Series Editor to Discuss and Sign First Book in New Series From UA Press

Photo credit: University of Arkansas Press

Back Yonder, published by the University of Arkansas Press.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Brooks Blevins, editor of the new University of Arkansas Press series Chronicles of the Ozarks, will discuss a new edition of the Arkansas classic Back Yonder: An Ozark Chronicle, at the Fayetteville Public Library. The free event is part of the library’s ongoing University of Arkansas Press Spotlight series and is from 6 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9.

Back Yonder, written by Wayman Hogue, is full of stories of growing up in the Ozarks. Hogue, like his contemporary Laura Ingalls Wilder, wove a narrative of a family making its way in rugged, impoverished and sometimes violent places.

A New York Times review in 1932 said, Back Yonder “brilliantly illuminates mountain life to its very heart and in its most profound aspects.” The book was a standout among the Ozarks literature that was popular during the Great Depression, but this memoir of life in rural Arkansas in the decades following the Civil War had been forgotten by all but a few students of Arkansas history and folklore.

Charles Wayman Hogue (1868–1965) was born and raised on a farm in Arkansas,  then lived most of his life in Memphis, where he worked as an artist and a salesman. He was the father of famed Arkansas writer Charlie May Simon, who was married to Howard Simon, who provided the woodcuts illustrating Back Yonder.

Brooks Blevins is the Noel Boyd Professor of Ozarks Studies at Missouri State University. He is the author of five books including Hill Folks: A History of Arkansas Ozarkers and Their Image; Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South; and Arkansas / Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ol’ Boys Defined a Sate.

The Chronicles of the Ozarks will make available depression-era Ozark books with introductions and editorial notes that place each book and its author against the backdrop of the time and its popular assumptions and myths of life in the Ozarks. Back Yonder is the first book in the series. The second book, The Ozarks: An American Survival Story, by Vance Randolph, will be published in the spring of 2017.

The UA Press has established a second Ozarks-related series called Ozarks Studies, for which Blevins will also serve as series editor. Ozarks Studies will publish new scholarship. The first book in the series, Down on Mahans Creek: A History of Families and a Neighborhood in the Ozarks, will be published in the spring of 2017.

The Fayetteville Public Library is located at 401 W. Mountain St. The next University of Arkansas Press Spotlight event is scheduled for Oct. 18, when Linda Williams Palmer will discuss Champion Trees of Arkansas: An Artist’s Journey. On Oct. 23 at 2 p.m., author Jerry McConnell will discuss his book, The Improbable Life of the Arkansas Democrat: An Oral History. Each of these events is part of the library’s larger True Lit festival, offering a variety of events, including author talks, writing workshops, concerts, and more.

About the University of Arkansas Press: The University of Arkansas Press was founded in 1980 as the book publishing division of the University of Arkansas. A member of the Association of American University Presses, it has as its central and continuing mission the publication of books that serve both the broader academic community and Arkansas and the region.