2023
February 18, 2023
This generous and comprehensive story by Rex Nelson just appeared in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Taking off from the new reissue of CD’s “delightful” Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread: Thirtieth Anniversary Edition, — “I’m not much of a cook,” he says, “but I’m looking at the recipes and getting hungry.” Rex explores CD’s achievements and adventures in and outside her home state. From communes to cookbooks to children’s books, an inn, and co-founding the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow… he gives a fresh and deep look at her goings-on, interests, and publications.
“For decades, Dragonwagon has been one of our state’s most prolific writers. Born in 1952 in New York City, she has written more than 50 books… It’s nice to have the legendary Crescent Dragonwagon back in Arkansas — writing, cooking, and as always, thinking deeply.”
Greek Lentil and Spinach Greek Lentil Soup with Lemon from “Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread.” (photograph by Jennifer Luxton / The Seattle Times)
January 17, 2023
THIS really fine, charming article by culinary journalist and two-times James Beard Award-winner Rebekah Denn appeared in the Seattle Times and Pacific Northwest Magazine. Although about Crescent’s 30th Anniversary Reissue of Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread, it really explores one lentil soup that is — is ‘legendary’ too grandiose a word? — well, let’s say ‘epic’, and the friendship it created between Crescent and Reid Branson, a Seattle nurse who brought it to work daily for seventeen years!
“EVEN THOUGH SOME of us lived far away, Crescent Dragonwagon gave us the warmest paper-and-ink welcome to Dairy Hollow House. For 30+ years, her 1992 cookbook from the Arkansas country inn has shared the spirit and flavors of the old farmhouse in Eureka Springs, the town dubbed ‘Where the Misfit Fits.’ … The soups and breads and salads remain magical. As Dragonwagon writes in the new edition, ‘A cookbook — if people actually make its recipes — has transcendent, earthy aliveness, a sacramental connective tissue that crisscrosses linear time as, I believe, nothing else does.’ Not only do they crisscross; they also branch forward, as Dragonwagon found when a stranger named Reid Branson reached out from Seattle a few years back.”
2022
December 4, 2022
“Kids want to know: ‘Will It Be Okay?’ — this book answers that question” proclaims the print-version NPR story about Crescent’s children’s book of the same name. Airing on NPR’s Weekend Edition show, it was part of the series “Picture This.” 
Producer-journalist Samatha Balaban interviewed not only Crescent, who wrote the book’s first edition in 1976, but Jessica Love, the 2022 edition’s brilliant illustrator. Spinning their answers together artfully, and exploring how artists and writers work together, she notes
“There are a lot of “what ifs” when you’re a kid:”What if a bee stings me?” “What if I forget my lines in the school play?” “What if people don’t like me?”
“At the heart of all these questions is a desire to know: “Will it be okay?” That’s the title of a 1977 book written by Crescent Dragonwagon — a story told entirely in dialogue between a mother and her child… Mostly (Love and Dragonwagon) just exchanged a few emails about how thrilled they each were to be working with each other. They didn’t speak face-to-face until this interview, but say it felt like working with a kindred spirit. ‘It’s that thing that happens when you read someone’s writing that speaks just like it’s being whispered into your ear,’ says Jessica Love. She especially connected, she says, with the way the mother speaks to the child. ‘It’s the quintessence of the way I longed to be spoken to as a child,’ she says. “
COMPOUND BUTTER: Art Inspired by Food
2020
COMPOUND BUTTER, a stunning, sensual, on-actual-paper quarterly is about “Art Inspired by Food.” A delicious deep dive not only into food as such but all it connects with and, yes, inspires, COMPOUND BUTTER is Dragonwagon’s new absolute favorite periodical, not the least because it’s a little bit out there: for example, a musing on what writer Jiordan Castle will eat in the afterlife (Judgement City), an exploration of salty finger food, and the life (culinary and otherwise) of theme park journalist Carlye Wisel.
These appeared in the same issue (spring-summer 2020; the fantasy issue) as an in-depth profile of Dragonwagon, by Lola Milholland. Milholland’s interest in the way idealism shaped her subject made for a deeper-than-usual conversation.
SOUTHERN TRAVELER, the magazine for AAA (summer 2020),was put together before the coronavirus hit. Veteran travel and culinary writer Barbara Gibbs Ostmann did a “tank trip” story (a place worth visiting that was only one tank of gas away from where most readers lived) about Fayetteville, Arkansas, Crescent’s home since 2018.
Naturally Barb checked in with Crescent about where to eat!
