Postscripts

---

McMillan Leaving Writers' League

As we said briefly last week, Jim Bob McMillan is going to stop being the executive director of the Writers' League of Texas at the end of August so that he can join the Texas Commission on the Arts, where he will be program administrator for community development and rural services. Sally Baker, who is the League's associate director, will take over until a search committee, which will conduct a national search, has found the permanent replacement. McMillan is most proud of "taking the organization from being more or less a local club to thinking of it more as an association of writers and making writers realize that they are part of a profession. That's something that we've worked hard to do; I don't think we're there yet but we're working toward it." The Writers' League of Texas used to be the Austin Writers' League, of course, and McMillan guided the organization through a somewhat contentious name change last year. League administrators realized that 43% of their members didn't even live in Austin. "It's kind of a logistics thing," McMillan told me nearly a year ago. "People would call us up and say, 'I'm from Conroe but I'm interested in ... but why am I calling the Austin writers' organization?' and we'd have to tell them that we have programs beyond the city of Austin." The decision to change the League's name seemed rather simple -- a name like the Writers' League of Texas is more likely to bring in corporate funding than a nonprofit called the Austin Writers' League -- but if members voted to change the name, they also had to vote themselves out of any say in the League's future since approving those particular by-laws would radically change the organization from one whose members voted on issues facing the League to one whose board would have final say. (Not to mention that approving the by-laws meant that the League wouldn't have to disclose its annual audit to members.) Some longtime members like Jeff Morris, who has been involved in various capacities with the League since it was founded in 1981, felt that the League had been "founded as a democratic organization, and we want it to remain such," as he said at the time. Many observers note that it was McMillan's levelheaded, inclusive approach to issues that carried the League through the change.

So what are the tasks the next director of the League will encounter? "Putting in place a strategic plan rather than a one-year term which we're used to working under," McMillan says. "It needs to be a longer vision than that. Maybe three to five years. I think that the other thing we're coming quickly to realize is that we need a permanent home. Right now, we do things in so many different places that people don't associate us with a place."

"The people that I've met here are very genuine, hard-working individuals, and I think that that's what I'll miss the most," McMillan says.

---

David Byrne's New Sins

David Byrne has decided what the new sins are in a little book resembling the Bible called The New Sins (Los Nuevos Pecados) (McSweeney's Books, $15). He'll be at BookPeople on Monday, Aug. 13, at 8:30pm, with a Power Point presentation. "Special McSweeney's guests, and one member of NASA's Mars landing team of engineers" are also expected, but that sounds like it comes straight from the McSweeney's people, so you're on your own about whether that will actually happen. Byrne will definitely be there; call 472-5050 for more info.