WHAT TEXANS ARE READING

LONE STAR LISTENS interviews   >> archive

12.2.2018  Stronger sustainability with the Stongers: A Texas family story talks about their off-grid, independent lifestyle

Since 2011 Stewart and Shannon Stonger have been living off the grid north of San Angelo, Texas, since 2011, and they’ve chronicled their experiences in a book called The Do-Able Off-Grid Homestead: Cultivating a Simple Life by Hand . . . on a Budget.

       This is Shannon’s fourth book, as she has crafted three cookbooks related to their experiences and is a prolific writer posting regularly on their blog, www.nourishingdays.com, a lifestyle blog. Native Midwesterners, they talked with Lone Star Lit via email (yes, they have power and have perfected their own solar panels!) about their decision, their journey, and what’s it like to be essentially to be self-sufficient.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Stewart and Shannon, I know you two aren’t originally from Texas, having settled here some years ago. Can you tell our readers where you grew up, and how you’d describe your younger years?

STEWART STONGER: I grew up in in Midland, Michigan. I had a fairly standard childhood, between school and Boy Scouts. When I was very young my dad had a garden in the backyard, and I remember planting peas with him one time where he got out his ruler to measure the spacing. My grandpa also had a fairly large garden, which was exciting to see every time we visited. I applied myself to schoolwork and planned for the typical college career path.

Shannon grew up in northern Minnesota. Her grandparents and aunt and uncle were farmers, raising dairy cows and crops such as corn and soy down in the southern part of the state. Some of her earliest memories are of the garden her parents grew in Bemidji, Minnesota, when she was very young. By the time she was seven years old her parents moved from their country home, but the country life always stayed with her.

Stewart, how did you and Shannon meet/marry/start out life together?

Shannon and I met at Michigan Technological University, where I was working after graduating and she was finishing up her bachelor’s in chemistry. We were both attending a Baptist church at the time and had some mutual friends, so those two things kind of brought us together. After a short courtship, we were married just after Shannon graduated, and then a job brought us to the Ann Arbor, Michigan, area.

From before we were even married we talked about how we wanted to homestead and raise our family in the country. We began our married life in the suburbs but did what gardening and preserving we could in our little duplex. We wanted to finish paying off student loans before making the move to a homestead, and when we did, we were finally free to move forward. >>READ MORE

Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events
Bookish Texas event highlights  12.2.2018>> GO this weekMichelle Newby, Contributing Editor

SPECIAL EVENTS THIS WEEK

• 2018 Emily Dickinson Birthday Gathering of Poets Dinner Reading, Conroe, December 6
• Holiday Book Fest, Fort Worth, December 8
• Laredo Book Festival, December 8
• Humanities Texas Holiday Book Fair, Austin, December 8

ONGOING EVENTS

• Literary Frontiers: Historical Fiction & the Creative Imagination, San Marcos, August 1-December 14
• “Dawoud Bey: Forty Years in Harlem” photography exhibition (from the book Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply), Austin, August 29-December 8
• Finding Sophie Blackall Exhibition, Abilene, October 11-February 1
• 30 Poems for the Tricentennial: A Poetic Legacy, San Antonio, December 3-April 25, 2019
• Artful Books, Alpine, December 7-17

DALLAS  Mon., Dec. 3 Hotel Crescent Court, World Affairs Council of DFW presents General Stanley McChrystal discussing and signing Leaders: Myths and Reality, 6PM

ALSO SIGNING IN FORT WORTH  Tues., Dec. 4   The Fort Worth Club, World Affairs Council of DFW, 11:30AM

ALSO SIGNING IN HOUSTON  Tues., Dec. 4   The Ballroom at Bayou Place, World Affairs Council of Greater Houston presents General Stanley McChrystal discussing and signing Leaders: Myths and Reality, 6:30PM

SAN ANTONIO Mon., Dec. 3The Twig Book Shop, Rachael Sparks reading and signing Resistant, 5PM

ALSO READING IN AUSTIN  Tues., Dec. 4   BookWoman, 7PM

AUSTIN  Tues., Dec. 4  BookPeople, Guest story time: Jennifer Coleman & Wade Dillon reading and signing Texas Nutcracker, 10:30AM

DALLAS  Tues., Dec. 4   SMU, Tate Lecture Series: cancer physician and researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, 8PM

HOUSTON  Tues., Dec. 4 Stages Repertory Theatre, Tintero Projects Open Mic and Featured Reading featuring Amanda Ortiz, 7PM

KERRVILLE Tues., Dec. 4 Riverside Nature Center Association, Lynne Weber and Jim Weber discussing and signing Native Host Plants for Texas Butterflies, 1PM

SAN ANTONIO  Tues., Dec. 4  Lion’s Field Adult Center, Andrew Sansom, Rusty Yates, and David K. Langford discussing and signing Seasons at Selah: The Legacy of Bamberger Ranch Preserve, 7PM

