Postscripts

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Upcoming

Does the thought of George W. Bush orating on Saturday have you begging for mercy? Do your presidential duty on Inauguration Day by tuning into KUT 90.5FM at 9am, when KUT will air a new radio documentary, Lady Bird Johnson: Legacy of a First Lady. Producer Joe Bevilacqua spent five months listening to previously unreleased audio archives housed at the LBJ Library, period news broadcasts, and private conversations with LBJ to create the program, which features Liz Carpenter, Washington Post owner Katherine Graham, LBJ Library director Harry Middleton, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center director Robert Glass Breunig, Lady Bird biographer Jan Jarboe Russell, first ladies Betty Ford and Barbara Bush, and Kirk Douglas and Helen Hayes reading from LBJ and Lady Bird's love letters. The program will be rebroadcast on Thursday, Jan. 25, at 7pm... Karen Finley will read from her new memoir, A Different Kind of Intimacy: The Collected Writings of Karen Finley, a Memoir (Thunder's Mouth Press, 384 pp., $17.95 paper) at Book Woman on Tuesday, Jan. 23, at 7pm... Gary Cartwright's recent collection of articles, Turn Out the Lights: Chronicles of Texas During the 80s and 90s (UT Press, 282 pp., $19.95 paper) has a new essay, "1963: My Most Unforgettable Year," in which Cartwright recalls knowing Jack Ruby, "the cheesy little hood who owned the Carousel Club," among other intriguing aspects of being a young sportswriter in Dallas in 1963. The book's publication is the perfect opportunity for the Southwestern Writers Collection, whose curator Connie Todd edited the book, to host a panel with Cartwright, Bud Shrake, and Dallas Morning News Texana columnist Kent Biffle, titled "Dallas 1963, My Most Unforgettable Year: The JFK Assassination and Its Impact on Texas Writers." It's on Thursday, Jan. 25, from 7-9pm, on the seventh floor of the Alkek Library on the SWT campus. For more info and where to park call 512/245-2313 or see www.library.swt.edu/swwc... Chronicle food writer Pableaux Johnson and BookPeople will present beer, gumbo, and Johnson's book World Food New Orleans: Creole, Cajun & Soul (Lonely Planet Productions, 208 pp., $13.99 paper) on Thursday, Jan. 25, at 7pm... Shelby Hearon's new novel Ella in Bloom (Knopf, 259 pp., $23) is the story of a woman with a Mom complex and a perfect older sister; she's never quite fit in. The novel is the graceful, subtle story of how she rearranges the family dynamics. Hearon will be at BookPeople on Tuesday, Jan. 30, at 7pm... Grove Press, the Continental Club (1315 S. Congress), and Resistencia Bookstore are hosting a publication party for Dagoberto Gilb's new collection of short stories, Woodcuts of Women (Grove, 167 pp., $23) on Wednesday, Jan. 31, from 6:30-9pm. Free! Poetry, dancing, and Gilb reading from Woodcuts... The Michener Center is bringing Michael Cunningham (The Hours, A Home at the End of the World) to town to read from his work on Thursday, Feb. 1, at 7:30pm, in the Avaya Auditorium in the A.C.E.S. building on the UT campus. Free and open to the public. Call 471-1601 for more info.