Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,
Contributing Editor
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
>> archive
Author looks at black high school football in Texas before integration
Historian, journalist, and author Michael Hurd has produced the very readable and authoritative Thursday Night Lights: The Story of Black High School Football in Texas (University of Texas Press, $24.95 hardcover).
“This book,” writes Hurd, director of Prairie View A&M’s Texas Institute for the Preservation of History and Culture, “is about ‘black folks’ who coached and played high school football behind the veil of segregation in Texas for half a century, 1920–1970, as members of the all-black Prairie View Interscholastic League.”
Hurd explains the book’s title: The all-black schools played their games “primarily on Wednesday and Thursday nights in most towns, Tuesdays in others, some on Saturdays, but rarely on prime-time Friday nights, when games for white schools were played.”
The author includes a six-page section on Abilene’s Carter G. Woodson High School Rams, featuring a get-together of several former players swapping tales about playing for Coach James Valentine and hanging out eating “the best burgers in Abilene” at Larry’s drive-in after their games.
At one out-of-town game, they remembered, the team bus pulled in to a service station to fill up with gas. But when the players were denied use of the station’s restroom, Coach Valentine ordered the white attendant, “Shut that pump off! We don’t want to fill up here!”
The book includes photographs of former Woodson players Andrew Penns and Louis Kelley.
“The PVIL football honor roll,” Hurd writes, “reads like a who’s who of national prep, college and professional gridiron greats,” with six of them in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In the first combined NFL-AFL pro football draft of 1967, five of the first thirty-three draft picks were former PVIL players.
“Black high school football flourished in a time when it seemed no one outside the black media and its audiences cared about … the abundance of talent bursting from the underfunded schools that competed under the PVIL banner,” Hurd notes.
“The PVIL created pride and ambition, and its games revived spirits battered by the day-to-day burdens of racism…. For black players, the game was a vehicle to propel them from poor hardworking disenfranchised communities into better lives that could include a college education.”
“Mean” Joe Greene, Bubba Smith, Dick “Night Train” Lane, Jerry LeVias, Ollie Matson, and Charley Taylor all played at PVIL schools, to name just a few. The late Barbara Jordan, the first black woman elected to Congress from a southern state, was a PVIL debate champion.
Hurd tells about some of the legendary coaches, teams, and rivalries in the PVIL, including the Houston matchup of Wheatley vs. Yates played for years on Thanksgiving Day, and the extraordinary talent coming out of Beaumont’s Hebert and Charlton-Pollard high schools.
The last chapter deals with integration of the University Interscholastic League in 1967 — “the good, the bad, the end” — that closed the books on the PVIL three years later.
Hurd tells the PVIL story with conviction, attention to detail, and great affection.
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
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Paperback, 978-0-9968-7974-3 (also available as an e-book), 216 pgs., $11.99
October 20, 2017
Nineteen is “sort of an itchy age, especially in a family whose motto was ‘Hold My Beer and Watch This.’” Juan Antonio Augustus “Augie” Sweetwater is nineteen, and has gone missing during a business trip to Mexico. Charlie, great uncle to Augie, quoting Gandhi, Thoreau, and John Lennon, philosophically feeling each of his sixty-eight years (“Lately he had begun to wonder if most of his dreams and adventures lay behind him, and if the whole of his life amounted to less than the sum of its parts”), heads to Veracruz to begin working his way up the coast. Raul, father of Augie, nephew of Charlie, crosses the border into Matamoros to begin working his way down the coast. Surely one of them will find Augie.
Old friends and business associates are behaving evasively, acting shady. Clues point in a gruesome direction: kidnapping, human trafficking, sea-slaves, cartels, corrupt public servants (“Plata o plomo, as they say. Silver or lead”), dissolute musicians, poachers, repo-women, plutocrats, and pirates, though those last two are synonyms.
