More about ... <br/>Eureka Springs authors

Eureka Springs has long been a center for the arts, and the literary arts are no exception. Here are some published authors who have lived in or near the city at some point in their life.

Contemporary

Peg Agee wrote the true crime story Eureka Springs Feud Ends Deadly
W. Keith Brenton is author of a series of sci-fi novels, The People-of-the-Water Cycle.
Kate Cooper co-authored Eureka Springs: City of Healing Waters with June Westphal
Crescent Dragonwagon is the award-winning author of more than fifty books in six genres including children’s books, cookbooks, and biography
Jane Elzey is the author of the Cardboard Cottage cozy mystery series (“The husband always dies”)
Harrie Farrow, currently an elected county official representing the Eureka Springs area, has written two novels
Laura Matson Hahn is author of The Heart Code, a novel set in 1930s New England and Bohemia
Peggy Perry-Hill has written several books including the memoir cookbooks Give Peas a Chance and In Mom’s Kitchen
Ruth C. Mitchell is a fantasy novelist
Julie Rogers has written books and screenplays in multiple genres including horror, fantasy, and romance
Keith Scales is a British-born novelist and playwright as well as stage actor and director, whose House of a Hundred Rooms draws from his time leading the Crescent Hotel’s ghost tours
Susan Schaefer has written six breezy nonfiction books about Eureka Springs, some available at the Eureka Springs Historical Museum
Zeek Taylor is an artist whose memoir Out of the Delta focuses on his upbringing in rural midcentury Arkansas and subsequent journey of self-discovery
John Two Hawks is a Grammy-nominated musician who has written two nonfiction books based on personal experiences
Ashley Wellman is a criminologist, gallery owner, and children’s author
June Westphal (1938-2023) was considered the leading historian of Eureka Springs, and wrote or co-wrote several books about the town
Joyce Zeller (1932-2016) wrote six novels including The Haunting of Aaron House, as well as a nonfiction history of Eureka Springs

Twentieth century

Frank Lee Beals (1881-1972), a former Army major, wrote several children’s books about American frontier personalities as well as a biography of Eureka Springs politician Claude Fuller
Mary Carson Breckinridge (1881-1965), founder of the Frontier Nursing Service, wrote two memoirs
Cora Pinkley Call (1892-1966) wrote numerous books about Ozarks folklore, history, and cooking, as well as novels and children’s stories
Irene Castle, the dancer who launched the Flapper era, wrote a 1914 dancing guide with her husband Vernon, a 1919 memoir My Husband after his death and, with Bob and Wanda Duncan, a 1958 autobiography Castles in the Air
Bonnie Lela Crump (1890-1977) self-published several short books about Eureka Springs and the Ozarks
Bill Dierkes (?-?) was a poet and publisher
Frances Donovan (1880-1965) was a sociologist who wrote three books on the changing roles of women
Robert Lipscomb Duncan wrote dozens of novels and more than a hundred scripts for television shows such as Bonanza and Lost in Space, many with his wife, Wanda
Wanda Scott Duncan wrote novels and television scripts with her husband
Glenn Ward Dresbach (1889-1968) was an acclaimed poet
Beverly Githens (1903-1971) was a poet whose collection No Splendor Perishes was published in 1946
Morris Hull (1906-1989) wrote a slew of often raunchy pulp novels such as Whose Wife Tonight?, most under pen names such as Herbert O. Pruett (trivia: a 1953 I Love Lucy episode showed a fictional Morris Hull Book Shop in a backdrop)
Marguerite Lyon (1892-1965), better known to readers of her Chicago Tribune column as Marge of Sunrise Farm, wrote four books set in the Ozarks, as well as one about Chicago ad agencies
Nellie Mills (1874-1957) wrote two memoirs about growing up in early Eureka Springs and another two about her later years in Missouri
Carry A. Nation (1846-1911) was a temperance activist who wrote an autobiography
Catherine Osterhage (1898-1970) co-authored the Eureka Springs history A Fame Not Forgotten with June Westphal
Joe Parkhill wrote a number of cookbooks and nonfiction books related to honey
Otto Ernest Rayburn (1891-1960) was an Ozarks folklorist, booster, and magazine publisher who wrote several books, including The Eureka Springs Story
Vance Rudolph (1892-1980) was a prolific and pioneering Ozarks folklorist whose Pissing in the Snow was a 1976 bestseller
Jesse Lewis Russell (1870-1956) wrote a memoir of growing up in the early twentieth century Ozarks
Virginia Tyler (1919-1989) was a local newspaper writer with two published collections of her Around Town columns
Constance Wagner (1903-1984) wrote five novels and two children’s books
Everett Webber (1909-1992) wrote racy romance novels, sometimes with his wife, Olga, as well as a history of utopian movements in the US and a 1954 episode of the television series Fireside Theatre
Olga Webber (1910-1974) co-wrote romance novels and a television episode with her husband, Everett

Nineteenth century

L. J. Kalklosch (?-?) wrote the first history of Eureka Springs, The Healing Fountain, in 1881
Powell Clayton (1833-1914), Reconstruction governor of Arkansas, wrote The Aftermath of the Civil War in Arkansas
William Evander Penn (1832–1895) was a Baptist evangelist who wrote hymns as well as religious nonfiction and an autobiography

This list is almost certainly incomplete, and does not even attempt to include the many newspaper and magazine writers who have lived in Eureka Springs but never authored a book, or artists who have published collections of their work.