Ozarks Alive

As we count down to the Rock Picking Party on Nov. 15 (to which you're invited!) watch for updates about each of this year's honorees. Next up: Megan Nichols, this year's Historical Preservation honoree.

Megan Nichols of Mountain View, Arkansas, is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist whose work focuses on contemporary Ozarks life, especially the psychological realities of rural living, poverty, and community survival. Her poetry chapbook Animal Unfit (Belle Point Press, 2023) was featured in Electric Literature, where Burnside Soleil called it “marvels of the everyday in the Ozarks.” Her essay “The Food Room,” published in the Oxford American, received attention for its embedded account of the Stone County Community Food Ministry, where she has volunteered for many years. The Arkansas Times described it as “a rare contemporary Arkansas story told from the inside, by someone working directly within the structures it depicts.”

Please join us in celebrating Megan and the other Rock Picking Awards honorees on Nov. 15 in Springfield. Info about tickets (and links to past Ozarks Alive stories about projects Curtis has championed) are in the comments.

Let’s try some apple pie(s)!

I put together a list of seven apple pies—found in vintage Ozarks cookbooks and tested as part of the Ozarks Pie Project—for you to try this season! Visit OzarksAlive dot com to find the recipes in the most recent post.

Also, a reminder: Copies of "The Ozarks Pie Project Diary," a cookbook collection of 48 vintage pie recipes, are currently on sale! You can get two copies for $40, which is $10 less than they cost individually. Visit the "Store" tab to get your copies with code PIESALE.