Cover Story
Summer Reading Roundup
Long after I’ve closed a paperback, I can tell if it was on my personal summer syllabus. Sweat stains and sticky splotches of ice cream dot the pages. Sharing a bag with damp towels and slick sunscreen containers leaves the spine soft and perfectly conditioned for lying flat on picnic tables and lakeside grass. Summer…
News
Getting to Know Austin Billionaire Joe Lonsdale
Most Austinites are unaware that our city is home to a far-right billionaire working diligently, and very effectively, to criminalize homelessness. That person is Joe Lonsdale, and VOCAL-TX, the grassroots homeless advocates, are staging an all-night vigil this Sunday at 8pm outside his think tank, the Cicero Institute. The vigil is part of VOCAL-TX’s Billionaire…
AISD Approves Sweeping Districtwide Cuts, Keeps Librarians
Close to midnight on June 18, after almost seven hours of public hearing and debate, Austin ISD trustees voted to adopt the proposed $887 million budget for the 2026-2027 school year with one amendment: that every school in the district will now keep a full-time librarian. AISD faced a $181 million budget deficit projection and…
East Austin Historic Resource Survey Underway
On Friday, Rosewood Neighborhood Park was the site of Austin’s annual Juneteenth celebration. The historic park has been the site for the city’s Juneteenth celebrations going back to 1930. A few blocks to the west is Austin’s first library, the George Washington Carver Library, established in East Austin in 1933. Historic homes of freedmen remain…
The Week’s Biggest News in Brief: June 18-24
Roadway Art Removal: After the Texas Department of Transportation denied Austin’s request to keep some of the city’s iconic street art, the city submitted an action plan on Monday, June 22, for the removal of the roadway art that the state had deemed unacceptable on Monday, June 22 – the deadline given by TxDOT before…
Environmentalists Balk at Plans for Massive Eastern Crescent Development
Many who offered comments at the Environmental Commission’s June 17 meeting spoke in bitingly personal terms about the new Dog’s Head land development deal, but none more so than Robin Rather, the longtime environmental activist. Rather began her remarks by describing the Dog’s Head deal as dystopian and environmentally racist. She then turned and stared…
Music
Music Notes
The Drop-In Thursday 25, Long Center Lawn Electric guitar wizard/singer-songwriter Jackie Venson takes a quick pit stop at home for the latest edition of the Drop-In’s lively free concert series. Chris Robinson’s alt-R&B project, Sweet Limb, opens with sophomore album Axis in tow. Allisen & the Wy’s Guys Saturday 27, C-Boy’s Heart & Soul Though…
Arts + Culture
Amanda Eyre Ward’s Latest Book Follows a Family’s Complicated Journey
Amanda Eyre Ward is whisking readers away to sparkling Mediterranean waters and ivory cliffs this summer. Once there, though, her characters’ lives aren’t all monument tours and seaside relaxation. “In the summer I like to read complicated books – set in Greece,” laughs Ward. In the far-flung destinations of her 2020 novel The Jetsetters and this…
Motherhood, Mystery, and Pole Dancing Combine in Last Night Was Killer
Mary Pauline Lowry’s foray into so-called cozy murder mysteries emerged from an unexpected confluence of inspirations. First, she’d been thinking about motherhood, sympathizing with her “beyond strapped” friends raising children. “I think there’s something about our modern American culture that is making motherhood particularly challenging and difficult,” Lowry posits. Then, therapy led her to pole…
Journalist Lauren Hough Writes Her Own On the Road
Once you’ve heard Lauren Hough’s voice, it’s hard to read her work without its dry, lightly accented rumble in your head. The bestselling author of Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing sacrificed a week of Diet Coke to read the audiobook for her second autobiographical release, Monster of a Land: On the Road in Search of…
Zell Miller III Shares His First Book as Austin’s Indigenous Offspring
Zell Miller III has his own lexicon. As with many poets, grammatical forms and capitalization rules get warped when Miller’s words make their way onto the page. For his debut collection, Austin’s inaugural poet laureate further examined the way his influences and his experience as a performer shape his written words. “It’s still so different…
Laekan Zea Kemp Is on the Tween Reading Beat
Cat, Sofia, Ana, and Mari are headed to high school. They’ll share lots of firsts, lots of gossip, and a book in Laekan Zea Kemp’s The Chismosas Only Book Club. “I know how awkward yet precious that transitional period is in their lives,” Kemp says. As an ESL ninth and 10th grade teacher, she’s seen…
Every Brilliant Thing Is a Short Solo Play Worth the Time