An oasis in quarantine: couple offers stories to community. In this May 14, 2020, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article by Becca Martin Brown, Crescent, with her husband Mark Graff, discuss their nightly read-alouds… as well as the journey that took them to an improbable late-life marriage and a home in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Greek Lentil Soup with Spinach and Lemon, photograph by Tom McCorkle, Washington Post
“This lentil soup is so good one nurse has eaten it for lunch every workday for 17 years”: the lentil soup referred to in this lead article in the Sunday, March 8, 2020, food section of the Washington Post, is Crescent’s Greek Lentil Soup with Spinach and Lemon, from the Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread.
Both she and Reid Branson, the Seattle nurse-supervisor so loyal to this soup, are featured in the story, beautifully written by Joe Yonan.
Art by Chad Maupin
2019
The “Myth of Me” series by artist Chad Maupin, of Big Bot Design/ Art Lab, features classic comic-book style renderings of heroes and heroines, with an accompanying bio.
Dragonwagon was his subject in December, 2019. The profile appeared in the annual Food and Drink Issue of Idle Class Magazine.
Cover art by Kevin Arnold and Louise Mandumbwa
In addition, Dragonwagon was also a featured chef in the magazine’s “guilty pleasures” year-end round-up, in that same issue.
Named an Arkansas Star Chef, Crescent’s luscious Grand Marnier Sweet Potatoes) in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a food-section piece by Kelly Brant, on Thanksgiving side-dishes, 2019.
Local artists receive Artists 360 Grants: September 10, 2019, Artists 360, a program administered by the MidAmerica Arts Alliance, announces the annual grantees, fifteen in the professional category and five in the student category. Crescent is one of the former, in the Performing Arts category.
Photograph by Kat Wilson, for Artist 360.
The project for which she was accepted: “Crescent Dragonwagon will focus on and further develop her first play, Until Just Moistened: A Not-Quite-One-Woman Show, with Crumbs. The play, accepted for and produced by the 2018 Arkansas New Play Festival, is the story of grieving, told in part through cornbread. A two-person play, including music by Bill Haymes (a Nashville-based professional singer-songwriter and friend), its themes of love, loss, grief, regeneration, friendship, resilience, rediscovery are both particular and universal.”
Click to learn more about Artists 360.
“Meet the One and Only Crescent Dragonwagon”, article, Austin 360. A food editor fan cooks and keeeps on cooking with Crescent.
The Uprising Spark: podcast interview (episode 12), August 2019. Crescent talks with Isabel 
Firecracker about living childfree — and why, though she initially wanted and planned to have children, she is very, very glad she didn’t.
2018
“Crescent Dragonwagon: Do Not Meddle in the Affairs of Dragons…”, Refigural Book (print edition), 2018, lengthy interview with CD.
Wonder Woman of the High South profile, Citi-Scapes Magazine, December 2018. 
Short profile, and a seasonal recipe from CD.
“Swapping soup serves to keep this group of couples close“, Portland Press Herald, December 2018. A soup club, which often features recipes from Crescent’s Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread: A Country Inn Cookbook.
John Scroggins with CD at Brightwater, A Center for the Study of Food. Photo, Food Channel
Meeting a Mentor: An Interview with Crescent Dragonwagon, September, 2018, Food Channel
Until Just Moistened: A One-Woman Show, with Crumbs, June, 2018: Crescent’s first play, announced by TheatreSquared, which selected it as their workshop production for the 2018 Arkansas New Play Festival
The Splendid Table, 2015, American Public Media / NPR host Lynn Rosetto Kaspar interviews CD about her book Bean by Bean.
“Crescent Dragonwagon is constantly writing…”, 2014, profile, Brattleboro Reformer.
CD, taping Splendid Table interview. Photo, David R. Koff
2012
The Queen of Bean Cuisine, 2012, major, in-depth Boston Globe profile.
The World of Beans: On Point with Tom Ashbrook, 2012, in-depth 45-minute National Public Radio interview, featuring Crescent’s book Bean by Bean.
“If I were a bean, I would feel lucky to be planted in Crescent’s garden…” : 2012, CD’s Extra-Green Green Curry, in a review and story from Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club
Smashwords, brief profile
2011
Crescent Dragonwagon’s Gumbo Zeb, 2011, CD’s Gumbo, in a review and story from Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club
2010 and earlier
Dragonwagon in Tulsa, 2010, news about a talk CD gave
“Crescent-esque”, 2008, a profile of Crescent in Relish Magazine, featuring her vegetarian cooking.
A Misfit Who Fits In: Radical Finds Peace-and Success As An Innkeeper-in Small-town Arkansas, Chicago Tribune profile, 1992, just before Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton’s election as president.
Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, detailed biography
cookstr.com, periodically updated profile / bio, focusing on Crescent’s culinary writing.
Pinterest Books by Crescent Dragonwagon
Wikipedia biography
