Cover Stories

How Barbara Hendricks sang her way out of rural Arkansas, onto the world’s biggest opera stages and into the lives of refugees across the globe.

Labor daze.

Serving up confusion in the time of the coronavirus.

Oxford’s fortunes may be inextricably linked to Ole Miss and the money and people and culture it brings, but the town is more than the university. 

Central Oklahoma boasts more than its fair share of great places to eat, too. If you’re ready for a trip but nervous about straying too far from home (both literally and conceptually), look west.

The appeal of the van as opposed to campers or RVs is mobility, Harris said. “They still have enough room for all your hobbies, all of your gear. All the vans that we build come with a full list of appliances: refrigerator, stove, sink, solar … so you can get all the basics that you would have in an RV in a much smaller, easier-to-maneuver package.” 

Shreveport is a hybrid of ArkLaTex elements and therefore its own thing entirely — too Cajun to resemble its geographical neighbors in East Texas, too landlocked to feel like New Orleans, too libertine to feel like the Bible belt. Here are a few ways to take it in.

The 2021 Arkansas Times Academic All-Star Team, the 27th team the Times has honored, includes quiz bowl savants, budding novelists, future engineers and doctors and championship athletes. There’s rarely a B on the transcripts of these students in not just this, their senior year, but in any year of their high school careers.

A year into a pandemic that stole jobs, lives and any sense of stability, Arkansans might have hoped for some help when lawmakers convened in January for the 93rd General Assembly. What they got was a kick in the face.

David Hill’s book “The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America’s Forgotten Capital of Vice” belongs in the pantheon of great Arkansas books. Weaving in his own family’s history in Hot Springs, Hill tells the story of Hot Springs’ gambling heyday, flashy nightlife and criminal underbelly. To take advantage of the book’s popularity, Visit Hot Springs, the city’s convention and visitor’s bureau, assembled a self-guided “Vapors” tour. Here, Hill adds a few additional suggestions.

The boom that got away.

His new book, ‘Save It for Later,’ confronts this political era.

Tales from the front lines.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Arkansas Times’ Readers Choice restaurant contest. This year, we have a new category to join our traditional bests: Best Pandemic Dining.

It rolled out a new gastropub and a new canned beer.

Forty years ago this year, the Arkansas Times first asked its readers to vote on their favorite restaurants. That kind of history makes our annual Readers Choice restaurant poll the gold standard among an array of latecomers by other publications. To celebrate the anniversary, here are some memorable quotes, factoids and other odds and ends from the last four decades

We reached Chung in South Pasadena, Calif., via Zoom to compare notes on Ozarks living (“I don’t miss the ticks”), to discuss the merits of a family as a protagonist and to jinx him by invoking the work of noted Oscar hoarder Bong Joon-ho.

“Anyone who comes to dine in or order takeout are my guests coming to my home,” Lal said.

Government disputes former Republican Party chair's motion to dismiss bribery case

If you or someone you know could use some help, here are a few resources to tap in Central Arkansas.