LONE STAR LISTENS interviews   >> archive

Kay Ellington, Editor and Publisher

8.13.2017  Johnston returns to his Texas roots as director of the Michener Center for Writers at UT–Austin

Bret Anthony Johnston is the author of the internationally best-selling novel Remember Me Like This, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and winner of the 2015 McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns Prize. He is also the author of the award-winning Corpus Christi: Stories. After directing the creative writing program at Harvard University for eleven years, he is now director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. He spoke with LSLL via email about his books, skateboarding, the Michener Center, and the best fish tacos in Corpus Christi.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Congratulations on being named the director of the Michener Writing Center and welcome back home to Texas, Bret. Many of the people who know your best-selling fiction may not realize that you actually grew up on the Texas coast. What was it like growing up in Corpus?

Thank you! I’m thrilled to be coming back, and more than a little shocked.

In many ways, growing up in Texas was ideal. It’s a unique part of the country, with its own codes and culture, its own temperament and landscape, and in ways that have nothing to do with politics, I still view the world through the lens of where I was raised. What it lacked, though, was any kind of real interest in the arts, certainly the literary arts. My parents were always reading, so I was always surrounded by books, but when I stepped outside our house, no one really cared about reading or writing. That was disorienting, confusing. I had a few invaluable teachers along the way, though, and they gave me reason to hope, reason to believe that there might be some kind of life with books. >>READ MORE

Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events

Bookish Texas event highlights  8.13.2017
>> GO this week   Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor

News Briefs 8.13.17

LONE STAR LIT’S BOOKISH TOUR OF TEXAS: DALLAS

Dallas’s new indie bookstore comes in with a bang

Lone Star Lit toured North Texas last week, with stops at a couple of university presses as well as the new independent bookstore on Preston Road that’s sending readers scrambling for their dictionaries. (Look it up — you’ll be rewarded with a rich history of the coined punctuation mark.)

Interabang Books swept onto the Dallas bookselling scene earlier this summer with a soft opening and has already hosted a number of events with big-name authors. They’re thrilled to have generous shelf space — as well as audience capacity for readings and signings.

Interabang’s 5,000-square-foot store at the southeast corner of Preston Road and Royal Lane carries titles in a wide variety of categories with a special focus on literature and children’s books. The well-curated children’s section hosts storytime at 11 am on Wednesdays. >> READ MORE

 ——­——— A D V E R T I S E M E N T —————

Lone Star Listens compilation available Sept. 15, for readers, fans, and writers everywhere

The present generation of Texas authors is the most diverse ever in gender, age, and ethnicity, and in subject matter as well.

Week in, week out, Lone Star Literary has interviewed a range of Texas-related authors with a cross-section of genre and geography. To capture this era in Texas letters, we’re pleased to bring you

Lone Star Listens:

Texas Authors on Writing and Publishing

edited by Kay Ellington and Barbara Brannon; introduction by

Clay Reynolds

Available in trade paper, library hardcover, and ebook Fall 2017

360 pages, with b/w illustrations and index

Featuring novelists, poets, memoirists, editors, and publishers, including:

Rachel  Caine • Chris  Cander • Katherine  Center • Chad S. Conine • Sarah  Cortez • Elizabeth  Crook • Nan  Cuba • Carol  Dawson • Patrick  Dearen • Jim Donovan • Mac Engel • Sanderia  Faye • Carlos Nicolás Flores • Ben Fountain • Jeff  Guinn • Stephen  Harrigan • Cliff  Hudder • Stephen Graham Jones • Kathleen Kent • Joe R. Lansdale • Melissa Lenhardt • Attica Locke • Nikki  Loftin • Thomas  McNeely • Leila  Meacham • John  Pipkin • Joyce Gibson Roach • Antonio  Ruiz-Camacho • Lisa  Sandlin • Donna  Snyder • Mary Helen Specht • Jodi  Thomas • Amanda Eyre Ward • Ann  Weisgarber • Donald Mace Williams

As a collection of insights into the writing and publishing life, the book will be useful in creative writing classes (not just in Texas alone) and other teaching settings, as well as for solo reading and study—and a great Texas reference volume.

• Lone Star Listens will be available for preorder May 31 and will ship around Aug. 1.
• Examination and review copies will be available May 31 in watermarked pdf format.

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archive

Hall of Fame catcher tells his remarkable story

Longtime Texas Rangers catcher Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez tells the story of his Hall of Fame baseball career in They Call Me Pudge: My Life Playing the Game I Love (with Jeff Sullivan, Triumph Books, $25.95 hardcover).

Rodriguez grew up in a small town in Puerto Rico with one brother in a close-knit family where “everything in our house revolved around baseball.” He dedicated the book to his parents, Joe and Eva, “for all their love, inspiration, and sacrifice.” He was signed by the Texas Rangers at age sixteen and started playing in the majors at nineteen. In twenty-one seasons, thirteen of them with Texas, he caught more games than any catcher in Major League history, won thirteen Gold Gloves as the best defensive catcher, was the American League Most Valuable Player in 1999, and had more than 2,800 hits. He led the Florida (now Miami) Marlins to a World Series title in 2003.

Rodriguez was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame the first year he was eligible, only the second catcher so honored (the other was his childhood idol, Johnny Bench), and was inducted last month. Throughout the book, Rodriguez speaks with confidence about his baseball skills, but not in a bragging sort of way. He was just that good. His numbers and his leadership spoke for themselves.

So did his ever-present smile. “I wasn’t conscious of my smiling,” he writes. “I guess I was just happy. I was in my happy place, playing this game I so respected and adored.”

Songs about Abilene: In his revised, expanded edition of Abilene in Song: The Women There Don’t Treat You Mean author Joe W. Specht tells about more than a hundred songs in which Abilene, Texas, either plays a role or is mentioned in passing.

The book (TexasStarTrading.com, $20 paperback) includes a CD of five of those songs, sung by Abilene musician Greg Young, ranging from the 1963 number one hit “Abilene” to “The Abilene Waltz,” recorded in 2016.

New novel: Laredo author Edward Swift gets right to the point in his new novel, Walking on Glory (CreateSpace, $9 paperback), killing off the main character in the first sentence.

Glory St. Michael is based on a Dallas millionaire who died penniless in 1991. Walking on Glory is Swift’s ninth book and eighth novel.

* * * * *

Glenn Dromgoole’s latest book is West Texas StoriesContact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life

Texas RITA award winners 2017: CORRECTION

In last week’s news briefs, we incorrectly reported the award category for Texas author Weina Dai Randel. The correct information appears below. We regret the error.

Mainstream Fiction with a Central Romance

The Moon in the Palace by Weina Dai Randel

Sourcebooks, Landmark

Shana Drehs and Anna Michels, editors

Weina Dai Randel was born in China and grew up there. She came to the U.S. when she was 24 and has lived here more than 15 years.  She received an M.A. in English from Texas Woman’s University in Denton. She lives in Flower Mound.

Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,

Contributing Editor

---

Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment *

Name *

Email *

Website

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.