Hidden Sea is the new novel by Miles Arceneaux (aka John T. Davis, James R. Dennis, and Brent Douglass), the fifth in his (their) Gulf Coast noir series of mysteries. >>READ MORE
University of North Texas Press
Hardcover, 978-1-5744-1692-3 (also available as an e-book and on Audible), 480 pgs., $29.95
August 15, 2017
On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed the right to marry for all Americans in Obergefell v. Hodges, after forty years of “struggle and engagement, combat and persuasion, activism and conversation.” Almost six hundred couples have been plaintiffs in same-sex marriage cases since 1970. In 2013, Mark Phariss and Vic Holmes of Plano, along with Cleopatra DeLeon and Nicole Dimetman of Austin, agreed to become named plaintiffs for a Texas case. Phariss and Holmes were denied a marriage license in Bexar County, and powerhouse international law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP, promptly filed suit. >>READ MORE
LONE STAR LISTENS interviews >> archive
10.22.2017 “Not so much a state as a habitat”: Lubbock’s next poet laureate, William Wenthe, reflects on Texas as inspiration and identity
Interviewed by Barbara Brannon
William Wenthe wasn’t a Texan to start with, but a quarter century of honing and teaching the craft of poetry here ought to qualify him as one by now. Of his four published volumes of verse, the first, Birds of Hoboken (1995) was published by the esteemed Orchises Press; its title signals his continuing interest in the relation between natural and human orders. The next three books have come out from Louisiana State University, whose top poetry honor, the L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award (a tribute to the press’s director emeritus, long a champion of excellent poetry) Wenthe won for his most recent collection, God’s Foolishness (2016). (In case you’re wondering about that striking cover design, it incorporates a screenprint by internationally renowned Lubbock printmaker Lynwood Kreneck
On the eve of the 2017 Lubbock Book Festival, during which he will be honored as the city’s new poet laureate, Wenthe took time out to discuss, via email, topics ranging from poetic inspiration to politics, with some practical advice for writers and readers along the way.
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Bill, you came to Texas Tech University in Lubbock — some years ago — by way of the University of Virginia, from an upbringing in New Jersey. Can you tell us more about your journey from East Coast to South to Southwest, and how that journey has influenced your creative development?
WILLIAM WENTHE: I’ve lived in a sixth-floor walkup in Manhattan and I’ve lived in a cottage in a 500-acre forest in Virginia. So I’m pretty adaptable. The relation of my writing to place is really complex, and something I’m always exploring. But very broadly, I did not identify with the suburban/industrial landscape I grew up in; much of the poetry I wrote then was by way of complaint. And then I loved, just loved, the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. In Virginia, I felt I understood the place: its natural history and human history, and that deepened my writing. Moving to West Texas was a kind of geographical shock, after Virginia—one of the first poems I wrote was titled “After Moving to a Place Where I Do Not Know the Names of Plants and Birds.” But after I moved here, I swore that I wouldn’t let unfamiliarity stop me from writing >>READ MORE
Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events
Bookish Texas event highlights 10.22.2017 >> GO this week Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor
SPECIAL EVENTS THIS WEEK
- TCU Language & Culture Festival 2017, Fort Worth, October 24-26
- National Black Book Festival, Houston, October 26-28
- Literary Lubbock 2017, October 27
- 1st Annual Lubbock Book Festival, October 28
- Halloween ComicFest 2017, statewide, October 28
