What Happens When Literary Events Move Online? | Literary Hub

"It changes the cultural landscape of a place like Little Rock to have a literary event like this that didn't exist before," says Choate. Writers like Molly McCully Brown, Kai Coggin, Allison Joseph, and Maurice Carlos Ruffin have stopped there, and they not only increase the city's literary profile but also open up residents to a more diverse-and often more challenging-scope of literature. When you pair that with wine, conversation, and even homemade cookies from Choate's mother, you have a reading series that does more than promote any one writer's work-it fills a need in the community. "I want to help shape [Little Rock] in a way that ... my son will grow up in the city and be proud of it," Choate says.