WEST PLAINS, Mo. – “Community” is the theme of Volume 4 of Missouri State University-West Plains’ literary journal Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies now available at the Drago College Store, 411 W. Main St., and at Aid Downtown Antique Mall.  Copies are $10 each.

Professor of English Dr. Craig Albin, the journal’s editor, said this issue is the largest in the journal’s four-year history and includes poetry, short stories, nonfiction pieces, visual art and book reviews, all of which have some element of community as an underlying theme.

In his editor’s note, Albin points out that, although writing is a “solitary act” and the common image of most writers is that of a “loner,” the one thing all writers have in common is “a deep interest in community.”

Pieces included in this issue explore family as community, religion and the role it plays in creating and bringing meaning to communities, Ozark communities as related to the “outsider view,” and acclimation to the Ozark community through work.

Among the authors is former West Plains resident Paul Flemming, who offers a fictional short story for this issue; poets Amy Wright Vollmar, who has had pieces included in previous Elder Mountain issues, and Chrys Fisher, a first-time contributor; Kimberly Harper, who tells of Hollywood’s invasion of McDonald County for the making of the film “Jesse James” starring Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda in 1938; and former Oregon County resident Thomas H. Olbricht, whose piece “Restoration Revivalism in Oregon County, Missouri, and Fulton County, Arkansas, 1930-1950” was dedicated to his aunt, Dortha Taylor of West Plains, as the last survivor of his mother’s five siblings and their spouses.

The issue also includes a scholarly piece on the Ozark folk tradition of “fire fishing,” also known as gigging, as well as poems by Bakersfield native Lee Busby and a review of his chapbook “Wild Strawberries” by Terrell Tebbetts.

Albin said a few copies of the first three volumes of Elder Mountain are still available at Drago College Store for $10 each.  The third volume, he said, includes poetry by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Claudia Emerson, as well as an essay by her late brother, Jack Emerson.

Members of Elder Mountain’s editorial board are currently accepting submissions for Volume 5, which will be published in late summer 2013.  Manuscripts must be e-mailed or postmarked no later than Dec. 31, 2012, for consideration.  Electronic submissions in Word documents can be e-mailed to ElderMountain@MissouriState.edu.  Regular hard copy postal submissions may be sent to C.D. Albin, Editor, Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies, Missouri State University-West Plains, 128 Garfield Ave., West Plains, MO  65775.