Officials with the Ozarks Heritage Research Center (OHRC) at Missouri State University-West Plains (MSU-WP) will host a presentation titled, “Lost Love, Murder, and Hillbillies…Songs of the Ozarks” at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 27, at the OHRC, located inside MSU-WP’s Garnett Library, 304 W. Trish Knight St., in West Plains.

The presentation will be given by Dawn Larsen and will feature stories and songs, new and old, of the Ozarks and its dark and spooky past.

Free and open to all, this event is sponsored by the OHRC and West Plains Council on the Arts . Refreshments will be provided.

More about Larsen and the presentation

Performer, storyteller, singer-songwriter and fifth-generation Ozarker, Larsen grew up surrounded by mountain music, arts, storytelling and beautiful hills and rivers. When she was thirteen, she taught herself to play guitar. At a family gathering at about that age, after she had finished singing traditional ballads and was taking a break, her mother pulled her aside and asked, “Don’t you know anything besides death and dying music?”

She’s proud to play Roots music, which is full of “death and dyin’,” an integral part of the human condition. She regularly plays festivals, house concerts, listening rooms, gives workshops in performing and writing and other events.

Larsen completed a songwriting artist-in-residency in Northern Ireland in 2024 and has also released two CDs of original music. She founded and operated the last traveling Toby tent show in the country for ten years. In 2025, she retired as Professor of Theatre at Francis Marion University in South Carolina where she specialized in American popular entertainment, especially rural comedy.

For more information about the event, contact Rebekah McKinney at 417-255-7949 or RebekahMcKinney@MissouriState.edu. Visit WP.MissouriState.edu/Ozarks for additional information and upcoming events hosted by OHRC.