Twenty-five-year-old Michener fellow and fictioner John McManus (Stop Breakin Down, Born on a Train) is so magical that not only will we profile him next week, but I just have to mention him here, as well. No, actually, this has nothing to do with magic, and McManus is but an anecdotal entryway. He told me during our talk that one of his biggest fears is losing his work, so much so that he’s basically OCD over it, handwriting it, making photocopies, then e-mailing it to himself during transcription, etc. He said that former Michener guest teacher Joy Williams (The Quick and the Dead) told a story about losing a novel-in-progress while visiting her daughter in D.C. It was in her car, and the car was stolen. Williams actually got them back (the car and the novel), but only time will tell if the same will be true for Southwest Texas State creative writing M.F.A. student Arturo Mancha. Sadly, his Southeast Austin apartment was reportedly broken into last Thursday morning, April 10, and five years’ worth of writing (including a developing novel) was stolen with his computer (and cell phone and DVD player). It’s worse than being plagiarized — Mancha could only call the burglary “devastating” — and the young writer’s colleagues have offered to retype everything he might still have as hard copy…
Speaking of SWT, the great Harry Mathews, novelist of The Conversions and poet of Armenian Papers and A Mid-Season Sky (not to mention pal of Georges Perec), will be at the Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center in Kyle on Friday, April 18, at 7:30pm…
One of the more interesting aspects of this year’s Austin International Poetry Festival was that local repertory company Walking Shadows filmed it. The documentary, with the working title Common Languages: Part 1, Poetry and Peace, will feature interviews, performances, and round-table debates and must’ve been one hell of a shoot. Can you imagine the footage? From a poetry festival!? In Austin? With poets (and protest-poets)? And those damn slams? Can you imagine editing that? There but for the grace of god (and possibly Christopher Guest)…
Submissions for the Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest must be postmarked by May 1, 2003. Aspiring authors should send up to 20 pages of their unpublished novels to the league in the categories of Mainstream, Mystery/ Thriller/Action-Adventure, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror, and Historical/Western, accompanied by an entry fee of $20. For more information, including entry forms, check out www.writersleague.org or call 499-8914…
Exciting upcoming releases finding their way onto these shelves: Fast Food Nation sensation Eric Schlosser‘s Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market (he’ll be at BookPeople on May 22) and Dagoberto Gilb‘s eagerly awaited collection of essays, Gritos. Exciting upcoming appearances you should be finding your way to: Austin author Rupert Isaacson will be signing his The Healing Land: The Bushmen and the Kalahari Desert (Grove, $24) at a fashion-show benefit for those bushmen, hosted by Pangaea but taking place at Texture, tonight, Thursday, April 17, at 10pm. Then, on Tuesday, April 22, 5:30pm, the Utter reading series continues at the Cactus Cafe with poems by Darin Ciccotelli and Robert Lee, nonfiction by Susan Briante, and fiction by Irene de Silva.
This article appears in April 18 • 2003.