Arkansas awarded $54.6 million to dozens of recipients through a new federal program to support projects aimed at bolstering rural healthcare, state officials announced Thursday. 

Established through a 2025 federal tax and spending law called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Rural Health Transformation Program will provide $50 billion to states over five years. Arkansas is expected to receive approximately $1 billion. 

Critics of the program have said it lacks transparency, which could make it difficult to protect against fraud, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy and research group.

Arkansas’ version of the program includes four pillars, including the Healthy Eating, Active Recreation, & Transformation initiative and the Recruitment, Innovation Skills, and Education for Arkansas priority, which received $27.4 million and $27.2 million, respectively, according to a press release. 

The funding awarded to these initiatives “represent strategic investments designed to strengthen health, wellness and workforce capacity” for the state, Arkansas Health Secretary Renee Mallory said during a press conference at the governor’s mansion Thursday. 

The 54 funded projects announced Thursday include training new maternal nurses to serve north central Arkansas and the River Valley, recruiting doulas from underserved communities and creating a “food is medicine” farm-to-clinic model through the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Sanders said.

The program, which will change the trajectory of health in small-town Arkansas, is much more than another funding stream to the healthcare industry, Sanders said. 

“It’s an effort to fundamentally transform what it means to provide healthcare in Arkansas,” she said. “Local, individual and focused on serving the whole person, not just their latest injury or illness.”

Sanders last month announced $149.3 million for 50 projects that fall under the Arkansas program’s other two areas — the Telehealth, Health-Monitoring, and Response Innovation for Vital Expansion initiative and the Promoting Access Coordination and Transportation priority. 

The program’s funding arrives as states prepare for the effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which could reduce federal Medicaid funding in rural areas by $137 billion over 10 years, according to KFF estimates. Rural providers see larger proportions of patients insured through Medicaid.  

The federal law, signed by President Donald Trump last year, is expected to reduce federal spending on Medicaid by about $1 trillion during the next decade to help pay for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy. 

Providers warn that the state’s healthcare system could be further strained by the end of Arkansas’ hybrid Medicaid expansion that covers more than 200,000 people. 

The state asked for a two-year extension to develop a replacement for the program after the Trump administration rejected the state’s renewal request. 

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew DeMillo for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

With bestselling authors like Ariel Lawhon, Alix E. Harrow, Deesha Philyaw, Sarah Damoff and Annie Hartnett on the docket, the Central Arkansas Book Festival’s Six Bridges Book Festival — running Sept. 27-Oct. 4 — is proving once again that its organizers have their fingers on the national literary pulse. 

But don’t let those big-shot names distract you from the homegrown talent on display. To give you a sense of Six Bridges’ robust ties to The Natural State, we chatted by email with a handful of Arkansas-connected writers appearing at the free festival, which takes place at venues across downtown Little Rock. Head to sixbridgesbookfestival.org for the full schedule and author lineup.

***

Though Stacey Yu now lives in London, her childhood included a short stint in Arkansas. The Natural State also figures into her debut novel, “Kitten” — a “Gen Z parable of existential nihilism,” according to Kirkus Reviews — which features a narrator originally from Little Rock who becomes obsessed with her boyfriend’s cat as she visits his wealthy family’s seaside home in New England. 

The premise of “Kitten” is pretty out there — a young woman becomes obsessed with her boyfriend’s cat. How’d you stumble upon this idea and what were the joys and challenges of developing it into a full-fledged novel?

“Kitten” is rooted in my life-long fascination with the childish and the animal — their penchant for grossness and bad behavior, but also their inherent lovability. Their survival often depends on the kindness of somebody who loves them, but they’re not totally helpless; they insist on themselves and their needs. We grow out of all of this peculiar form of freedom, and I wonder if a part of us will always want it back. I’ve always wanted to write a coming-of-age novel about growing out of childhood, and I thought an animal was the perfect device to explore this idea. It allowed me to approach serious, age-old themes with playfulness and humor.

Arkansas was one of the many places you called home during your childhood. When did you live here, what was your experience like and how did that time inform your identity and your writing of “Kitten”?

I lived in Little Rock for two years, from age 5 to 7. I have beautiful, rosy memories of biking down the wide, loping roads with my sister, collecting rocks at the edges of the neighborhood, darting around the wilderness in our backyard. But I was also ostracized at school for being Chinese and non-religious. When I moved to California, where there was a large East Asian population, I was shocked to meet other Asian Americans who had no insecurities about their race. Living in different places with completely different social structures and rules for identity formation has made me a more observant writer, and more tuned into the intricacies of personality and the ways people are constantly negotiating between the world they came up in and the world they’re growing into. 