- 45th Annual Ann and Stephen Kaufman Jewish Book & Arts Festival, Houston, October 28–November 12
HOUSTON Mon., Oct. 23 Brazos Bookstore, Mark Bowden discussing and signing Hue 1968, A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam, 7PM
ALSO SIGNING IN DALLAS Tues., Oct. 24 B&N – Preston Parl, 7PM; FRISCO, Tues, Oct. 24, B&N – Stonebriar Mall, 7PM; FORT WORTH, Wed., Oct. 25, The Fort Worth Club, World Affairs Council DFW, 11:30AM; DALLAS, Wed., Oct. 25, Interabang Books, 7PM; AUSTIN Fri., Oct. 27, BookPeople, 7PM [ticketed event]
PERRYTON Mon., Oct. 23 Perry Memorial Library, Stew Magnuson giving a multimedia presentation of The US 83 Chronicles / The Last American Highway in Texas, 12PM
ALSO SIGNING in WELLINGTON Tues., Oct. 24, Collingsworth County Public Library, 7PM; ANSON, Wed., Oct. 25, Anson Public Library, noon; ABILENE, Wed., Oct. 25, Hardin-Simmons University, 8PM; BALLINGER, Thurs., Oct. 26, Ballinger Memorial Library, noon; MENARD, Thurs., Oct. 26, Menard Public Library, 6PM; JUNCTION, Fri., Oct. 27, Kimble County Library, noon;
DALLAS Tues., Oct. 24 Deep Vellum Books, Wiley Cash reads and signs The Last Ballad (with Ben Fountain), 7PM
ALSO SIGNING IN AUSTIN Thurs., Oct. 26, BookPeople, 7PM [ticketed event]
AUSTIN Thurs., Oct. 26 LBJ Presidential Library, Secretary Madeleine Albright signs Madam Secretary and Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box, and Bob Schieffer signs Overload: Finding the Truth in Today’s Deluge of News, 4:30PM
HOUSTON Thurs., Oct. 26 Rice University, The O’Brien Medieval and Early Modern Studies Guest Lecture Series: “Ghost Stories” by Dr. Scott Bruce, author of the forthcoming The Penguin Book of Hell: Three Thousand Years of Torment, 8PM
RICHMOND Thurs., Oct. 26 George Memorial Library, Gulf Coast Reads: historical re-enactment of Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd’s role of reading the news to rural Texans in 1870, from the novel News of the World by Paulette Jiles, 7PM
EL PASO Sat., Oct. 28 Literarity Book Shop, A Reading of The Notebook of Nancy Lea by Adair Margo, founder of the Tom Lea Institute, 2:30PM
SAN ANTONIO Sat., Oct. 28 The Twig Book Shop, Texas Poetry Calendar 2018 launch and poetry reading, 4PM
AUSTIN Sun., Oct. 29 BookPeople, Hayden Gilbert, Jeremy Hepler, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Bryce Wilson, RJ Joseph, and Bret McCormick speaking & signing ROAD KILL: Texas Horror by Texas Writers VOL 2 (moderated by E.R Bills), 2PM
AUSTIN Sun., Oct. 29 BookPeople, author Taisia Kitaiskaia and illustrator Katy Horan speaking & signing Literary Witches, 5PM
News Briefs 10.22.17
Lubbock Book Festival to feature 36 authors plus lucal luminaries and Lubbock’s next poet laureate, Oct. 28
Hank the Cowdog creator John R. Erickson, “Perfect Pass” author S. C. Gwynne, bestseller Jodi Thomas, news anchor Karin McCay, and celebrity chefs/cookbook authors Adán Medrano and Angelina LaRue to headline
LUBBOCK — It’s probably safe to say that never before in Lubbock’s 100 year–plus history has such an illustrious slate of Texas-related authors gathered here on the same day to discuss and sign their books.
As part of the 20th anniversary celebration of LHUCA, Lubbock’s esteemed Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, the literary arts will be the focus of the city’s first-ever full-day book festival, Sat., Oct. 28, 2017. Thirty-six featured authors, plus several others serving as moderators and more than a dozen local authors on hand to sign their books, will participate. Sessions cover literary genres from fiction to poetry to history and more, and appeal to diverse readers of all ages. A full schedule, author bios, and other details are posted at http://www.lubbockbookfestival.org/schedule
In addition, the city will name its 2017–18 Lubbock Poet Laureate, award-winning poet William Wenthe of the Texas Tech University faculty, on Saturday evening at 7 p.m. in LHUCA’s Firehouse Theatre.