Why am I crying over a borrowed coat? We’re barely 10 minutes into Every Brilliant Thing, and I’m already getting misty as the Storyteller, the one and only official performer, clutches an audience member’s folded white windbreaker. Another random audience member approaches the jacket with a pencil, the Storyteller’s lip quivers, and I’m swallowing the…
Summer Reading’s Dino-mite With the Austin Public Library
Attention, Reader! Austin Public Library’s summer reading program is back. This year’s theme, Unearth a Story – as chosen by the public library nonprofit Collaborative Summer Library Program, or CSLP – offers prehistoric thrills for the modern age with dino-riffic reading rewards. Running until August 8, readers of all ages have the chance to dig up…
What the Austin Chronicle Staff Is Reading This Summer
The Nineties rock memoir I’ve been waiting for: In Even the Good Girls Will Cry, Melissa Auf Der Maur, the badass bassist of Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, recounts her hippie upbringing, how she joined Courtney Love’s band at 22 – four months after Kurt Cobain’s death – and all the other highs and lows of…
Screens
Supergirl Review: Hero With a Hangover
In Supergirl, the latest addition to James Gunn’s quasi-revamp of the DC cinematic universe, everyone has a purpose. Embittered teen Ruthye (Eve Ridley) seeks revenge against the interstellar brigands who killed her family. Brigand leader Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts, Bullhead, A Hidden Life) wants a life of murder and chaos. Interstellar bounty…
Food
Restaurant François Is Expensive, Indulgent, and Frustratingly Easy to Love
I had to lobby for this review. Not because Restaurant François isn’t one of the hottest reservations in town. Totally the opposite. Since opening last winter, the Downtown restaurant has racked up heaps of praise usually reserved for longstanding Austin institutions. However, my editor was pretty “meh” on the idea of featuring (yet another) restaurant…
Columns
Feedback: June 26, 2026
Booze of Austin Dear Editor, Best of Austin has two categories that seem inconsistent. Radio Coffee & Beer was voted Best Coffee. It seems like the category should be limited to coffeehouses, the kind without booze. Speaking of booze, Cosmic was voted Best Place for Sober Socializing. Again, another coffee and alcohol spot. It really…
Day Trips: Spanish Missions in Texas
Spanish missions in Texas were some of the first steps on the long journey to America’s 250th anniversary. Between 1682 and 1793, Franciscan priests established 26 missions in what became Texas. These far-flung outposts established Spain’s toehold in the region and the foundation of Texas culture. Visiting these missions is like stepping back in time.…
Qmmunity: A Slam Dunk Women’s Sports Bar
Last year, the door opened on a much-needed space in Austin’s sporty scene: Debra Hallum and Marlene du Plessis’ 1972 Pub. But the road to where they are now – hosting weekly watch parties for women’s sports like Friday’s Women’s PGA championship at 5pm or next Wednesday’s 8pm AUSL Texas Volts softball game – started…
Can the Red-Hot United States Actually Win the World Cup?
The content factory that is this 2026 FIFA World Cup has continued to hum at unprecedented efficiency as the tournament enters the final week of group stage play. It has generated a list of international talking points the likes of which we never could have anticipated. Among them, people are amazingly, unironically asking… Can the…
Cautiously Optimistic Cactus
Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you that I’m a card-carrying rescheduler. I love canceled plans, rain checks, and even an occasional Irish Goodbye. When Todd Harris, co-owner of Happy Cactus, had to reschedule our interview a couple times, I was simply curious: What was keeping him so busy? Harris sat down in…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
According to The Wall Street Journal, payroll taxes stopped being enough to cover the (Social Security) retiree and disability programs’ expenses 16 years ago. In American English, nippy can mean chilly. In British English, nippy can mean agile. Edward Bancroft, a double agent working for Benjamin Franklin and spying for the U.S. and Great Britain in the Revolutionary…
The Luv Doc: Shortcomings
Dear Luv Doc, I am increasingly feeling emotionally distanced and morally ashamed of my younger brother who is a family man and caring dad while living in the outreaching faraway suburbs of Austin, Texas. Why is this? My younger brother appears to possess a constant conservative mindset, is a Trump supporter and recently posted a…
Fun + Games
Free Will Astrology
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Now is an auspicious time to declare a sweeping amnesty and observe a personal season of pardon. To the best of your ability, release your clenched feelings about people who have caused you pain. Banish blame! Purge any lingering resentment and regret that has curdled into self‑reproach. Celebrate atonement and absolution!…