What’s the most pressing question you set out to pose, answer or engage with when writing “Kitten”?

I wrote “Kitten” to examine the myths and narratives we create, and continue to believe in, about our own childhoods, and the way they interfere with our adult lives. There are many freedoms and safeties unique to childhood that we all grow out of. But there are freedoms and safeties we gain, too, in approaching adulthood. I suppose my key question is: Is adulthood worth it?

This is your first novel. When you think about future book projects, do you imagine them echoing or deviating from the somewhat surreal tone set by “Kitten”? 

My current project is a bit more realist, but who knows about the next one! I love books that have a tint of magic, like Banana Yoshimoto’s works. I try to imbue my writing with that quality, even when it’s grounded in the real world. I’m not sure that I’ll ever dip fully into magical realism or the truly surreal. I’m too concerned with the ways we reveal ourselves in our everyday actions and decisions. 

Who’s the writer (or writers) you’re most excited to encounter at Six Bridges and why? 

I’ve heard such great things about Isabel Klee’s memoir, “Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I’ve Cried About.” I feel like it shares similar themes and soft spots with “Kitten,” such as being lost in your 20s and finding your way through an animal, though of course executed very differently.

The hottest days of a particularly warm August overlapped with the (re)introduction of many to a plain-speaking “shero” of the Clinton era. The Arkansas Repertory Theatre produced a world premiere of “The Remarkable Resignation of Dr. Joycelyn Elders” for a three-week run. Written and directed by The Rep’s artistic director and Little Rock native Steve H. Broadnax III, the play tells the story of the quite remarkable life of Elders. 

As its title suggests, however, the piece centers on her buzzy resignation as U.S. surgeon general on New Year’s Eve 1994. There are a bunch of lessons about public service to be learned not just from how Elders carried out her work during her short time in office, but from how she left that position.

Elders, who celebrated her 93rd birthday during the run of the play, plotted an extraordinary path from the rural Howard County cotton fields where she was born and worked as a youngster. A scholarship to Philander Smith College, based on Elders’ excellence at her all-Black high school, provided her a pathway to study biology, then take a job as a nurse’s aide in a Veterans Administration hospital. She joined the Army, where she trained as a physical therapist, then was accepted into the University of Arkansas Medical School (now known as the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences), newly opened to Black Arkansans and still barely open to women. She graduated from UAMS in 1960 and trained as a pediatrician, eventually becoming a specialist in juvenile diabetes. 

To Gov. Bill Clinton’s credit, he gave many Black Arkansans, including women, a place at the policymaking table during his decade-plus as governor. Elders, appointed to head the Department of Health in 1987, was among them. Elders worked to reduce Arkansas’ historically high rates of teen pregnancy by encouraging enhanced access to birth control and comprehensive sexuality education. She also responded progressively to the AIDS crisis in its early days in the rural state. After years as his chief health officer in Arkansas, President Clinton put her forward as his nominee as surgeon general. 

A few days before the opening of the play, I got the honor of hearing Elders visit about her life in service and, of course, “the resignation” with The Rep’s Broadnax. It’s important to remember how controversial Elders’ appointment as surgeon general was in the first place. The Senate vote in her favor was 65-34, extraordinarily close for that era. Elders recounted how the intersection of race and gender created doubts about her credibility to the point that at least one senator refused to meet with the first Black and second woman to serve in the role.

Once in the position, Elders spoke frankly — and often memorably — about topics others avoided or only whispered about. She advocated that the legalization of certain drugs be studied, a stance that drew criticism on various fronts. She reaffirmed her support for abortion rights, stating that, “We really need to get over this love affair with the fetus and start worrying about children.” At a UN conference on the burgeoning AIDS crisis in early December 1994, Elders was asked about whether masturbation should be promoted. The surgeon general replied, “As per your specific question in regard to masturbation, I think that is something that is a part of human sexuality and it’s a part of something that perhaps should be taught.” So incendiary was her comment about masturbation that it led to her return to Arkansas after only 15 months on the job in D.C.

Reflecting upon her resignation, Elders shared that she got a call on New Year’s Eve from an aide who said her resignation letter was needed within a couple of hours so it could be announced. Elders told the aide that if the president wanted her resignation, he could call and ask her for it. No doubt deeply pained in doing so, Clinton did so later in the day, and Elders promptly gave it. 

Elders said she has never borne any grudges. It was simply about politics, and Clinton was urged on by those looking out for his political fortunes, just weeks after Democrats’ devastating losses in the 1994 midterm elections. It’s quite remarkable that Elders was able to take this loss of position with such grace.

