Book on Dardanelle, farms selected for Worthen Prize

Mildred D. Gleason has won the Worthen Prize for

her book Dardanelle and the Bottoms: Environment, Agriculture, and Economy in an Arkansas River Community, 1819-1970.

The book explores the economic partnership established between the city of Dardanelle and the adjacent farming community known as the Dardanelle Bottoms.

The Central Arkansas Library System established the Worthen Prize judged to be the best book published in a three-year period written by an author in the library system’s service area. Gleason lives in a county served by the Gateway card, an agreement among 35 counties in central Arkansas that allows residents of those counties to borrow books from any of the counties’ public libraries.

The award is named after William Booker Worthen, a longtime supporter of the Central Arkansas Library System, which serves Pulaski and Perry counties, and a 22-year member of the system’s board of trustees.

The Worthen Prize will be presented in October in a joint ceremony with the winner of the Porter Prize. Both prizes award recipients $2,000, making them the richest literary prizes in Arkansas. The winner of the Porter Prize is usually announced sometime in June or July.

Gleason, 70, taught history at Arkansas Tech University until she retired from her work at the Russellville campus in May 2017. She now manages Gleason Historical Studies in Dardanelle. Her book Dardanelle and

the Bottoms is published by the University of Arkansas Press.

Gleason completed her undergraduate work at Arkansas Tech and her graduate work from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where she earned a master of arts degree and a doctorate.