Lauren Puckett 9 posts 0 comments

This summer, when parents were forced to realize that the coronavirus pandemic would derail Columbia Public Schools’ status quo well into the fall semester — if not well into 2021 — they were faced with a practically impossible task: Get…

Peter Geye is so thrilled we’re talking about snow. It’s mid-February, his hometown of Minneapolis is enjoying a balmy mid-30-degree day, and unlike most of us curmudgeons praying for sunlight he’s not exactly ecstatic the winds are…

Claude McKay Love isn’t sure what he’s doing in Columbia, Missouri. The protagonist of Gabriel Bump’s gut-punch of a debut novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong, Claude knows nothing of Missouri. His world revolves around Chicago’s South Side…

Fitness has arguably never been more fun — or more innovative. We practice yoga with goats. We SoulCycle to beats by Beyoncé. We instruct Siri to start, pause and end our workouts. Hotshot companies such as Peloton and Mirror are…

You’re a writer in Columbia. You’re still waiting on that six-figure advance, but you’ve been writing, so that makes you a writer, right? Yet no matter your experience level, chances are you’re doing the bulk of this writing at a desk in…

You might not notice at first. But screw up your vision, then peer a little closer at the cover of Phong Nguyen’s new novel, Roundabout. You’ll see it: The letter “e” in his last name is a faint, hazy gray, just a few shades darker than the…

In 1963, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. finished the final sermons that would become Strength to Love, a literary masterpiece in its own right, but also the first book of sermons by an African-American preacher to be widely distributed…

Blink, and you’re already flooded with party invitations. You’ve dragged the pumpkins and fog machine out of the basement. Your kid won’t stop begging: “Can I be Spider-Man? Puh-lease?” October must be here, so, of course, all anyone can…

Stephen Paul Sayers became a bestselling author on the dare of a teenager — specifically, the prodding of his own daughter. An associate professor of physical therapy in the School of Health Professions at MU, Sayers didn’t seem a natural…