That leads to the final lesson about public service that Elders had to teach: the importance of the “village” supporting Elders across her time in public service so she never lost her sense of self. At the head of that village is Coach Oliver Elders, a legend in his own right, who retired as the winningest coach in Arkansas high school basketball. Now 95, Coach Elders was at the event, offering up one of his famous poems to the crowd. In return, the woman who had been the most visible medical professional in the world offered her own words to him: the importance of their love in making her who she is and shaping how she served. 

Four Arkansans filed by Thursday’s deadline to run in the Jan. 5 special election to fill the Senate District 18 vacancy, according to the secretary of state’s office. 

Independent candidates Steven McClelland and Trevor McGarragh, Democrat Camille Feyen and Republican Will Moore are seeking to replace Republican Jonathan Dismang, who resigned from the Senate earlier this month to take a job at Arkansas Electric Cooperatives. 

Moore, Searcy’s city attorney, has been endorsed by Dismang and several other top Republicans, including Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Dismang’s successor will serve the remainder of his term as the representative of Senate District 18, which includes White County and parts of Faulkner and Cleburne counties. Dismang, the former co-chairman of the Joint Budget Committee, was last elected in 2024 to a four-year term that ends in January 2029. 

The vacancy leaves Republicans with a 27-6 majority in the Senate.

Dismang’s seat will be the sixth legislative vacancy to be filled over the last year. Republican Sen. Brad Simon and Democratic Rep. Alex Holladay won special elections in March to represent Senate District 26 and House District 70, respectively. 

Republican Bill Teeter won the House District 44 special election in August to replace the late Republican Rep. Stan Berry.  

Eudora Mayor Tomeka Butler, a Democrat, and Rison Republican Harrell Wilson are vying for the Senate District 1 seat in a special election that coincides with November’s general election. The winner will replace former Republican Sen. Ben Gilmore who resigned in June to work for Attorney General Tim Griffin.  

Republican Kara Armas of Pea Ridge and Democrat Parker Stohlton of Bella Vista are facing each other to represent House District 8 in a separate special election that’s also scheduled during November’s midterms. 

The seat became vacant when former Republican Rep. Austin McCollum resigned in August following domestic violence charges. His resignation left Republicans with a 79-20 majority in the House.

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew DeMillo for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

With bestselling authors like Ariel Lawhon, Alix E. Harrow, Deesha Philyaw, Sarah Damoff and Annie Hartnett on the docket, the Central Arkansas Book Festival’s Six Bridges Book Festival — running Sept. 27-Oct. 4 — is proving once again that its organizers have their fingers on the national literary pulse. 

But don’t let those big-shot names distract you from the homegrown talent on display. To give you a sense of Six Bridges’ robust ties to The Natural State, we chatted by email with a handful of Arkansas-connected writers appearing at the free festival, which takes place at venues across downtown Little Rock. Head to sixbridgesbookfestival.org for the full schedule and author lineup.

***

Little Rock writer Hope Coulter, a former professor and administrator at Hendrix College, heads to Six Bridges in support of “Rumors of Peace,” a new short story collection released Sept. 22 that Foreword Review called “poignant, pensive, and nuanced.” Her body of work also includes a poetry collection, “The Wheel of Light” (2015); a children’s book, “Uncle Chuck’s Truck” (1993); and two novels, “Dry Bones” (1990) and “The Errand of the Eye” (1988).

How long have you been working on “Rumors of Peace”? What was the path to getting it published?

This book is a collection of my best stories, published over the years in literary magazines and anthologies, as well as two longer stories, the newest ones, which are previously unpublished. So in a sense I’ve been working on this collection since 1991, when the oldest story in the book first saw print. 

Gathering the stories into a single manuscript, I worried about how they would hold together. What would unify them? Would the ones I wrote long ago still hold up? As I arranged them, I started to see themes and connections that I hadn’t noticed before. That part was fun.

I was so happy when the collection was accepted by Cornerstone Press, a quite active literary press based at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

The publisher’s summary for “Rumors of Peace” includes the phrase “fractured, suburban American South” to describe the various settings that unite the stories in the book. What interests you about Southern locales? And does Arkansas serve as a backdrop for any of the stories?

I’ve lived in Arkansas and Louisiana my whole life, except for college and a few years after college. I’m steeped in the South. I love its natural beauty, its complexity, its ironies. 

