WHAT TEXANS ARE READING

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9.30.2018  Texas Teen Book Festival programming director Meghan Goel on what’s new and perennial favorites at the 10th annual TTBF

The tenth annual Texas Teen Book Festival (TTBF) takes over Austin’s St. Edward’s University on Saturday, October 6, 2018, for a full day of bookish fun. More than thirty-five authors will read from and sign their books and participate in panel discussions. There will be creative writing workshops conducted by Barrio Writers and Badgerdog, the Epic Reads costume contest, the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival Workshop, presentation of the winners of the annual fiction writing contest, and more.

TTBF is a one-day event that celebrates the teen reading experience by inviting fans to engage with some of the most popular and critically acclaimed young adult authors in the country. TTBF started as the Austin Teen Book Festival in 2009 with sixteen authors and five hundred attendees at Westlake High School. The event continued to grow, and in 2011 through 2013 was sponsored by the Austin Public Library Friends Foundation. In 2014 the event was renamed the Texas Teen Book Festival and is one of the largest gatherings of its kind anywhere.

Presented in collaboration with the Texas Book Festival, BookPeople, and a dedicated team of volunteers, librarians, and venue sponsor St. Edward’s University, TTBF is made possible in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For more information and to plan your visit, visit www.texasteenbookfestival.org

Meghan Goel is the TTBF Programming Director, Children’s Book Buyer and Programming Director at BookPeople, and columnist for Publishers Weekly. She spoke with Lone Star Literary Life via email.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Ms. Goel, how and when did the Texas Teen Book Festival (TTBF) begin?

MEGHAN GOEL: The Texas Teen Book Festival began in 2009 when librarian Heather Schubert partnered with BookPeople to see if we could start a festival together. A number of other librarians joined the cause. And the rest is history!

What is the festival’s primary mission?

Our primary mission is to introduce readers to exciting literary voices and bring teens together around conversations that use young adult literature as a jumping-off point for anything that’s on their minds.  >>READ MORE

Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events
Bookish Texas event highlights  9.30.2018>> GO this weekMichelle Newby, Contributing Editor

SPECIAL EVENTS THIS WEEK

• Waco WordFest, October 5-7
• Boerne Book & Arts Fest, October 6
• Evening with the Authors, Lockhart, October 6
• Texas Teen Book Festival, Austin, October 6

ONGOING EVENTS

• Oliver Jeffers: 15 Years of Picturing Books, Abilene, June 7-September 30
• “Dawoud Bey: Forty Years in Harlem” photography exhibition (from the book Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply), Austin, August 29-December 8
• The Texas Liberator: Witness to the Holocaust exhibition (from the book The Texas Liberators: Veteran Narratives from World War II), Houston, September 7-October 28
• Texas Writers exhibition, Fort Stockton, October 1-22
• Traversing Dimensions: An Exploration of Diversity in Science Fiction, Austin, October 1-31

AUSTIN  Mon., Oct. 1 BookPeople, SYLVIA ACEVEDO speaking & signing Path to the Stars: My Journey from Girl Scout to Rocket Scientist, 6:30PM [ticketed event]

DALLAS  Mon., Oct. 1  Interabang Books, Ben Fountain discussing and signing his new book, Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution, 7PM
ALSO SIGNING IN AUSTIN  Wed., Oct. 3 Central Library, 7PM

ALSO SIGNING IN HOUSTON  Thurs., Oct. 4 Brazos Bookstore, 7PM

AUSTIN  Tues., Oct. 2  Malvern Books, An Evening with Sabrina Orah Mark & Elizabeth McCracken, 7PM

The North Door, One Page Salon, 7:30PM

FORT WORTH  Tues., Oct. 2  The Fort Worth Club, World Affairs Council of DFW hosts Ken Starr discussing and signing Contempt, 5:30PM

ALSO SIGNING IN DALLAS  Wed., Oct. 3   Crescent Club, World Affairs Council of DFW hosts Ken Starr discussing and signing Contempt, 12PM

AUSTIN  Wed, Oct. 3  St. Edward’s University, The Marcia Kinsey Visiting Writers Series featuring Natalia Sylvester, 6PM

PLANO  Thurs., Oct. 4 B&N – Legacy West, Handcrafted: A Woodworker’s Story book signing with Clint Harp, 7PM

AUSTIN  Fri., Oct. 5UT – Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Donna Marie Miller signing The Broken Spoke: Austin’s Legendary Honky-Tonk (with Broken Spoke owner James White and music by Ben Stafford Rodgers), TBA

HOUSTON  Sat, Oct. 6Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston journalist Joy Sewing and her rescue dog Ava will visit to celebrate the release of AVA AND THE PRINCE, 3PM

HOUSTON  Sat., Oct. 6  Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church, Jodi Picoult reading and discussing A SPARK OF LIGHT, 7:30PM [ticketed event]

