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Author Stephanie Saunders will discuss her debut novel “Covered Buttons” at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 6, at the Donald W. Reynolds Library Serving Baxter County. The talk is part of the library’s Read-Write-Ignite Literary Series, and it is free and open to the public with no registration required.
“Covered Buttons” is set in the foothills of the Ozarks in 1939 and follows Thea, a 17-year-old who begins to imagine a life beyond her small Arkansas town. The story moves between books and embroidery, secrets stitched into buttons and the quiet networks of women looking out for one another. Saunders drew the novel from the grassroots birth control movement in Arkansas during that era.
The Arkansas State Library chose the book for a 2026 Arkansas Gem award, which recognizes quality books by Arkansas authors or set in the state to promote literacy and local writers.
Saunders is a writer and educator from Batesville and a first-generation college graduate of Lyon College. She earned a master’s degree in 2005 and a doctorate in 2009 in Hispanic studies from the University of Kentucky, and in 2011 she served as a researcher in residence at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile. She has also published articles, book chapters and translations in four languages across five countries.
For more information on this and other Baxter County Library programs, visit baxlib.org.