All official Festival events will take place in venues at LHUCA and CASP in Lubbock’s downtown Cultural District. LHUCA is located at 511 Avenue K, Lubbock, TX 79401. CASP’s Printmaking Studio and 5& J Gallery are located at 1106 Fifth Street, Lubbock, TX 79401. >>READ MORE
McAllen Book Festival to feature eighteen authors in fourth year, Nov. 11
McALLEN — Benjamin Alire Sáenz, the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the American Book Award, will be among 18 authors at the Fourth Annual McAllen Book Festival to be held Saturday, Nov. 11 at the McAllen Public Library, 4001 N. 23rd.
A free event sponsored by the McAllen Public Library the festival will also feature Rachel Caine, a multiple New York Times bestselling author of books in a wide variety of genres, including thriller, mystery, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, science fiction, and young adult. She has published more than fifty novels to date. Her notable series are Stillhouse Lake (thriller), The Great Library (young adult), Morganville Vampires (young adult), and Weather Warden (urban fantasy).
Other authors include Xavier Garza, author, artist, teacher, and storyteller whose work is a lively documentation of life, dreams, superstitions, and heroes in the larger-than-life world of South Texas. Garza has exhibited his art and performed his stories in venues throughout Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. He is the author and illustrator of several children’s and young adult books, including Maximilian and the Lucha Libre Club and The Donkey Lady Fights La Llorona and Other Stories. Garza lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his family. >>READ MORE
Texas book fest announces full schedule with special Antone’s music stage, author panels, lit crawl, kids’ activities, and more
AUSTIN — The Texas Book Festival announced today the 2017 schedule, which features 300 renowned authors, panels, book signings, live music, cooking demonstrations, children’s activities, and more. The 2017 Texas Book Festival Weekend will take place on November 4 and 5 on the grounds of the Texas Capitol. >>READ MORE
(Information from organization’s press release)
Eighth Annual Lit Crawl Austin takes place Sat., Nov.4
AUSTIN — Lit Crawl Austin will celebrate its eighth year of irreverent literary programming on Saturday evening, November 4. Join participants on the East Side for a night of performances, games, trivia matches, music, and all-ages storytelling sessions.
At the North Door, 7 p.m., four authors and three judges will take part in the return of Literary Death Match. Judges will be Dan Chaon (literary merit), Elena Passarello (performance), and Maya Perez (intangibles). >>READ MORE
7th annual Dobie Dichos to celebrate works of J. Frank Dobie Nov. 3
Bring a lawn chair, eat a bowl of chili, and listen to top Texas authors and storytellers read from/tell stories from the works of noted folklorist J. Frank Dobie under the stars at the Historic Oakville Jail town square
Presented by George West Storyfest Association, Inc., the annual Dobie Dichos event honors Live Oak County’s most famous son, author J. Frank Dobie, to celebrate his works and contributions to literature, folklore, and storytelling. This year, the Dobie Dichos evening is slated for Sun., Nov. 3, 2017, from 6:00 to 9:30 p.m. Tickets are $5.00–$15.00 per person.
Featured presenters are Cary Clack, Sarah Cortez, Dudley R. Dobie Jr., Stephen Harrigan, Stan Mahler, Carolina Quiroga-Stultz, Taylor Tomlin, and Bill Witliff. Screenwriter William Jack Sibley will serve as master of ceremonies.
Texas writers/authors and storytellers read from or tell stories from Dobie’ works under the stars on the grounds of the Historic Oakville Jail, located on IH-37 in Live Oak County. The meal consists of a bowl of chili, pan de campo, a bottle of water, and dessert. Beer is available for purchase. >>READ MORE
Odessa Council for Arts & Humanities offers drawing for two tickets to “An Evening with David Sedaris”
ODESSA — David Sedaris, award-winning author and critic, will appear at the Wagner-Noël Performing Arts Center in Midland Tues., Nov. 7, 2017, at 7 p.m.
With sardonic wit and incisive social critiques, Sedaris has become one of America’s preeminent humor writers. The great skill with which he slices through cultural euphemisms and political correctness proves that Sedaris is a master of satire and one of the most observant writers addressing the human condition today. >>READ MORE AND ENTER TO WIN
————— A D V E R T I S E M E N T —————
Lone Star Listens compilation available fall 2017, 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.
