Six Bridges Book Festival: Acie Clark / Ellie Black / Lee Bains

Moderated by Matt White

Six Bridges Book Festival presents Acie Clark (Small Talk), Ellie Black (Revelator), & Lee Bains (Work Lunch). Moderated by Matt White.

Acie Clark

Acie Clark is a multi-genre writer from Florida and Georgia. A former writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, he teaches in the Film, Theatre, and Creative Writing Department at the University of Central Arkansas and at Interlochen Center for the Arts. His debut poetry collection, Small Talk, was selected by Derrick Austin for the Hub City Press New Southern Voices Poetry Prize and will be published in 2026.  
 
Acie Clark wants to talk. In the poetry collection Small Talk, Clark reconsiders our relationship to talking about work and the weather. Through lenses of recovery, birding, caregiving, gospel, and semantics, this collection shows its belief in multiplicities, in the seemingly contradictory identities that make us who we are, and in the hope talking to each other might still save us.  

Ellie Black

Ellie Black is a visiting assistant professor in English–Creative Writing at Hendrix College. She received a PhD in creative writing (emphasis in memoir/autotheory) and an MFA in poetry, both from the University of Mississippi. She was a finalist for the 2025 Disquiet Prize in Poetry, and her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Bennington Review, Sixth Finch, the Common, Washington Square Review, the Drift, and others.  
 
Ellie Black’s debut collection, Revelator, winner of the 2026 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, glitches and falters; it imitates, iterates, and alludes. This obsessive, self-conscious book is concerned deeply with what’s real, what’s fake, and what’s fantasy, offering up a mirror to the ways we invent and perform ourselves on stages, on screens, and in our lives. 

Lee Bains

Lee Bains is a poet and musician from Birmingham, Alabama. A cult songwriter forged in independent scenes, he has performed all over the U.S. and Europe, receiving acclaim from Rolling Stone, the New York Times, NPR, and the Guardian. After first having his poems published by the New Yorker in 2021, Bains will see his debut poetry collection, Work Lunch, published by Hub City Press on October 13, 2026. Bains has lent his work to support striking coal miners, immigrants’ rights groups, abortion funds, and anti-racism organizations. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where he works between tours as a handyman. 
 
In Work Lunch, Bains’s poems explore the multifaceted and often contradictory nature of Southern culture and values through the lens of food, whether at a meat-and-three or a taquería. Within these sprawling, long-form poems, a take-out gyro prompts a reflection on religious-nationalist violence, a Cuban sandwich spurs consideration of U.S. imperialism, a hamburger channels into a cry of solidarity with organized labor, and a salad elicits an epic rumination on lineage, class, race, gender, memory, and faith. These poems glimpse sandwiches under shade trees, tables full of boisterous coworkers discussing barbecue, and reflective moments at those dwindling local spots, all fertile ground for investigating Bains’s home places, the systems of power that shape life there, and the ways in which ordinary people survive, connect, and fight back.

ASL interpretation will be provided for all Six Bridges sessions held in CALS Ron Robinson Theater. ASL interpretation for sessions at other CALS locations and Six Bridges venues (including CALS Main Library) will be provided by request. To request ASL interpretation, please submit an ASL Interpretation Request form.

CALS will validate parking in the CALS Library Square surface lot and the CALS Parking Deck. The entrance to the surface lot is located on 2nd Street near River Market Ave. The entrance to the parking deck is located on Rock Street and can be accessed from President Clinton Ave. Street parking is also available throughout the River Market District (free after 6pm and on weekends).