Jane Hankins
Welcome to Peavine, the fictional South Arkansas town created by author Jane Hankins in her first novel, “Madge’s Mobile Home Park,” Volume One of the Peavine Chronicles Series.
The book will be launched at a luncheon, book signing and readers theatre, featuring Hankins and her husband, Craig O’Neill, beginning at 11:30 a.m. May 12 at the Pine Bluff Country Club.
Tickets for the benefit for the Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts at Washington, D.C., are $50 each. Reservations are available by calling 870-550-5464 or e-mailing peavine@muleheadbrand.com. Checks should be made payable to Arkansas Committee NMWA and mailed to P.O. Box 8962, Pine Bluff, AR 71611. A telephone number or e-mail address should be included with each check for confirmation of the reservation.
Hankins of Little Rock is a sculptor/painter turned novelist. O’Neill is a Little Rock television news anchor.
Hankins was inspired by Fannie Flagg’s novel, “Fried Green Tomatoes,” to do a whole series of sculptures of elderly Southern ladies. In 1992, she entered some of these pieces in a juried show for the National Museum of Women in the Arts and was one of 10 artists chosen to represent Arkansas in an exhibit in Washington, D.C.
In 2000, she did a one-woman sculpture show with a second set of characters motivated by the homemade road signs that Hankins saw on car trips between Little Rock and New Orleans. These characters populate her first work of fiction.
Hankins’ art has also been featured in an exhibition at the Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas.
Hankins said that her sculptor is a form of storytelling and she began to write down the stories of each woman. When she ran out of room on the back of the sculptures, she had a novel, which took her eight years to complete.
Everyone who attends the fundraiser will receive a signed copy of “Madge’s Mobile Home Park” as a party favor.
Information about the museum is available by visiting the website at acnmwa.org. Information about the author can be found at her website at janefhankins.com.
Details about the fundraiser are available by calling Dabney Pelton at 870-550-5464.
