Lone Star Lit’s Literary Tour of Texas: Austin

Members of the Lone Star Lit team are just now unpacking from trips to Austin (and more exotic places, like India) and downloading loads of digital photos. Here are a few highlights from our visit during Texas Book Festival week earlier this month — before we head off to Burnet, Kyle, San Antonio, and other bookish destinations in a few days.

Where better to begin a literary tour of the capital city than with the good people of BookPeople Kay and Barbara visited with marketing director Abby Fennewald and enjoyed a welcome cup of coffee on a rainy Austin day.

The store's selection of Texas books and authors can’t be beat. The store features sections arranged by subjects, with a feast of related merchandise in addition to a delectable array of new books. Upstairs is the seating area for author events (the store hosts more than 300 annually) and an excellent kids’ section.

Staff are knowledgeable and readily located. And if you can’t make it for an in-person visit, or to see an author whose autograph you’re coveting, BookPeople offers a mail-order service for limited quantities of signed copies.

Another must-see destination for lovers of letters is the Harry Ransom Center situated in the heart of the University of Texas campus. The Ransom Center (or HRC, as many of us have long known it) will celebrate 60 years of collecting with a “World of Wonders” gala April 22, 2017. While the Ransom Center is primarily a research archive and museum, and its Hazel Ransom Reading Room is open only to registered users, its dramatic public spaces offer glimpses into the repository’s treasures through rotating exhibitions year-round.

The center’s distinctive windows feature images and signatures representative of its extensive holdings, and a copy of the Gutenberg Bible is on permanent display near the entry foyer. For literary scholars unable to visit in person, an increasing number of the center’s documents have been digitized, and detailed finding aids are available via its content website

We had a delightful tour and visit with Jennifer Tisdale and Suzanne Krause of the Public Affairs office — and we’ll look forward to coming back and spending even more time!

We rounded out our Austin trip with another engine of scholarly and literary production, the University of Texas Press. Moving last year to spacious new headquarters at the university’s Lake Austin campus, the Press now boasts ample space for producing some 100 new books and ten journals annually — and displaying highlights from its backlist of more than 3,000 titles from more than six decades of publishing. Staff members Brady Dyer and Colleen Ellis, along with visitor Kathryn Marguy from Johns Hopkins University Press, welcomed us to come see the new digs for ourselves.

The Press’s credo is emblazoned on a plaque in its new lobby — a reminder to all, about the central place of books in the advancement of knowledge.

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Reading Rock Stars rock it at Crockett Dec. 1

The Texas Book Festival hosted one of its annual Reading Rock Stars presentations last week at Crockett Elementary School in Houston. Beginning at 8:15 a.m., the school hosted three authors — nationally recognized author Kathi Appelt (right, with her book Counting Crows), NFL veteran and Pro Bowl player from Dallas Wade Smith, and New York Times bestselling author Nathan Hale—to present their books for students.

The Texas Book Festival’s Reading Rock Stars literacy program brings books to life for children in low-income schools and has hosted authors from across the country at six Texas schools, including Crockett, in 2016. The authors will present their literary works in an entertaining fashion. The Texas Book Festival gives each student an autographed copy of each book and provides the school library with a new set of books.

After the 2016 Houston presentations, Reading Rock Stars will have coordinated more than 330 author visits and provided more than 78,000 books to students in Title I schools, since its inception.

For more information on the Texas Book Festival and Reading Rock Stars, visit www.texasbookfestival.org.

(From organization’s press release

Writers in Performance to host 26th annual Emily Dickinson Birthday Celebration with poets at The Woodlands, Dec. 8

Writers in Performance will hold its annual Gathering of Poets at 7 pm Thurs., Dec. 8, at the Black Walnut Café in The Woodlands. The event will feature some twenty published poets. Each will read a favorite Dickinson poem as well as one of their own. Featured poets include Michael Anania, Alan Ainsworth, Mary Margaret Carlisle, Sarah Cortez, Carolyn Dahl, Houston Poet Laureate Robin Davidson, Sybil Estess, Lyman Grant,  Dede Fox,  John Gorman, Ken Jones, Sharon Klander, Janet Lowery, Deseree Probasco, Kevin Prufer, Kathryn Lane, John Milkereit, Daniel Rifenburgh, Melissa Studdard, Randall Watson, and Mick Lowell White. The readings will be led by 2011 Texas Poet Laureate Dave Parsons.

Earlier that day, at 3:00 pm at Lone Star College-Montgomery, room G-102, Martha Nell Smith, Distinguished Professor at University of Maryland, will discuss the flurry of scholarly work done on the poet in the last few years. Smith is widely regarded, both here and abroad, as the most knowledgeable scholar of Dickinson’s writings.

Both events are free to the public. Beverages and food may be purchased at the Black Walnut, 9000 New Trails at Research Forest Blvd. in The Woodlands.

Writers in Performance events are made possible through the partnership of the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council, Lone Star College-Montgomery, Conroe Commission on Arts and Culture, Montgomery County Arts Alliance and SWIRL, student magazine of art and literature.  For more information contact Cliff Hudder, clifford.w.hudder@lonestar.edu

(From organization’s press release)

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