ALSO SIGNING IN DALLAS  Sun., Oct. 7   Adolphus Hotel, 2PM

LAREDO Sat., Oct. 6  Joe A. Guerra Library, One City One Book 2018: Loung Ung discussing First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, 10:30AM (reception at 9:30AM)

SAN ANTONIO  Sat Oct. 6  The Twig Book Shop, Jeremy Banas discussing and signing Pearl: A History of San Antonio’s Iconic Beer and San Antonio Beer: Alamo City History by the Pint, 12PM

WEBSTER  Sat., Oct. 6  B&N – Baybrook, Gulf Coast Poets meeting featuring Edward Vidaurre, 1PM

News Briefs 9.30.18

West Texas Book Festival honors Dromgoole with A. C. Greene Award, brings a full slate of programming to Abilene Oct. 18–20

ABILENE — The long-running West Texas Book Festival returns to Abilene in 2018 with a robust lineup of activities October 18–20. One perennial festival highlight, the Books & Boots Luncheon, will honor journalist, author, bookseller, and publisher Glenn Dromgoole with the festival’s prestigious A. C. Greene Award.

The full festival lineup is as follows.

Texas Cookbook Gala

Thursday, October 18, Abilene Country Club Dinner begins, 6 p.m.

The gala features incredible vintners and featured cookbook author Sarah Penrod. Penrod is an award-winning 7th-generation Texan, professional chef, and TV personality who charmed audiences as the vivacious and warm-hearted Texpert on The Next Food Network Star! Penrod’s cookbook, Urban Cowgirl, celebrates modern Southern culture with decadent Texas recipes.

Boots & Books Luncheon

Saturday, October 20, Abilene Woman’s Club

Doors open, 11:30 a.m. | Lunch, 12 p.m. | Book signing, 1:15 p.m.

The A.C. Greene Award is presented annually to a distinguished Texas author for a lifetime achievement. The A.C. Greene Award is named for author, columnist, and Abilene native, A.C. Greene.

This year, the West Texas Book Festival is proud to honor Glenn Dromgoole as the 2018 A.C. Greene Award recipient. As a tribute to his literary memoirs, Glenn has written a new book called Book Guy: One Author’s Adventures in Publishing. “You’ve probably heard me say that every book tells at least two stories — the story inside the covers of the book, and the story outside the covers,” says Dromgoole. “In Book Guy, I focus on the stories outside the covers of my thirty (now thirty-one) books and some others that I’ve helped publish.”  >>READ MORE

Women’s Storybook Project of Texas awarded Texas Center for the Book 2018 Literacy Award

Readers 2 Leaders and Literacy First both awarded honorable mentions

AUSTIN — The Women’s Storybook Project of Texas has been selected as the 2018 Texas Center for the Book Literacy Award winner. The nonprofit organization will receive $1,000 to use in its future work. Texas Center for the Book also gave honorable mentions to two additional literacy nonprofits, Readers 2 Leaders and Literacy First. Each honorable mention winner will receive a $500 prize.

The Women’s Storybook Project of Texas connects incarcerated mothers with their children through the power of reading. The organization’s volunteers visit women’s prisons in Texas once a month to record eligible mothers reading books aloud to their children, as well as short, personalized messages. The volunteers then mail a copy of the book with the recording to the children. >>READ MORE

Evening with the Authors 2018 benefiting Lockhart’s Dr. Eugene Clark Library

LOCKHART — Evening with the Authors 2018, an unforgettable evening of conversation with locally and nationally renowned authors, gourmet food, and wine, is scheduled for Sat., Oct. 6, 2018, from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. This year the evening is in a new location, the garden of Margaret Riddle, at 509 South Commerce Street in Lockhart. Tickets are $30 in advance, $35 at the door.

This year’s author lineup includes Jessica Lee Anderson, author of Trudy (winner of the 2005 Milkweed prize for Children’s Literature); Bob Alexander, a renowned historian of the Old West and author of Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy; Donaly Brice, former senior research assistant at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and co-author with Alexander of Texas Rangers; Sarah Bird, author of ten novels, the newest of which is Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen; Don Graham, professor of English at the University of Texas in Austin and author of Giant; Patrick Kelly, author of the Hill Country series; David Liss, author of four novels, including The Day of Atonement and The 12th Enchantment; Nola McKey, a former senior editor of Texas Highways and author of From Tea Cakes to Tamales, Third Generation Texas Recipes; Liz Garton Scanlon, author of numerous beloved books for young readers, including the highly acclaimed Caldecott-honored picture book All the World; Elizabeth Crook, author of The Which Way Tree, which has been optioned for film; and Canan Yetman, author of two books based on the WWII aftermath of finding and restoring famous works of art to their Jewish owners, including The Roses Underneath, based on the experience of her grandmother in Germany, which won the 2015 Gold Medal for Historical Fiction from Independent Publishers. >>READ MORE

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

Lone Star Listens compilation available summer 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 Summer 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.