LONE STAR LISTENS interviews   >> archive

Author interviews by Kay Ellington

2.11.2018  Byrds of a feather publish together: Lee Merrill Byrd and Bobby Byrd on the origins of El Paso’s Cinco Puntos Press, and books they love

Lone Star Listens typically focuses on interviews with Texas–related writers, but it’s a distinct pleasure this week to interview two El Paso authors (and 2017 Texas Institute of Letters inductees) who have contributed as significantly to publishing books as to writing them. Bobby Byrd of Cinco Puntos Press wants readers to know that even though he wrote most of the interview responses this week via email (wife Lee Merrill Byrd being in Denver for the American Library Association Mid-Winter Conference), she did “toss in her two cents here and there.” Thanks to both of these literary love-Byrds for taking the time out of a busy week for some bookish conversation.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Lee and Bobby, since it’s Valentine’s week, why don’t you start by telling us how you met, and how long have you been married?

BOBBY BYRD: Well, that’s complicated. Sometime in the summer of 1966, during a rather boisterous night, a friend of mine pushed me through the window of Lee’s motel room. We were both at the Aspen Writers’ Workshop organized by Robert Vas Dias and Toby Olson. Paul Blackburn was the poet in residence. Lee graduated the next spring from Beaver College (I promise you, that was its name) outside Philly, and we’ve been together ever since, marrying in 1973 in Alamosa, Colorado, honored to have our wonderful twenty-month-old daughter Susannah Mississippi Byrd carrying the ring down the aisle for us.

When did you start Cinco Puntos Press — and what motivated you?

LEE AND BOBBY: The official date is 1985.  >>READ MORE

Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book eventsBookish Texas event highlights  2.11.2018 >> GO this week   Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor

SPECIAL EVENTS THIS WEEK

• FronteraFest 2018, Austin, January 16-February 17
• Lone Star Ink Writing Conference, Dallas, February 8-10
• Humanities Texas presents Texas Storytime: A Family Reading Program, Midland, February 8-March
• North Texas Comic Book Show, Irving, February 10-11
• 10th Annual Romance Readers Social, Pflugerville, February 10

AUSTIN  Sun., Feb. 11  BookPeople, DELBERT McCLINTON and DIANA FINLAY HENDRICKS speaking & signing One of the Fortunate Few, 2PM

DALLAS  Mon., Feb. 12   Interabang Books, Elizabeth Crook reading and signing THE WHICH WAY TREE, 7PM

ALSO SIGNING IN HOUSTON  Wed., Feb. 14 Brazos Bookstore, 7PM

SAN ANTONIO  Mon., Feb. 12 The Twig Book Shop, Bryan Mealer discussing and signing The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream, 5PM

ALSO SIGNING IN HOUSTON  Tues., Feb. 13  Blue Willow Bookshop, 7PM

FORT WORTH  Tues., Feb. 13 The Dock Bookshop, POWER OF LOVE: An Evening of Poetry, Spoken Word, and Music, 8PM

HOUSTON  Tues., Feb. 13 Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, World Affairs Council of Greater Houston presents Chris Fussell, Former U.S. Navy SEAL Officer and Aide-de-Camp to General Stanley McChrystal, and One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams, 12PM

SAN ANTONIO  Tues., Feb. 13 The Twig Book Shop, Naomi Shihab Nye launches Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners, 6PM

AUSTIN  Thurs., Feb. 15 BookWoman, We Who March: conversation and signing with Ellen Feldman (all profits from this book donated to Planned Parenthood), 7PM

AUSTIN  Thurs., Feb. 15 Harry Ransom Center, The New Writers Project at UT Austin presents a reception and poetry reading by National Book Award-winner Nikki Finney, 6PM

HOUSTON  Thurs., Feb. 15  Cullen Performance Hall, The Houston Public Library Quarterly Author Series presents A GOOD CRY with Nikki Giovanni, 7:30PM

AUSTIN  Sat., Feb. 17  BookPeople, author BETHANY HEGEDUS and illustrator ERIN MCGUIRE speaking & signing Alabama Spitfire: The Story of Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird, 2PM

DALLAS  Sat., Feb. 17  PDNB Gallery, artist reception and book signing for Peter Brown and Hometown Texas, 5PM

KILLEEN  Sat., Feb. 17  Black World Books, Black History Celebration: storytelling, music, dance, genealogy, Geechie language history and demonstration, Ethiopia outreach, 2PM

News Briefs 2.4.18

6th annual Book Festival to bring more than ninety authors to San Antonio Apr. 7

SAN ANTONIO—The San Antonio Book Festival (SABF) has released its lineup of more than 90 national, regional, and local authors who will appear at the 6th annual Festival, which will take place on Saturday, April 7, 2018, from 9 am to 5 pm at the Central Library and Southwest School of Art. A detailed schedule of the Festival’s author sessions will be available at saplf.org/festival in March.

