Cover Story
Turn to Chapter 30
This weekend, the Texas Book Festival unites writers and readers from across the globe for the 30th year: A feat all the more impressive as uncovering erased histories, pushing the boundaries of fiction, and encouraging universal literacy – all essential to the festival’s mission – remain key targets of our increasingly widespread autocratic regimes. Among…
News
Texans Approve All 17 State Constitutional Amendments
While the city of Austin’s defeated tax hike, Prop Q, took the forefront in conversations and lawn signs across our city this election cycle, statewide the focus was on 17 proposed amendments to the state constitution, which all passed on Tuesday. The green light down the ballot isn’t unusual; Texas voters have historically signed off…
The Week’s Biggest News in Brief
A Dominant Performance: The Democratic party scored big wins on Election Day, including gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia; notably Dem candidates made gains in every single county in those states, compared with their counterparts in the previous election, according to The Washington Post. Additionally, California voters enthusiastically passed Prop 50, a redistricting effort…
Sarah Eckhardt Wants to Do “Big Things”
Three of Austin’s best-known political leaders are taking on huge challenges in next year’s election – David vs. Goliath scenarios. Rep. Gina Hinojosa is running for governor against Greg Abbott, the most powerful Republican in Texas. Rep. James Talarico is running against the winner of the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate, either the longtime…
Austin Voters Emphatically Reject Prop Q
Austinites have a lot to be upset about: the city’s high cost of living; tax increases from the county, school district, and ACC; the plan to close neighborhood schools; controversial, high-dollar investments in a new convention center, a police contract, a city logo; delays in breaking ground for Project Connect. Add to that a general…
AISD Makes Last Minute Changes to School Closure and Zoning Plan
On the evening of Nov. 4, Austin ISD sent an unexpected email out to all families in the district announcing that Palm, Bryker Woods, and Maplewood elementaries are being taken off the closure list next year. Additionally, the AISD Board of Trustees’ vote on new school boundary lines across the district is being postponed to…
Music
Music Notes
Aaron Watson Friday 7, Coupland Dancehall Coupland Dancehall reopens roughly a month after Lightstream Presents announced plans to take over the venue’s live entertainment programming. Aaron Watson kicks off a November slate featuring Cory Morrow (Nov. 21) and an acoustic performance from Randy Rogers (Nov. 29). Sorry Papi w/ Paloma Mami Friday 7, Mala Vida…
Takesies Backsies: Cheer Up Charlies Leaves Deal With Pride Holdings Group
Hope you’re holding on to your hats! As the Chronicle was preparing a story on homegrown LGBTQIA bar Cheer Up Charlies’ recent acquisition by Florida-based company Pride Holdings Group, co-owners Maggie Lea and Tamara Hoover reached out with the following statement: “As of 2:15pm, November 4th 2025, both parties have amicably agreed to part ways.…
Arts + Culture
Austin Studio Tour Welcomes You to the Playground
Under loom-woven trees and on handstitched gardens, Iris Kwon’s whimsical renditions of Austin artists row kayaks with paintbrushes and rev motorbikes into boomboxes, interpolating a community of creatives into colorful characters – fitting for the 2025 Austin Studio Tour guidebook. “It’s almost like everybody’s going to a playground, and meeting everybody, and having a good…
Jason Camacho, Beloved Austin Drummer, Has Died
Jason Camacho, revered drummer of local post-metal group Glassing, died in his sleep on Oct. 24. Camacho played with several other groups around town and is celebrated in outpourings from friends and fellow musicians for his uniquely explosive drumming and steadfast dedication to the Austin music community. A GoFundMe is gathering donations to support his…
Scott Semegran Goes Back to His Indie Roots
Scott Semegran was a military brat who spent half his childhood in San Antonio before moving to Austin in 1989 to earn an English degree from UT. Then he started reading the writers that weren’t on his degree plan – iconoclasts like Bukowski, Robbins, and Vonnegut – and drew inspiration from their direct, often subversive…
Stephen Graham Jones’ The Buffalo Hunter Hunter Is a Vampire He Can Believe In
“If I were a vampire, I could do it better,” promises Stephen Graham Jones. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, a historically bound horror tale, is his proof of concept. The Blackfeet writer has built his reputation on slashing horror tropes, disfiguring genre conventions, and summoning monsters that struggle with their own significance. “For me to believe…
Poet Amanda Johnston’s Anthology Praises Everyday People
“we must have talked/ about flowers, Mrs Adams, because one day you made me a gift of/ daffodil bulbs,” ire’ne lara silva writes for the kind, elderly woman who drove her every day to kindergarten in South Texas. “Praisesong for Mrs Adams” is one of many poems included in the anthology Praisesong for the People:…
Caro De Robertis and Tourmaline Salute Queer Elders
Each generation of young LGBTQIA people learns to navigate a world that is openly hostile to them. Some may feel that they’re the only people on Earth who have had to learn the necessary skills. But a pair of books by authors Caro De Robertis and Tourmaline show that there are legacies of strength and…
Skip Hollandsworth Retraces His Crime Writing Steps in She Kills
The muddied evidence, the gruesome details, and the hair-raising headlines are unique to each case, but the underlying question beneath all true crime stories is the same: Why? For decades, Skip Hollandsworth has been puzzling over two motives. First, of course, there’s the thorny emotions and vengeful impulses behind each bizarre crime he’s chronicled during…
Survival Through Subversion: Maria Reva Restructures the Novel to Save Its Endling
Maria Reva’s Endling is a form-breaking tale of three kinds of survival: the survival of its titular endling, the final specimen of a soon-to-be extinct species of snails; the survival of her Ukrainian characters as Russian attacks envelop their country; and the survival of Reva’s novel itself as that same war upended her story, which…
Screens
Predator: Badlands Review: How to Keep a Long Franchise Fresh? Play It for Laughs.
