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Sister Jessica Explains It All for You
Cindy Widner
Mon Nov 16, 4:02pm
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
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
"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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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).
A Progressive Pilgrim’s Progress
Michael King
Wed Jun 10, 12:02pm
If you missed Robert Jensen June 9 for his scheduled Bookpeople reading, it’s not surprising – it’s been postponed until July 29, although several local web sites (including Jensen’s own UT homepage) have not yet caught up with the change. As it happens this time, the peripatetic journalism professor and prolific writer and activist was undergoing minor surgery, and was not off again on one of his frequent journeys – New York, Minnesota, Colorado, South Africa, India, Pakistan – all places he visits in his persistent and earnest efforts to help create the international cultural revolution. His literary efforts – on media, politics, internationalism, feminist theory, pornography, or all of the above – are equally eclectic, although his latest turn may most surprise his readers, as it somewhat did this one, a friend of several years.
All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice (Berkeley: Soft Skull Press, paper, 194 pp.) is an extended meditation on Jensen’s tentative return to the Presbyterian church of his youth. The book carries an ecstatic Old Testament title (Jeremiah 23:9), and the cover features a 1967 photograph of the eight-year-old third-grader Jensen, holding his newly awarded bible, at the Fargo, North Dakota, First Presbyterian Church. Since those halcyon days – when he says he was simply “bored, nearly to death” by church – he had become a journalist, a professor, a writer, a committed left activist, and had lost virtually all his small youthful interest in matters of official religion.
All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice (Berkeley: Soft Skull Press, paper, 194 pp.) is an extended meditation on Jensen’s tentative return to the Presbyterian church of his youth. The book carries an ecstatic Old Testament title (Jeremiah 23:9), and the cover features a 1967 photograph of the eight-year-old third-grader Jensen, holding his newly awarded bible, at the Fargo, North Dakota, First Presbyterian Church. Since those halcyon days – when he says he was simply “bored, nearly to death” by church – he had become a journalist, a professor, a writer, a committed left activist, and had lost virtually all his small youthful interest in matters of official religion.
At Least Five Things You Should Know About, I Mean, If You Were Counting
Kimberley Jones
Wed Jun 3, 4:30pm
It might take a sec to wrap your brain around the concept behind the regular series Five Things: We're gonna take a cue from the title and call it a multimedia thingy involving awesomely talented Austin folk, but cohost Stacy Muszynski's description of a "literati/musical/performative event" is a lot more elegant.
The theme of this month's event is Photographs. Five authors – Amanda Eyre Ward, Jennifer Pashley, Aly Tadros, Perry Tyson Midkiff II (who, fyi, won second place in our last Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest for his terrific story "May the Passenger Pigeon Sing Thee to Thy Rest"), and Sigers Steele – will tell stories based on the photographs of five photographers – Mary Sledd, Suzi Q, Sarah Gonzalez, David Jewell, and David Hill – followed by music from the likes of Jamie Panzer, Legs Against Arms, and Zapata Sparrow. Hosting the evening will be series masterminds Muszynski and Amelia Gray (whose new brand-spanking-new book of flash-fiction AM/PM is on the top of our to-read pile).
Five Things: Photographs takes place this Friday, June 5 at the (very happily reopened) United States Art Authority next to Spiderhouse Cafe (510 West 29th). Doors open at 7pm (come early for a special acoustic set by Aly Tadros). Admission is $1. For more info, go to fivethingsaustin.com.
Full press release after the jump.
The theme of this month's event is Photographs. Five authors – Amanda Eyre Ward, Jennifer Pashley, Aly Tadros, Perry Tyson Midkiff II (who, fyi, won second place in our last Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest for his terrific story "May the Passenger Pigeon Sing Thee to Thy Rest"), and Sigers Steele – will tell stories based on the photographs of five photographers – Mary Sledd, Suzi Q, Sarah Gonzalez, David Jewell, and David Hill – followed by music from the likes of Jamie Panzer, Legs Against Arms, and Zapata Sparrow. Hosting the evening will be series masterminds Muszynski and Amelia Gray (whose new brand-spanking-new book of flash-fiction AM/PM is on the top of our to-read pile).
Five Things: Photographs takes place this Friday, June 5 at the (very happily reopened) United States Art Authority next to Spiderhouse Cafe (510 West 29th). Doors open at 7pm (come early for a special acoustic set by Aly Tadros). Admission is $1. For more info, go to fivethingsaustin.com.
Full press release after the jump.
The Long and Short of Roy Blount Jr.
Kimberley Jones
Wed May 27, 1:48pm
Tags: Roy Blount Jr.
If you happened to pick up Roy Blount Jr.'s linguistics book, Alphabet Juice, you've surely recognized, as our reviewer did back in November, that he's "an unimpeachable digresser." And if you've ever listened to him on NPR's weekly call-in quiz show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, you already know he's a quick, dry wit, able to perform brilliantly in punchline.
Marion Winik at BookWoman This Weekend
Kimberley Jones
Fri May 22, 3:06pm
Although Marion Winik (The Glen Rock Book of the Dead) hasn't lived in Austin for years, the memoirist/NPR commentator/former Chronicle contributor is still awfully beloved in these parts, and rightfully so: She's a funny and candid chronicler of her life (which has been rocked by the kind of tragedy that would render most people mute). She's terrific in person, too, which is why we heartily recommend you to her reading at BookWoman this weekend.
All the Ladies in the House
Kimberley Jones
Fri May 15, 2:17pm
Tags: Dobie Paisano Fellowship
UT announced today the winners of the 2010 Dobie Paisano Writing Fellowships – prestigious writing awards that involves both an extended stay at the 254 acre Paisano ranch and some cold hard cash.
Texas Monthly columnist and much-loved comic novelist Sarah Bird (How Perfect Is That) won the Johnston Fellowship, for writers more established in their career; runners-up include two Michener graduates, poet Bruce Snider (The Year We Studied Women) and Philipp Meyer (whose debut novel American Rust earned great reviews this spring).
A Pre-Teen Genius Cartographer?
Wayne Alan Brenner
Tue May 12, 5:22pm
Yes, he's all of 12 years old.
Straight From the Horse's Mouth
Kimberley Jones
Mon May 11, 3:34pm
Tags: Bud Shrake
We'll have a proper tribute to Bud Shrake in our Thursday print issue, but in the meantime, we point you to our archives – most particularly to this interview conducted in 1985 by Chronicle Editor Louis Black. In it, a funny and forthcoming Bud Shrake talked about his career in the movies, from taking Hollywood actor Cliff Robertson to court in Travis County ("He showed up looking like somebody who had gotten dressed at the Salvation Army discard barrel") to Dennis Hopper's run-in with revolutionaries on the Mexico set of Kid Blue.
