Contributing Editor

POETRY

Burning Number Five: Power Plant Poems

Cindy Huyser

Co-winner of the Blue Horse Press Chapbook Contest, 2014; paperback, 978-0692249963, 36 pgs., $10.00

Reviewed by Barbara Brannon

Austin poet Cindy Huyser’s debut chapbook invites readers into a Dantesque world few followers of contemporary poetry have ever witnessed in person: a fifteen-story-tall circa-1960 electric generating facility, now decommissioned, in Austin, Texas. Huyser knows her ignitor from her turning gear: she worked there.

The persona in Burning Number Five: Power Plant Poems is a tender of the enormous, constantly moving power plant, an operator who sees the aging machine in gynopomorphic terms. We’ve all heard grizzled guys huddled around cars or boats or anything with an engine: She’s a real beaut. Turn her loose, boys. Shut ’er down. The dynamo is always female. Huyser’s is no exception.

 >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archive89 Aggies fought at Bataan, Corregidor

With Aggie Muster coming up Thursday, it seems an appropriate time to mention the excellent new book by John A. Adams Jr. — The Fightin’ Texas Aggie Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor (Texas A&M University Press, $30 hardcover).

Adams is the author of three other books about Texas A&M, including one on Muster, when Aggies get together every April 21 (San Jacinto Day) to share a meal and call the roll of those who have died in the past year. Two dozen Aggies observed Muster on Corregidor shortly before in fell in 1942.

Adams’s new book tells the stories of the eighty-nine Aggie soldiers who fought at Bataan and Corregidor during the early days of World War II and were subjected to incredible brutality after being captured by the Imperial Japanese forces. Of those Aggies, six were killed in the battles and five escaped or were evacuated, two would be missing in action, thirty-one died on prisoner ships and fifteen in prison camps, and only thirty returned home after surviving capture. Adams lists all eighty-nine, what camp or ship they were held, and their fate.

 “While there have been many books on the saga of Bataan-Corregidor, none has focused solely on the contributions and sacrifice of the citizen soldiers from Texas A&M University,” Adams writes. “This is their story: a chronicle of valor, grit, and sacrifice that has never been told and should never be forgotten.”

Texas Ranger: Whiskey River Ranger: The Old West Life of Baz Outlaw by Bob Alexander ($34.95 hardcover) is the sixteenth book in the University of North Texas Press’s Frances B. Vick Series that focuses primarily on biographies of legendary Texas Rangers. Several of the previous bios have dealt with notable Ranger captains and commanders such as J. A. Brooks, John Rogers, John Brooks, Bill McDonald, John B.  Jones, and Frank Jones. In this volume, Alexander traces the life and times of a good-bad Ranger sergeant.

Outlaw, says Alexander, “could be a fearless and crackerjack lawman, as well as an unmanageable maniac” who fought a losing battle with alcoholism and died in a brothel brawl in El Paso in 1894 at age forty.” Whiskey River Ranger is Alexander’s sixth book in the UNT series. The author is a retired federal agent.

Now in paperback: The University of Oklahoma Press has brought out new paperback editions of two books by Charles M. Robinson III that have been around for a while.

The Frontier World of Fort Griffin: The Life and Death of a Western Town ($14.95), first published in 1992, tells the story of the frontier post and the wild west town that grew up in its shadow, once known as the “toughest town in the west.”

The Indian Trial: The Complete Story of the Warren Wagon Train Massacre and the Fall of the Kiowa Nation ($14.95) first came out in 1997. The book concerns the Jacksboro Indian Trial involving Satanta and Big Tree and the aftermath of the verdicts.

Each book is a compact, fast-paced account of about 200 pages plus index.

* * * * *

Glenn Dromgoole is co-author, with Carlton Stowers, of 101 Essential Texas Books Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Lit

UPCOMING CONFERENCES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

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 Catching Calliope, Elephant Journal, eFiction India, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Digital Papercut, and more. >>READ MORE

DFW Writers Conference, April 23-24, announces special guest speakers, classes, agents, editors

DALLAS—The 2016 DFW Writers Conference, to be held April 23-24, 2016m at the Fort Worth Convention Center, has released a partial list of its classes and authors and the lists of agents and editors who will be attending as well. >>READ MORE

Houston Writers Guild presents three-day annual conference April 29–May 1, with authors Ford, Hutchins

The 2016 Houston Writers Guild annual conference will be held April 29–May 1, 2016 at the Marriott Houston Westchase, 2900 Briarpark Drive, Houston, Texas 77042. Registration and event times vary each day.

Friday night, April 29, the HWG Press will hold a Book Launch/Cocktail Reception. Conference attendees will be entertained by guest speaker Jay Asher. Light hors d’oeuvres will be served along with cash bar. The main event on April 30 will begin with keynote speaker Jamie Ford, followed by one-hour breakout sessions. In addition, there will be an opportunity for writers to pitch their work, in ten-minute sessions with agents and editors. >>READ MORE

Dallas Book Festival,
Apr. 30, Expands With
Best-selling Novelists, Award Winners

Several nationally prominent authors — including best-selling novelists and winners of both a Pulitzer and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize —  are headed to the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library for an expanded Dallas Book Festival.

Among those just announced for the free, all-day, April 30, 2016, event:

Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, which won the 2015 Dayton prize in nonfiction; Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower; Jessica Knoll, best-selling author of  Luckiest Girl Alive; Historian/analyst Andrew Bacevich, who is about to release America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History; Adam Mansbach, famous for that picture book that is known in its polite form as Seriously, Just Go to Sleep; Ghostwriter to the stars David Ritz, whose books include Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin, and Curtis Sittenfeld, the American Wife author who is about to release her newest book, Eligible, in April.

Local authors taking part will include Karen Blumenthal, Nancy Churnin, Tim Cowlishaw, AG Ford, Sarah Hepola, Don Tate and Merritt Tierce.  >>READ MORE