Postscripts

Four Walls Eight Windows, a New York firm, has recently published Dallasite Steven Culbert's third novel, Lovesong for the Giant Contessa. Contessa is a poetic, nostalgic, but not overly wistful gaze at the lives of two adolescents in and around La Vaca Bay and the Coastal Bend region that takes a cue from Southern Gothic but has a decidedly Texan tinge; it's about down-and-outers who nonetheless can come up with lines like, "It's a real common prayer when you can be silent with a friend and not worry, not mourn it, like sometimes later in life." When asked to categorize what makes the novel "Texan," Culbert postulates that there is a "complete human wildness" in Texas that is not seen in other areas of the nation. Culbert should know -- growing up, his father was a bluegrass singer and insurance salesman, necessitating frequent moves. On Saturday, July 12, Culbert will be reading from the preface of and signing Contessa at BookPeople.

Slam One Down

Proceeds from a performance on Tuesday, July 15, at Club Deville (900 Red River), will help send the 1997 Austin Poetry Slam team to the Nationals in Middletown, CT. Entertainment includes performances by the slam team (Susan B.A. Somers-Willett, Genevieve Van Cleve, Wammo, and Phil West), SXIP, Guy Forsyth, a screening of the new Wammo video "There Is Too Much Light in This Bar," and a highlight reel from the documentary project about the 1996 Austin team. There will also be a silent auction 7-10 pm, $10. For more information: 448-5989.

Read Up!

Several reading groups in town have made some fascinating choices this month: On Wednesday, July 16, 11am, Barnes & Noble Westlake hosts a Contemporary Cultural Fiction Group reading Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter, which recreates the life of jazz musician Buddy Bolden, while BookPeople hosts a Book Group reading A.S. Byatt's The Matisse Stories the same day,
7-8:30pm. Barnes & Noble Arboretum hosts a Fiction Discussion Group on Monday, July 28, 7pm, reading Milan Kundera's Immortality, and a Women's Book Discussion Group Wednesday, July 23, 7pm, reading Venus Envy by Rita Mae Brown.

Searching for Justice

On Saturday, July 19,at 7pm, BookPeople and the Foundation for a Compassionate Society will host a fundraiser for Jennifer Harbury of Weslaco, who has written Searching for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala. The book is an intense account of Harbury's attempts to ferret out what happened to her husband Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, a high-level Mayan resistance leader who was captured by the Guatemalan army in 1992, tortured, and later assasinated. Lourdes Perez will perform in honor of the fundraiser, and Genevieve Vaughan, the founder of the Compassionate Society, will introduce Harbury. Harbury will discuss her efforts to learn the truth behind her husband's death.

Black & Blue(s)

Texas Folklife Resources plans the second installation of their three-series program The Language of Tradition, for Saturday, July 26 at 7:30pm. The Victory Grill (1104 East 11th) will host All Black and Some Blues, to feature local blues legends T.D. Bell and Mel Davis; author of 55 children's books, cook, and storyteller Angela Shelf-Medearis; rap group N.O.O.K. (Never Outcasting Our Kind); and Reverend Mack Williams will appear again after his great reception at TFR's first program The Cowboy Way. That program packed the Dougherty Arts Center, and, though free, seating may be limited at this event as well.