Edited by Dana Steward

A love letter to the Natural State

What does it mean to have a sense of place? Through history, memoir, poetry, and fiction, the writers of these essays answer this question in a variety of ways, giving us their collective history of natural Arkansas. They speak of the interrelationships of humans and nature, and of the struggles for balance between economic realities and landscape preservation. The book evokes the sheer physical diversity of the Natural State, from the Ozarks and the Boston Mountains to Crowley's Ridge, the Grand Prairie, and the Delta. But far more than mere geography, these are places of intense meaning: sites of enlightenment, conflict, comfort, and vivid experience. Rivers and mountains, plains and forests — these are shorthand terms for specific, beloved, storied places.

"A cornucopia of wonderful thoughts about what it's like to live in the natural world of Arkansas, A Rough Sort of Beauty is a keepsake collection of tributes, memories, dreams, reflections, histories and warnings, indispensable to an understanding of just why we choose to call this home."

—Donald Harington,
author of Thirteen Albatrosses (Henry Holt, 2002)
and eleven other novels set in the natural world of Arkansas

6" x 9"
296 pages
$22.95 (s) paper
978-1-55728-729-8 | 1-55728-729-5

Dana Steward teaches writing at Hendrix College and is a writing coach for the Little Rock Writing Project, a National Writing Project site. She has won the top nonfiction award from the Arkansas Literary Society, and is also the author of A Fine Age (August House, 1984).