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Go Greek
Kimberley Jones
Sun Feb 7, 8:53am
The classics keep on ticking, and tickling the imagination of modern authors – in these first two months of 2010 alone, we’ve seen David Malouf’s Illiad-reimagining Ransom and Zachary Mason’s The Lost Books of the Odyssey. Now Austin author Katharine Beutner has got into the act, too, with Alcestis.
Ghost Riding
Richard Whittaker
Fri Jan 29, 4:37pm
It may be ten months away, but Wizard World has already announced three special guests for the Austin leg of their pop culture convention.
Undead Alert!
Kimberley Jones
Fri Jan 22, 4:11pm
BookPeople hosts a reading tonight for local author BJ Burrow, whose novel The Changed is about an ordinary guy who becomes a leading agent in the fight for undead rights. You know what that means, right? Zombies at BookPeople!
MCW Alum Brian Hart Reads at BookPeople
Kimberley Jones
Wed Jan 20, 2:05pm
Brian Hart is no stranger to accolades – in 2006, he become the first-ever recipient of the University of Texas’ Keene Prize for Literature, the largest student literary prize in existence. Now his debut novel is netting him some awfully nice notices. As in, “quietly exceptional,” quoth The New Yorker.
Wizard World in the ATX
Richard Whittaker
Wed Jan 6, 5:00pm
Best new comics day ever! First the big-screen adaptation of Kick-Ass is booked for SXSW, then we heard that 30 Days of Night creator Steve Niles will be in town in May 2011 for the World Horror Convention. Now the Wizard World pop culture convention confirms it's coming to the capital of Texas this November.
Hard-Boiled at B&N
Kimberley Jones
Tue Dec 29, 5:42pm
, 2009
All most Hollywood scribes had to show for the 2007 writers’ strike was a strike beard, but Lou Berney went and wrote himself a novel – and a well-reviewed one at that.
Pimp That Kindle, and Other Gift Ideas for Book Lovers
Kimberley Jones
Tue Nov 24, 1:13pm
, 2009
Tags: Gift ideas
Honestly, the rise of e-readers makes our soul hurt, but that doesn't change the fact that key individuals on our holiday gift-buying list are Kindle converts. So what to get that very special futurist in the family?
Sister Jessica Explains It All for You
Cindy Widner
Mon Nov 16, 4:02pm
, 2009
If girls – that's girls, not ladies, women, or grrrls – fail to save rock & roll as planned, it won't be for lack of instruction manuals.
'Redefining Beauty' party and signing tonight
Kimberley Jones
Fri Nov 13, 3:49pm
, 2009
Karla K. Morton, the 2010 Texas State Poet Laureate, reads tonight from her new collection of poetry, Redefining Poetry, which deals with her own battle with cancer, from diagnosis through to treatment, as in “Eyelashes� (after the jump) and then recovery.
Where Art Meets Craft
Kimberley Jones
Fri Oct 30, 3:03pm
, 2009
"Let's make a book, y'all," urges the Austin Makes a Book project. With that potent mix of can-do and down-home, how could you say no?
Room To Read Fundraiser Tonight
Ashley Moreno
Thu Oct 15, 11:17am
, 2009
This evening (10/15), from 6-10pm, Room to Read will host a fundraising dinner at the Clay Pit featuring contemporary Indian cuisine, dance, and music. Proceeds go to promote education scholarships for girls, local language children’s books, and library construction in India.
Claudio Sanchez: My Life in Comics
Richard Whittaker
Wed Oct 7, 1:07pm
, 2009
Tags: Comics
It's been a big week for Claudio Sanchez: Not only did his band Coheed and Cambria rip up the LiveStrong stage at Austin City Limits, but his new comic Kill Audio hits the racks.
Judy Shepard Reads at BookPeople
Matthew Patin
Mon Sep 28, 11:10am
, 2009
Thousands will march for marriage equality in Washington on Oct. 11, just a little over eleven years after Matthew Shepard’s brutal murder in Laramie, Wyoming.
Book Ban Bonanza
Jordan Smith
Mon Sep 28, 10:33am
, 2009
Tags: Banned Books
There's good news and more good news for you during this year's Banned Books Week. For starters, according to the Texas ACLU, there were no book challenges this year in Austin ISD.
Fantastic Fest: Dr. Ronald Chevalier at BookPeople
Kimberley Jones
Wed Sep 23, 1:59pm
, 2009
Tags: Fantastic Fest
Reading is fundamental, sure, but Friday's reading at BookPeople is fundamentally a lie – a really fun lie, we should add. Because when you see Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) at BookPeople on Friday, he'll be in character as the entirely fictitious sci-fi/fantasy novelist Dr. Ronald Chevalier.
