The Pryor Center Presents 2025 lecture series continues with Sean Fitzgibbon presenting "What Follows is True: Crescent Hotel" at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22, at the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

Fitzgibbon will present What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel, his 240-page, fully painted graphic nonfiction book that examines the Crescent Hotel's dark chapter as the Baker Hospital, a Depression-era cancer hospital in Eureka Springs. Combining rigorous research with evocative visual storytelling, the work explores the intersection of history, folklore and cultural memory surrounding one of the region's most notorious episodes.

Fitzgibbon will also give a preview of his forthcoming graphic nonfiction project on the history, folklore and science of Plum Bayou Mounds, an important archaeological site in Arkansas. In addition, he will discuss the unique power of graphic narrative as a medium for interpreting and communicating history to audiences of all ages.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. 

Artist and author Sean Fitzgibbon explores unusual real places and events through visual storytelling. He holds an M.F.A. in art and teaches college-level courses in studio, design and art appreciation. His work has been exhibited nationally, and he was awarded a 2021 Mid-America Arts Alliance Artists 360 Grant and the 2023 Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship for his graphic nonfiction What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel. The book received a coveted Kirkus Starred Review.

Fitzgibbon is developing a new graphic nonfiction book on Plum Bayou Mounds in collaboration with Paige Ford of the Arkansas Archeological Survey and an advisory board of Tribal and educational representatives. The project combines art and archaeology to make science accessible, with free copies, along with supporting curricula, to be distributed to Arkansas middle schools.

The Pryor Center is located at 1 E. Center St., Suite 120. The event is free and open to the public, and parking is available in the Town Center parking deck on East Avenue.

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About the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History: The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History is an oral history program with the mission to document the history of Arkansas through the collection of spoken memories and visual records, preserve the collection in perpetuity, and connect Arkansans and the world to the collection through the Internet, TV broadcasts, educational programs, and other means. The Pryor Center records audio and video interviews about Arkansas history and culture, collects other organizations' recordings, organizes these recordings into an archive, and provides public access to the archive, primarily through the website at pryorcenter.uark.edu. The Pryor Center is the state's only oral and visual history program with a statewide, seventy-five county mission to collect, preserve, and share audio and moving image recordings of Arkansas history.

About the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences: The Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is the largest and most academically diverse unit on campus with three schools, 16 departments and 43 academic programs and research centers. The college provides the majority of the core curriculum for all University of Arkansas students.

About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas' flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $2.2 billion to Arkansas' economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the few U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research News.