AUSTIN  Wed., Dec. 5 Bullock Museum, High Noon Talks: Dr. Paul Carlson and Tom Crum for a talk on their book Myth, Memory and Massacre: The Pease River Capture of Cynthia Ann Parker, 12PM

AUSTIN  Thurs., Dec. 6UT, Joynes Reading Room Literary Speaker Series: writer Paul Lisicky, author of The Narrow Door, 7PM

DALLAS  Thurs., Dec. 6Interabang Books, Holiday Open House, 5PM

SAN ANTONIO  Thurs., Dec. 6The Twig Book Shop, Bronson Dorsey discussing and signing Lost Texas: Photographs of Forgotten Buildings, 5PM

HOUSTON  Fri., Dec. 7MATCH: Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston, Inprint and UH host a memorial celebration of poet, teacher, and storyteller Tony Hoagland, 6PM

AUSTIN  Sat., Dec. 8Resistencia Bookstore, Cuentos y Resilience: An Afternoon with Christopher Carmona, 4PM

News Briefs 12.2.18

Poets Gather in Conroe Dec. 6 to celebrate Emily Dickinson’s Birthday

CONROE — Lone Star College Montgomery will host the 2018 Emily Dickinson Birthday Celebration on Thursday, December 6, 2018. The annual celebration will again feature two events, a presentation at LSC-Montgomery by a noted Dickinson scholar and the Gathering of Poets readings at Martin’s Hall in Conroe.

At 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 6 in LSC-Montgomery room G-102, Dickinson scholar Dr. Marta Werner will discuss the iconic poet who has been called the Mother of American Poetry. Werner is s professor of English at D’Youville College and the author or editor of Emily Dickinson’s Open Folios: Scenes of Reading, Surfaces of Writing, Ordinary Mysteries: The Common Journal of Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne (with Nick Lawrence), Radical Scatters: An Electronic Archive of Emily Dickinson’s Late Fragments and Related Texts (Center for Digital Research in the Humanities), and The Gorgeous Nothings (with Jen Bervin).  >>READ MORE

Holiday Book Fairs set for Dec. 8 in Austin, Fort Worth

On Saturday, December 8, 2018, readers and gift-givers will have two excellent opportunities to meet leading Texas authors and purchase signed copies of their books.

Humanities Texas will host its tenth annual Holiday Book Fair from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the historic Byrne-Reed House in Austin, and TCU Press will host their second annual Holiday Book Fest from 2:30 to 5 p.m. at the Dee Kelly Alumni Center on the campus of Texas Christian University.

The Humanities Texas Holiday Book Fair features twenty-six noteworthy authors—including Lawrence Wright, Sarah Bird, H. W. Brands, Elizabeth Crook, Joe Holley, Bill Wittliff, Carrie Fountain, Michael Barnes, Mimi Swartz, Chris Barton, Don Graham, Bethany Hegedus, Kyle Longley, Austin Bay, Kenny Braun, Samantha M. Clark, Xelena González, Paul Woodruff, Bronson Dorsey, Virginia A. Cumberbatch, Leslie A. Blair, Bill Wright, Wyatt McSpadden, Barbara Morgan, Kevin Robbins, Anne R. Keene, and Jennifer Ziegler—will visit with the public and sign copies of their latest books. Available titles include works of fiction and nonfiction, with selections for both adult and youth readers.

More than a dozen authors will be autographing and inscribing copies of their books at TCU Press’s Holiday Book Fest. At press time, the lineup includes Anthony Champagne, LaLonnie Lehman, Bill McNeal, Karla K. Morton, Hank O’Neal, Jan Reid, Jim Riddlesperger, Drew Sanders, Robert Seltzer, Patricia Vermillion, and Thomas Zigal, and Fort Worth legends Dan Jenkins and Bobbie Wygant.  >>READ MORE

Letters About Literature 2018 open for submissions from young readers

AUSTIN — Has a book brought you to laughter or tears, or changed your life? Write a letter to the author.

Letters About Literature is a reading/writing contest for fourth through twelfth graders under the direction of the Library of Congress. Texas submissions for the 2018–19 contest are due to the new online submission platform by December 14, 2018. A permission form is required for all students under the age of 13 on November 1, 2018.

Tens of thousands of students from across the country enter Letters About Literature each year. State winners receive $100 and a trip to the Texas Library Association Conference. National winners receive $2,000 and travel assistance to Washington D.C. for a special awards ceremony.

How to enter

There are three categories for contestants:

Level 1 — Grades 4-6

Level 2 — Grades 7-8

Level 3 — Grades 9-12

Read: Select a fiction or nonfiction book, a poem or play you have read that you feel strongly about. It might be a book that helped you through a difficult time, or it might be a book that simply touched your heart or inspired you.>>READ MORE

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

Lone Star Listens compilation available fall 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.