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December 6, 2022
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Eric McHenry

Eric McHenry is a poet and critic whose work has appeared in The Yale Review, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, and The Threepenny Review. He teaches creative writing at Washburn University and is a former poet laureate of Kansas.

The Bully in the Ballad

The Bully in the Ballad 

Was Mississippi John Hurt really the first person to sing the tragic tale of Louis Collins?

by Eric McHenry | Thursday, December 01, 2022
The Annotated “Stacka Lee”

The Annotated “Stacka Lee”

Comments on the famous murder ballad’s oldest known lyrics

by Eric McHenry | Saturday, March 13, 2021
The Baddest Man in Town

The Baddest Man in Town

On the trail of a historical figure immortalized in African-American folklore

by Eric McHenry | Saturday, March 13, 2021

THIS WEEK’S ARCHIVE PICK

2nd Look

The Story of a Stare Down

by Penelope Rowlands

Hilary Mantel, one of Britain’s most revered novelists, died this year at the age of 70. She is beloved for her sweeping Wolf Hall trilogy, for which she won two Booker Prizes. But long before rehabilitating Thomas Cromwell’s reputation, Mantel was unparalleled in her crystalline dissections of power, whether between girls at the University of London or Dantonists in the French Revolution. In honor of Mantel’s enormous contributions to literature, dive back into her Tudor world with Penelope Rowlands’s essay about one of the key power dynamics Mantel explored: that between Cromwell and Sir Thomas More.

Smarty Pants Podcast

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