In season 6, episode 24 of The Simpsons, “Lemon of Troy,” bully Nelson Muntz begrudgingly rescues nerd Martin Prince from an ass-kicking, and Martin insists they are now friends, much to Nelson’s chagrin. It’s not hard to imagine that Predator: Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg and writer Patrick Aison just showed the memorable scene of Martin…
Die My Love Review: Mommy Weariest
Tradwives may rule a uniquely hellish pocket of the internet, but in arthouse film at least, Grim Mommy is ascendant, with an emerging canon presenting a more clear-eyed portrait of women buckling under domestic stress – in last year’s Nightbitch, this fall’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and now Lynne Ramsay’s hallucinatory picture of…
Food
Exciting Flavors and Huge Portions at Blue Apsara
As a South Austin resident, I’m always eager to welcome a new addition to the area’s Asian food scene. I had the chance to do exactly that at Blue Apsara, a fantastic Cambodian food truck currently parked on South Lamar. Blue Apsara can be found in the parking lot of Frond Plant Shop, a charming…
Columns
The Queer Egg-sperience
This Monday morning I cracked an egg on myself, if you’re curious how your faithful Qmmunity editor’s life outside the column space is going. To be honest, the worst part of gooey unfertilized egg mess being all over myself and the floor was knowing I had to clean it up. Ugh! Isn’t it enough for…
The Luv Doc: Natural Talent
Dear Luv Doc, I am a local musician and my boss trusted me to cover his weekly gig that his band has had for over a decade at a very famous local venue while he was on tour. At first I was a bit worried we wouldn’t be good enough, and I would get in…
Day Trips: Village of Rockne, Bastrop County
The Village of Rockne, an unincorporated community in the southwest corner of Bastrop County, is credited with being the only town in the country named after the legendary college football coach Knute Rockne. Born in Norway and raised in Chicago, Rockne became a national celebrity in his 13 seasons at the University of Notre Dame…
Feedback: November 7, 2025
Tangled Web Dear Editor, What the actual HELL have you done to the movie listings on your website? It was bad enough when you stopped publishing most of the reviews except online. But now it’s nearly impossible to find a particular movie (times, theatres, etc.) without jumping through too many confusing hoops. Why is there…
Op-Ed: When It Comes to Wrongful Convictions, Apologies Are Not Enough
I was not the only innocent person on death row in 2004. Among others, I was there with Robert Springsteen. We were all victims of a system that often gets it wrong. Finding out that Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Welborn did not commit the yogurt shop murders is a scary reminder…
Ugly Ending Clouds Mostly Positive Season for Austin FC
After a pair of swift defeats to LAFC in the first round of the MLS Cup Playoffs, including an embarrassing 4-1 suckfest at home in Game 2 Sunday night, it’s curtains for Austin FC’s 2025 season. As a result, the lasting images of the club’s campaign will go down as Myrto Uzuni missing a penalty…
The Common Law
One of my neighbors lets her dog poop in my yard. If I’m lucky she scoops the poop, but sometimes she doesn’t. It drives me nuts. When I’ve politely asked her to stop letting her dog poop in my yard, she always says the grassy area of my front lawn closest to the street is…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
In 1907, William Willett, the great-great-grandfather of Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, proposed Daylight Saving Time in Great Britain. A Mamamia.com survey of 250 Australian women revealed 42% shave their pubic hair, 42% just tidy it up, and 11% have a landing strip. Choerophyrne koeypad is one of two new frog species recently identified by researchers. Native…
Fun + Games
Free Will Astrology
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Martin Luther King Jr. said that harnessing our pain and transforming it into wise love can change the world for the better. More than any other sign, Scorpio, you understand this mystery: how descent can lead to renewal, how darkness can awaken brilliance. It’s one of your birthrights to embody King’s…