Headlining the 2018 lineup is Emmy award-winning journalist Jorge Ramos with his latest book, Stranger: The Challenge of a Latino Immigrant in the Trump Era. Ramos has been the anchorman for Univision since 1986 and was hailed as “one of the 25 most influential Hispanics in the United States” by magazine. His 2016 documentary, Hate Rising, investigates the state of hate in America.

Other top attractions in the SABF lineup include popular comedian Paula Poundstone with her book exploring happiness, The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness; Pulitzer Prize finalist Luis Alberto Urrea with his new novel, The House of Broken Angels; former San Antonio mayor Henry Cisneros with Building Equitable Cities: How to Drive Economic Mobility and Regional Growth; Attica Locke, author of Bluebird, Bluebird and former writer for the TV show Empire; National Book Award finalist Carmen Maria Machado with her debut collection of short stories, Her Body and Other Parties; former LBJ Presidential Library director Mark Updegrove with The Last Republicans: Inside the Extraordinary Relationship Between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

MacArthur Fellow and best-selling author Sandra Cisneros will appear with her memoir, A House of My Own: Stories from My Life.  >>READ MORE

BLACK HISTORY MONTH FOCUS

NCCIL opens exhibit of African-American authors, illustrators

ABILENE — The Coretta Scott King Book Awards have been given annually since 1969 to African-American authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults for demonstrating African-American culture and values. The largest exhibit honoring these authors and illustrators opened last week at the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature (NCCIL) in Abilene.

An exhibit three years in the making, “Our Voice: Celebrating the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Awards” will run through at least May 19, 2018, according to Sujata Shahane, director of education and exhibitions programming at the NCCIL.

Texas Poetry Out Loud finals slated for February 24

LEFT: 2017 Texas Poetry Out Loud competitors

AUSTIN — The Texas Commission on the Arts will host the Texas Poetry Out Loud recitation contest for high school students at 1:00 pm Sat., Feb. 24, 2018, in Austin. The finals, graciously hosted by the Bullock Texas State History Museum, will be open to the public and free to attend. 27 students will represent their schools in the competition. The event will be hosted by internationally renowned Texas poet Naomi Shihab Nye.  >>READ MORE

Lone Star Lit wraps up Indiegogo campaign ’18: Thanks for helping launch our 4th year!

Lone Star Literary Life covers the Texas literary scene like no one else, week in and week out. Since 2015, we’ve given Texas authors, booksellers, libraries, publishers, and readers a trusted platform of their own. With shrinking coverage devoted to books in mainstream media — and most of that focused on the same handful of national bestsellers — where were Texas authors to get noticed, and where were Texas readers to discover the books they crave?  >>READ MORE

Nineteen elected to Texas Institute of Letters for 2018

Members of the Texas Institute of Letters have overwhelming approved nineteen writers to join the ranks of the TIL, a distinguished honor society founded in 1936 to celebrate Texas literature and recognize distinctive literary achievement.

The TIL’s membership consists of the state’s most respected writers — including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Academy Award, Tony Award, and MacArthur “Genius” grants. Membership is based on literary accomplishments and is granted only though an election by existing members.

This marks the first year the TIL has recognized a songwriter based on literary accomplishments: Willie Nelson.

Other 2018 honorees are Oscar-nominated screenwriter-director Richard Linklater, fiction writers Daniel Chacón (El Paso), Bret Anthony Johnston (Corpus Christi/Austin), Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Eagle Pass/San Antonio), José Skinner (Puerto Rico, Rio Grande Valley); and nonfiction authors Marcia Hatfield Daudistel (El Paso), Michael Hurd (The Woodlands), and Mary Beth Rogers (Dallas).

Also honored are filmmaker- playwright Severo Perez (San Antonio/Los Angeles), playwrights Kirk Lynn (Austin) and Ted Shine (Dallas); and journalist Alfredo Corchado (Dallas/Mexico City).

Poets honored this year are Katherine Hoerth (Beaumont), Sheryl Luna (El Paso/Denver), Sasha Pimentel (Phillipines/El Paso), José Antonio Rodríguez (Rio Grande Valley), Steven Schneider (Rio Grande Valley), and Christian Wiman (Snyder, New Haven, CT)  >>READ MORE

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

Lone Star Listens compilation available spring 2018, 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 Spring 2018

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.