer Nashville in 2024.
Vincent A. Cellucci wrote Absence Like Sun (Lavender Ink, 2019) and An Easy Place / To Die (CityLit P, 2011). He edited Fuck Poems an exceptional anthology (Lavender Ink, 2012). He also has three collaborative titles: come back river (Finishing Line P, 2014); a ship on the line (Unlikely Books, 2014), which was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award; and the most recently released getting away with everything (Unlikely Books, 2021). Vincent performed Diamonds in Dystopia, an interactive poetry web app at SXSW in 2017, and the poem was anthologized in Best American Experimental Writing 2018. He works at the TU Delft Library and combines technology and poetry at Leiden University.
Stasha Cole is a PhD candidate in the department of English and Creative Writing at The University of Tulsa. She is Editorial Assistant for Nimrod International Journal and a fellow at The Oklahoma Center for the Humanities. Her poetry and photography can be found in venues such as Thimble, Indefinite Space, Red Flag Poetry, Poetry South, and elsewhere.
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.
Margo Davis is elated her new collection, Uncoupling, is now in print. Prior poems have appeared in Notes of Light and Dark, The Ekphrastic Review, Verse Daily, Synkroniciti, and equinox. In spring 2026 Margo was awarded a fellowship in Washington, just south of Olympic National Park.
LC Gutierrez is an erstwhile academic and product of many places in the deep, southern USA and the Caribbean. He lives, writes, teaches, and plays trombone in Madrid, Spain. His work is published or forthcoming in many fine journals, including Notre Dame Review, New York Quarterly, Tampa Review, Hobart, Delta Poetry Review, and Trampset. He reads poetry for West Trade Review.
Matthew Hand is a writer from Cumming, Georgia, whose fiction explores the quiet negotiations of belonging. His work has been nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Additionally, he was longlisted for the 2025 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize. His work appears in Bull: Men’s Fiction, Ginosko Literary Journal, and Susurrus, among others.
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.
William Hawkins has been published in Granta, ZZYZYVA and TriQuarterly, among others. Originally from Louisiana, he currently lives in Los Angeles where he is at work on a novel. Read more of his writing at oncetherewas.substack.com.
Guy Lancaster currently is the editor of the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) and the author of a number of books on race and violence, including American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching (U of Arkansas P, 2021).
Susan Isaak Lolis was shortlisted in the William Wisdom-William Faulkner novel contest. Her story “Vivien’s Sister” won the James Knudsen Prize for Fiction and is published in Bayou Magazine. Her work has appeared in New Madrid, Yemassee, Yalobusha Review, Arkansas Review, Fiction Southeast, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Miami, where she was a James Michener fellow. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Justin McKee was previously the co-founder/editor-in-chief/general dogsbody for the offbeat New Orleans literary journal The Raffish, as well as a busker in Naples, a deckhand in Punta Del Diablo, a bellhop in San Francisco, and a vegetablemonger in Queens. For additional information, please visit justinmckee.com.
Dixie L. Partridge grew up in the rural Mountain West; lived most of her adult life along the Columbia River. Her poetry and essays have won national and regional awards and have appeared in many journals, including Poetry Magazine, The Georgia Review, Southern Poetry Review, and most recently Kaliedescope, Dialogue, MacGuffin, and Healing Muse. Her two published books are Deer in the Haystacks (Ahsahta Press, Poetry of the West series) and Watermark, recipient of the national Eileen Barnes award. Personal impact of landscape is often at the root of her writing.
Samuel Prestridge, a post-aspirational man, lives and works in Athens, Georgia. His book A Dog’s Job of Work is available from Sligo Creek Publishing. He is currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of North Georgia. His children concede that he is, generally, an adequate father.
Kodi Roberts is Associate Professor of History at Louisiana State University. He was awarded a BA in History and Religious Studies from LSU, an MA in History from University of New Orleans, and a PhD in History from University of Chicago. His work focuses on intersections of race and religion in African American History. His current research project is on education in prison.
Drew Rollins is a poet and translator based currently in Sofia, Bulgaria. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Hayden’s Ferry, Witness, Body Literature, and Rattle. A recent graduate of Boston University’s MFA Program in Poetry, he is cobbling together his first collection, which has to do with faith, human nature, and also regular nature.
Kalina Smith is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and high school English teacher. Her work appears in ONE ART, Tulsa Review, FLARE: The Flagler Review, and others. She is the author of Scorpio Season (Kelsay Books). Instagram: @kalinasmithpoetry.
Caris Uşoară is a queer, crip artist, scholar, and emerging poet who rests on and creates from ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Dakota homelands (Dakota county, Minnesota) and grew up on ancestral and traditional Osage and Quapaw lands (Sharp and Fulton counties, Arkansas). You can read Caris’s poetry in BarBar Lit Mag, Louisville Review, the St. Paul Almanac, and Midway Journal.
Allison Wiltshire is Assistant Professor of English at Mississippi Valley State University. She studies African diaspora literature, her recent work analyzing African and African American representations of twins and the Mississippi Delta. Most recently, her work has appeared in Valley Voices: A Literary Review and North of Oxford.
Arkansas Review 57.1 (April 2026)