- Examination and review copies will be available fall 2017 in watermarked pdf format.
LONE STAR CLASSIFIED LISTINGS
FEATURED: WORKSHOPS OPEN FOR REGISTRATION
.22.17 Finally — the writing community you’ve been searching for! Are you looking for experienced, published authors who will read your work, give you credible feedback, and help you on your path to publishing—affordably and efficiently?
Come be a part of the first-ever Paragraph Ranch Writers’ Workshop, brought to you from the creators of Lone Star Literary Life. This weekend workshop, Dec. 1–3, 2017, led by popular fantasy author Tex Thompson, will support writers in the development of their voices and the practice of their craft. Located in a picturesque Western setting in the caprock country of Spur, Texas, this retreat welcomes writers of all ages, levels of experience, and genres.
All lodging and meals are included (with optional discount for shared or off-site lodging).
Email info@lonestarliterary.com or for more information visit www.lonestarpublicity.com/product-page/paragraph-ranch-writers-weekend-2017-with-tex-thompson
>>READ MORE CLASSIFIED LISTINGS
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COMING UP ON TOUR: FICTION
Death in D Minor by Alexia Gordon Visit with Alexia through Oct. 26, 2017
25-Oct Review Hall Ways Blog
25-Oct Notable Quotable Texan Girl Reads
26-Oct Top 5 List Books and Broomsticks
27-Oct Review Momma On The Rocks
27-Oct Playlist 1 Texas Book Lover
28-Oct Review Chapter Break Book Blog
29-Oct Excerpt A Page Before Bedtime
30-Oct Author Interview The Librarian Talks
30-Oct Review Forgotten Winds
31-Oct Playlist 2 Syd Savvy
1-Nov Review Tangled in Text
1-Nov Top 5 List Bibliotica
2-Nov Notable Quotable Missus Gonzo
2-Nov Notable Quotable StoreyBook Reviews
3-Nov Review Reading By Moonlight
COMING UP ON TOUR: FICTION
A Good Girl by Johnnie Bernhard Visit with Johnnie Oct. 26–Nov. 4, 2017
26-Oct Excerpt 1 Hall Ways Blog
27-Oct Review Texan Girl Reads
28-Oct Author Interview Reading by Moonlight
29-Oct Guest Post Tangled in Text
30-Oct Review Missus Gonzo
31-Oct Notable Quotable Texas Book Lover
1-Nov Review Syd Savvy
2-Nov Scrapbook Page Forgotten Winds
3-Nov Excerpt 2 StoreyBook Reviews
4-Nov Review The Librarian Talks
CONTINUING ON TOUR: FICTION
Lady Jayne Disappears by Joanna Davidson Politano Visit with Joanna through Oct. 26, 2017
22-Oct Scrapbook Page Tangled in Text
23-Oct Review Momma On The Rocks
24-Oct Deleted Scene The Page Unbound
25-Oct Author Interview The Librarian Talks
26-Oct Review Reading By Moonlight
CONTINUING ON TOUR: NONFICTION
Understanding Cemetery Symbols by Tui Snider Visit with Tui through Oct. 27, 2017
22-Oct Author Interview Books and Broomsticks
23-Oct Excerpt 2 The Page Unbound
24-Oct Review Forgotten Winds
25-Oct Top 5 List Syd Savvy
26-Oct Guest Post 2 A Novel Reality
27-Oct Review Bibliotica
CONTINUING ON TOUR: FICTION
The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck by Bethany Turner Visit with Bethany through Oct. 28, 2017
22-Oct Deleted Scene Reading by Moonlight
23-Oct Review A Page Before Bedtime
24-Oct Guest Post #2 Texas Book Lover
25-Oct Review Tangled in Text
26-Oct Playlist Books in the Garden
27-Oct Review StoreyBook Reviews
28-Oct Character Interview Books and Broomsticks
RECENTLY ON TOUR: FICTION
Hidden Sea by Miles Arceneaux
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