HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE — Arkansas boasts a proud tradition of writers — from Nobel laureate Maya Angelou’s time in Stamps to Charles Portis, scribe of True Grit, who still lives in Arkansas. So the Friends of the Coronado Center Library, the Hot Springs Village Writers and the Coronado Center Library have devised a literary festival to celebrate that tradition from 2-5 p.m. today in the Coronado Community Center.
The free event will feature two panel discussions, a Build a Story event, library tours, and booths featuring local authors, literary clubs and organizations. A wine-and-cheese reception will conclude the festival and allow festival attendees to mingle with panelists and authors.
A board member of the Friends of the Coronado Center Library, Judy Carroll, coordinates a local author presentation the last Thursday of every month, called FOCCL Presents. The event has highlighted more than 30 authors in three years and served as the basis for creating the literary festival.
“We wanted to do something,” Carroll said. “We have so much talent in this area. We thought it would be fun to have a literary festival of our own — not quite as big as the Arkansas Literary Festival — we’re starting small, having it on one afternoon.”
It’s a Mystery to Me will be the event’s first panel discussion, at 2:15 p.m., and will focus on the mystery genre. This discussion will be moderated by Janis Kearney, President Clinton’s diarist, as well as an author and publisher. The panelists will be John Achor, author of the Casey Fremont series, which is set in Little Rock; Penny Richards, an author of historical mysteries set in Delight; and Chad Harper, an author of suspense novels.
Where Didja Get That Idea? will be the second panel discussion, at 3:15 p.m., moderated by Mary Eliades. The discussion will feature panelists Jerry Jay Carroll, a Pulitzer-nominated journalist and New York Times bestselling author; Robert Raines, curator of the Gangster Museum of America and author of Hot Springs: From Capone to Costello; and Jeff Meeks, managing editor of an area newspaper and author of They Answered the Call: World War II Veterans Share Their Stories.
“[Raines] is a wonderful, colorful guy, and he sings, too,” Carroll said. “I don’t know if he’s going to do that at our program, but he did that at the program he presented last year.”
The Build a Story event will have attendees add to a collective story based on a prompt. Jerry Davis, a local author, actor and director, will publish the result into a book and present it as a gift to the Coronado Center Library.
For more information, call the library at (501) 922-3555.