ASF Celebrates Its Fall Issue With a Free and Cozy-Sounding Event
Kimberley Jones
Thu Sep 17, 1:45pm
, 2009
Tags: American Short Fiction
The cover of the new American Short Fiction is swathed in a budded tree and autumnal colors – a tease of the season to come. Sure, it's still too soon for sweater weather, but we'd like to think of the ASF's outdoor reading tomorrow night, in celebration of their Fall issue, as unofficial kickoff to the season.
Howl, Fantods, Howl.
Wayne Alan Brenner
Wed Sep 16, 3:02pm
, 2009
Here's a wonderful literary event called And But So.
(It's called that in homage to, as you know even if you've only skimmed a story in which David Foster Wallace allows his supra-narrator characters to get a word in edgewise, a tic of human speech that the acclaimed and beloved – but now, as of about a year ago, suicided – author captured so well and frequently.)
Talk to the Hand (of God)
Kimberley Jones
Tue Sep 15, 1:58pm
, 2009
God may have said nyet, but the critics sounded yes to Michener graduate James Hannaham's widely praised comic novel, God Says No, which came out this summer from McSweeney's.
Texas Book Festival Announces Lineup
Kimberley Jones
Thu Sep 3, 5:01pm
, 2009
Tags: Texas Book Festival
Fans of literary fiction rejoice!: The Texas Book Festival announced its lineup today, and there's some awfully big, bold-face names attached, including Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem, Antonya Nelson, Richard Russo, and Colson Whitehead.
Be There, Love Them
Kimberley Jones
Wed Sep 2, 3:05pm
, 2009
We're big fans of the Austin Bat Cave, the West Lynn-based literacy nonprofit that offers tutoring and arts programs for kids. ABC's mission statement is to connect "a diverse population of young writers and learners with a vibrant community of adult volunteers" who are working professionals culled from the local arts and media scene.
News/Print
Kimberley Jones
Wed Aug 26, 2:09pm
, 2009
Horton Foote may be gone, but the Austin Public Library Foundation is making sure he isn't forgotten. The late playwright and screenwriter provides the theme for this year's annual Texas Tales fundraiser, called “A Trip to Bountiful: An Appreciation of Horton Foote.”
Calendar Girls
Kimberley Jones
Tue Jul 28, 3:41pm
, 2009
The inked women of Texas libraries come together in the calendar pages of "The Tattooed Ladies of TLA," a 40-page calendar benefiting the TLA Library Disaster Relief Fund, following last year's "Men of Texas Libraries" page-turner, which raised funds for libraries hit by Rita and Katrina.
Keene Prize Winners Announced
Kimberley Jones
Fri Jul 24, 11:44am
, 2009
Tags: Keene Prize
Prizewinners for the prestigious Keene Prize for Literature were announced this morning, and UT's Michener Center for Writers continues to dominate: Out of 58 submissions for the annual award, two Michener grads and two current Michener MFA candidates made the shortlist, with Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig winning the top prize for her play Lidless, described as "a poetic treatment of the issue of torture at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." Cowhig will receive $50,000 – one of the largest student literary prizes in the world – while an additional $50,000 will be split between three additional finalists, Malachi Black for the collection of sonnets Cantos from Insomnia; Sarah Cornwell for her short stories "Mr. Legs," "Champlain," and "Other Wolves on Other Mountains"; and Sarah Smith for her collection of poetry, Enormous Sleeping Women.
Full press release after the jump.
Oh, the Horror...
Kimberley Jones
Thu Jun 25, 4:29pm
, 2009
Tags: World Horror Convention
The World Horror Society sure gets around: This year's convention was held in Winnipeg, next year's will be hosted by Brighton, England, and in 2011, the World Horror Convention touches down in our fair city. ("Does it help that Austin is home to the largest urban bat colony in the world?" wonders our friends at Slackerwood.)
African-American Book Festival Spotlights Women Writers
Kimberley Jones
Thu Jun 25, 2:35pm
, 2009
Presidential scholar Annette Gordon-Reed first came to acclaim with Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, which explored not just the long-rumored affair between Jefferson and Hemings but also the history of scholarship about the pair – how authors have historically ignored, denied, and denigrated evidence of a long-term relationship between the president and his slave. (DNA evidence now confirms Hemings and Jefferson had at least one child together.) In her 2008 book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, Gordon-Reed circles back to the couple and broadens her scope to trace a multigenerational exploration of black and white relations in Jefferson's household and the still-new America at large. Gordon-Reed, a native Texan, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book, and she'll be the headline speaker (11am) at Austin's African American Book Festival this Saturday (6/27).
