January 5, 1971

John Hornor Jacobs, a novelist whose Arkansas-influenced fiction spans different elements in horror, science fiction, supernatural, and fantasy genres, was born in Little Rock. Though Jacobs had written some while attending Lyon College in Batesville (Independence County), it was not until age thirty-seven that he began writing for National Novel Writing Month, an annual web project that challenged participants to produce a 50,000-word novel from beginning to end during the month of November. His first novel, Southern Gods, was published in 2011.