Eli Cranor will be the featured speaker for the Ross Pendergraft Library and Technology Center Author Series on Wednesday, Oct. 15.
Cranor will speak at 7 p.m. in room 300 of Pendergraft Library and Technology Center, which is located at 305 West Q Street on the Arkansas Tech University campus in Russellville. Admission will be free and open to the public.
Writer in residence and instructor in the ATU College of Arts and Humanities, Cranor is the author of four books. His most recent offering is “Mississippi Blue 42.”
According to information provided by publisher Soho Crime, “Mississippi Blue 42” centers on an investigation by special agent Rae Johnson into the “tangled web of a college football empire…and the bloody greed that fuels it.”
Soho Crime’s description states that “Mississippi Blue 42” provides “a hard and often hilarious look at the big-money world of college athletics.”
Learn more about “Mississippi Blue 42” at www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/778180/mississippi-blue-42-by-eli-cranor.
Cranor also authored “Don’t Know Tough,” which was released in 2022 and won both the Peter Lovesey First Crime Novel Contest and the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best first novel by an American author; “Ozark Dogs,” which was released in 2023 and was recognized by the New York Times, The Guardian, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and CrimeReads as one of the best novels in its category that year; and “Broiler,” which was released in 2024 and was one of 30 books selected to the long list for the 2025 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
The 2025-26 academic year is Cranor’s third as a member of the ATU faculty. He hosted approximately 160 aspiring writers for the inaugural ATU Lit Fest on the Arkansas Tech campus in Russellville during the spring 2025 semester.
Learn more about the RPL Author Series at https://libguides.atu.edu/authors.
Contact Luke Heffley, special projects coordinator for Pendergraft Library, at (479) 964-0546 or lheffley@atu.edu for more information about the RPL Author Series.
