Ozark Literary Afternoon

Dr. Brooks Blevins

Historian Brooks Blevins has spent his life studying and writing about the people of his native regions—the South and the Ozarks. He has been in the vanguard of a new and vibrant Ozarks Studies movement that has worked to refract the stories of Ozarkers through a more realistic and less exotic lens. In his new book, In Up South in the Ozarks: Dispatches from the Margins, Blevins introduces us with humor and fairness to mostly unseen lives of the past and present: southern gospel singing schools and ballad collectors, migratory cotton pickers and backroad country storekeepers, fireworks peddlers and impoverished diarists.
 
Part historical and part journalistic, Blevins’s essays combine the scholarly sensibilities of a respected historian with the insights of someone raised in rural hill country. His stories of marginalized characters often defy stereotype. They entertain as much as they educate. And most of them originate in the same place Blevins does: up south in the Ozarks.  

Kaitlyn McConnell

Kaitlyn McConnell is a seventh-generation Ozarker, journalist, and history enthusiast. Kaitlyn writes about the Ozark region through Ozarks Alive, a web-based culture and history preservation project that she founded in 2015. During this program, Kaitlyn will share more about the site and its work, thoughts behind it, and some of the most interesting stories she’s written about along the way.

Passport to the Ozarks: Volume 2 is the second in a series by Kaitlyn. This publication is completely different from the first “Passport,” which was released in 2019. Her new 120-page book features more than 66 places to visit in the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks, and includes color photos and stories about each destination. Sites include historical landmarks, tasty places to eat, beautiful spots to enjoy nature, and unique stops that help you see a quirky side of the Ozarks. It is completely different from the first Passport to the Ozarks book, which is also still available.