The moonflower vine is a type of morning glory, and can grow as wild and invasively as your common backyard morning glory. Really, its prevalence is tropical. I lived for some time in Florida, and probably saw them without knowing it, but in the Midwest the moonflower’s cultivation is less common and it can be … Continue reading The Moonflower Vine, by Jetta Carleton

Howerton, a professor at Missouri State University—West Plains, surveys Ozarks literature from the travel journal of the unofficial founder of Ozarks writing, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft,  through the contemporary scene. He opens the collection with a wonderful, very foreign Osage creation story, put into English by the Omaha Indian scholar, Francis La Flesche. Otherwise, while the … Continue reading The Literature of the Ozarks (2019), edited by Phillip Douglas Howerton

In southern Missouri, the Big Piney flows from the hamlet of Dunn northward for one-hundred-and-ten miles, through pastures and hilly national forest, until it reaches the larger Gasconade River, which flows into the Missouri. DOWN ALONG THE PINEY is the title for my collection of short stories that will be published in 2018 by the … Continue reading Reviewing the Ozarks