But there’s not one monolithic South, right? As [Chimamanda Ngozi] Adichie says, there’s no single story that defines it. The protagonists of these stories view the South through the lens of white privilege, as I do. But other factors such as education, class and politics complicate that simplistic summary. The characters move and act within political and historical contexts that they understand to varying degrees. They confront — and deny, and distort — the underpinnings of immigration, war, and caste as well as race. 

The first five stories take place in Louisiana, where I grew up. The last three stories have more generalized Mid-South settings: Arkansas isn’t named, but Arkansas backdrops may come into your mind as you read.

You retired in 2025 after working at Hendrix College for more than 30 years. How has your relationship with reading and writing changed since retiring?

I have more time! I loved my work at Hendrix, and it enhanced my writing and reading in so many ways. But the hours were long, and like most teachers, I routinely brought work home to finish on nights and weekends. Now all of that — plus my commute — is simply gone from my schedule. The days are deliciously open. I have long stretches of time to write and read. These days, if I can’t sustain my attention on some gnarly draft in progress, I have no one to blame but myself. 

You’re a multi-genre writer. How does writing short stories differ from poetry, novels and children’s literature?

Short stories are so focused and mysterious: I’ve read them, taught them, written them, and at some level I may never fully understand what makes them tick. They have the lyricism, compression and attention to rhythm that poetry requires. They deal in voice and momentum, like a novel. And they often have a tone I enjoy in children’s lit, a kind of matter-of-factness combined with surprise. So, in a way, they have it all. Maybe that’s why I still find them supremely challenging.

Who’s the writer you’re most excited to encounter at Six Bridges and why? 

Oh, what a great roster. There are a number of local writers that I’m always excited to hear. One non-local that jumps out is Ben Fountain. I loved his novel “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” as well as his earlier fiction — he’s deeply knowledgeable about a breadth of things, he spins a good tale and he’s funny. I’m curious to see him in person and read his new book. Then there are those sessions that pique my curiosity just because the titles are so intriguing. How could I not be drawn to “A Siege of Owls” by Uchenna Awoke, or “How to Talk to Your Dog About Murder” by Emily Soderberg? Part of the fun of the festival is discovering new writers I wasn’t familiar with before.

The Arkansas Department of Corrections will shift its focus away from creating a policy restricting access to physical books in an effort to prevent illegal drugs from entering prisons, officials told the state corrections board Monday. 

Officials instead plans to tighten the language of a 2022 policy and give the department more authority to ban “misbehaving” third-parties selling publications laced with drugs to incarcerated people, said Tawnie Hughes, the department’s chief legal officer. 

The ability to purchase physical newspapers, books and other publications will not be taken away, based on the draft policy obtained by the Advocate.

“Please do not print a headline that says we’re banning books, because we’re not,” said corrections board chairman Jamie Barker during Monday’s meeting.

The department first proposed banning incarcerated people from receiving physical books last year in order to tamp down on drugs making their way into prisons. Physical books in state prison libraries were not affected under that proposal, but books that incarcerated people purchased from businesses like Amazon or Barnes & Noble were. 

The proposal faced pushback from civil liberties and prison reform groups, and the families of incarcerated people. 

Officials paused implementation of the proposal earlier this year so it could go through the formal rulemaking process.

Critics of such restrictions have said they severely limit access for people in prison to reading materials because offerings in prison libraries and on prison-issued tablets can be limited or outdated. But prison officials said they were needed to combat a surge of illegal drugs.

Rowell said the Baxter County sheriff tried implementing a policy similar to the one proposed by the corrections department, but it was blocked in federal court.

“You really have to be demonstrative that you’ve taken all of the steps before moving to something that’s that extreme,” Rowell said.

Corrections Secretary Linsday Wallace said the changes to the initial proposal that were discussed with the board Monday were made for several reasons, including that digital reading options for incarcerated people did not meet the standards necessary to enable a ban on physical books. 

“If we could get some library options that were bolstered and they had more opportunities to get what they wanted, I don’t have a problem with that,” Wallace said. “But also, not everybody gets tablets.” 

Prison-issued tablets often do not bridge the gap when access to physical books is curtailed, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy group.

Wallace said department officials would see if the new proposal discussed Monday made a difference before attempting more restrictive policies. 

The conversation about the book policy came during a broader discussion about overdose deaths within state prisons. Incarcerated people have been overdosing on drugs that don’t respond to naloxone, an opioid-overdose antidote, department staff told board members, and the ever-evolving nature of the illicit drugs that make their way into the prisons means there’s no single test for identifying them.

“This is not an Arkansas-unique problem,” Wallace said. “It’s happening everywhere. Everybody is dealing with these drugs coming in and their deaths.”