By now you’ve heard the incredible news that UT’s incredible Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center has reached an incredible $5 million deal with the incredible Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for what the latter says is “every [incredible] scrap” of their Watergate notes. As of 2004, the public will have access to those notes, along with drafts, manuscripts, memos, and the like, but not to materials relating to protected sources. Until those sources die, of course. For more details, check out www.hrc.utexas.edu/home.html… The Texas Book Festival has awarded state libraries $81,556.32 in grants “through book sales, special events, sponsorships, and exhibitions” from its 2002 efforts. The monies will be distributed among 33 branches. For more information, visit www.texasbookfestival.org… The choice for the second annual Mayor’s Book Club — which along with Austin Public Libraries encourages the city of Austin to read the same book at the same time — is a bang-up jolly one: the great Louis Sachar‘s Holes, recently adapted for the big screen… My last-minute trip to New Orleans for the Final Four with Chronicle Marketing Director Erin Collier wasn’t revelatory only because Jim Boeheim and Syracuse (I dropped out; she graduated) triumphed as National (and essentially Big 12) Champions, but also because of our time spent with poet-teacher-tour-guide husband-&-fictioner-mysterious-engineering-thing-chief wife, Ed Skoog (2000 finalist for the Yale Younger Poets Prize) and Jill Marquis (McSweeney’s, The Mississippi Review), who are so talented, fascinating, and fun that it was hard to not wish they were on the court doing something spectacular at the Super Dome. Promise me that you’ll read their stuff, more for your benefit than theirs… Recommended event this week: “Women’s Voices of the Austin International Poetry Festival” at Book Woman on Saturday, April 12, 7pm, and hosted by Susan Bright (see full fest schedule at www.aipf.org).
This article appears in April 11 • 2003.