Terre Ware Author Lecture Series

The first speaker in the new Terre Ware Author Lecture Series at Arkansas State University-Mountain Home (ASUMH) was Rex Nelson, author of Southern Fried: Going Whole Hog in a State of Wonder. The event took place at 6:00 p.m. on October 26, 2021.  

Rex Nelson is the senior editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, where he writes three columns a week along with stories for the newspaper's Sunday Perspective section. Nelson, one of the state's most high-profile writers and speakers, has had a long career in journalism, government and public affairs.

The second speaker in the Terre Ware Author Lecture Series was by Mara Leveritt, author of Devil’s Knot, All Quiet at Mena, and The Boys on the Tracks on March 7, 2023. Leveritt is an American investigative reporter best known for her examinations of official conduct regarding serious crimes in Arkansas. Though often categorized as a “true crime” writer, she says, “I’m more interested in what happens when officials mishandle criminal cases, a sub-genre I’ve dubbed ‘crime after crime’.”

Leveritt’s best known work is Devil’s Knot, about three Arkansas teenagers who were convicted virtually without evidence of having murdered three eight-year-old boys in a crime prosecutors said arose from the teens’ alleged interest in “the occult.” Library Journal called Devil’s Knot “an indictment of a culture and legal system that failed to protect children as defendants or victims.” The New York Times listed the book among 50 “classic” accounts of murder in the United States. A 2013 film based on it starred Colin Firth and Reese Witherspoon.

Eli Cranor, nationally-bestselling author of Don’t Know Tough and Ozark Dogs, presented a lecture at Arkansas State University-Mountain Home (ASUMH) on Tuesday, October 3, 2023.  The third speaker in the Terre Ware Author Lecture Series at ASUMH, Cranor lives and writes from the banks of Lake Dardanelle, a reservoir of the Arkansas River nestled in the heart of True Grit country. 

He is an Edgar Award recipient and his debut novel, Don’t Know Tough, won the Peter Lovesey First Crime Novel Contest and was named one of the “Best Books of the Year” by USA Today and one of the “Best Crime Novels” of 2022 by the New York Times.  Cranor also pens a weekly column, “Where I’m Writing From,” for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and his craft column, “Shop Talk,” appears monthly at CrimeReads.  His newest novel, Ozark Dogs, is now available wherever books are sold.