Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,

Contributing Editor

ESSAYS/CULTURAL STUDIES

Willard Spiegelman

Senior Moments: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Farrar Straus Giroux

Hardcover (ebook) 978-0-374-26122-1, 208 pages, $24.00; September 13, 2016

Reviewed by Si Dunn

Life, we are often reminded, is a journey, and some journeys are better than others, especially if we share them with good friends.

The delightful personal essays in Willard Spiegelman’s Senior Moments take us to past chapters, adventures and concerns in his life, while also gently taking us forward to contemplate the final silence we will also encounter someday.

Fittingly, his book opens with an essay titled “Talk,” in which he contends: “The person who excels in conversation has mastered the art of listening as well as speaking.” And Spiegelman, the Hughes Professor of English at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, ends Senior Moments with “Quiet,” an entertaining and thoughtful examination of how our lives and attention spans now are almost constantly bombarded by noise, to the point that conversations have been replaced by shouting over the ambient hubbub. “In nearly all restaurants, everywhere,” he laments, “commotion and hysteria have replaced tranquility.” >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archive

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Texas Reads is taking a holiday today and will return Jan. 8, 201

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

Bookseller and writing group updates, January 2017

The close of one year and the debut of another always brings word of important transitions, and bookish Texas life is no exception. While we’ve learned of changes in some of our favorite bookstore destinations from the east side of the state to the west, we’ve also gotten wind of a new bookselling enterprise in the south.

Beauty and the Book closes; founder Murphy shifts plans; Pulpwood Queen’s Girlfriend Weekend 2017 dates set

Kathy L. Murphy, founder of the long-running Beauty and the Book hair salon and bookstore in Jefferson and, later, Hawkins, Texas, posted on her Facebook page December 4, “A chapter is closing in my book of life, yes, Beauty and the Book, my shop that was my dream come true has come to an end. It’s time . . . 16 years of my life I gave it my all, 2000–2016, but sometimes that is just not good enough. I have to let it go and move on.” >>READ MORE

Lubbock indie store Hester Books closing its doors—for now

Oldies977 Radio of Lubbock reports Dec. 29 that “the doors of Hester Books will be closing . . . as owner Renee Hester has decided to pursue a new direction.” Hester, who has managed the shop since 2006 following the death of her father, Ross Hester, who founded it in 1997. The Hester family has served Lubbock community with office supplies, office machines, and a printing company going back eight decades. >>READ MORE

Panhandle Professional Writers rebrands as High Plains Writers

The Amarillo-based Panhandle Professional Writers, one of the state’s oldest writers’ groups, changed its name in 2016 to Texas High Plains Writers, an identity reflected in its new Facebook page.

The group began in 1921 as Panhandle Pen Women, founded by teacher and historian Laura V. Hamner. >>READ MORE

Houston welcomes new bookstore to Talento Bilingüe de Houston

As the Houston Chronicle reports recently, the new Nuestra Palabra Arts & Books is “tucked in a side room at Talento Bilingüe de Houston, the Latino cultural arts center just east of downtown.

>>READ MORE

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LONE STAR LISTENS interviews >> archive

Kay Ellington, Editor and Publisher

1.1.2017 Arianne “Tex” Thompson waxes witty on Western sci-fi, workshops, and writing in characters who haven’t been included before

It was only a matter of time before an author named Tex would be featured on the front page of Lone Star Lit, but last week when she—that’s right, she—announced the launch of her latest Western sci-fi fantasy novel with a fruitcake amnesty program on New Year’s Eve, she became a “must-get.” In addition to being a novelist, Arianne “Tex” Thompson teaches in the SMU Writer’s Path Program. We visited with her virtually via email the day before the big event about her books, and her path to publishing.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Where did you grow up, Tex, and how has it influenced your writing?

TEX THOMPSON: Well, if you know the Dallas-Fort Worth area, you might be familiar with Irving. It is the warm, friendly armpit of the DFW metroplex, wedged right up between the D and the FW. I was born there and lived there until I was thirty (when we moved an entire eight miles down the road into Dallas proper), and if I play my cards just right, I might even be lucky enough to die there.

And it’s not like Irving itself is some kind of sparkling gem on the Interstate. To me, what matters is that I’ve gotten to grow right where I was planted. I can meet my parents for dinner on a whim. I still play D&D with people I went to kindergarten with. There is power and identity in being really, meaningfully “from” somewhere, and it’s the bedrock of everything I’ve written so far. In Droughtworld, the people who have magic aren’t “born special”: instead, their power comes from some kind of cultural continuity. They’ve spent their lives belonging to a place or a clan or a faith tradition, and that link empowers them. It certainly has empowered me.>>READ MORE

Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events

Bookish Texas event highlights 1.1.2017
>> GO this week Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor

SPECIAL EVENTS THIS WEEK: Kwanzaa at The Dock, Fort Worth, through Jan 1, 2017Saturday, December 31 HAPPY NEW YEAR’S EVESunday, January 1, 2017 HAPPY NEW YEAR 2017Check out the new features on our GO events page!AUSTIN Tues., Jan. 3 The North Door, Owen Egerton’s One Page Salon, 7:30PMAUSTIN Wed., Jan. 4 Bullock Museum, High Noon Talk: author and photographer Rhonda Lashley Lopez discusses Don’t Make Me Go to Town: Ranchwomen of the Texas Hill Country, 12PMAUSTIN Thurs., Jan. 5, BookPeople, The Rag Editors THORNE DREYER, ALICE EMBREE, and RICHARD CROXDALE speaking and signing Celebrating The Rag: Austin’s Iconic Underground Newspaper, 7PMAUSTIN Fri., Jan. 6, Malvern Books, a reading with acclaimed poets Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum and Jenny Molberg, 7PMALSO READING IN DALLAS Sat., Jan 7, Deep Vellum Books, Pandora’s Box kicks off 2017 with poets Jenny Molberg, Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, and Caitlin Pryor, 7PMHOUSTON Fri., Jan. 6, Inprint House, First Friday Poetry Reading Series presents The Balcony Poets, led by Billie Duncan and Chris Wise, 8:30PM

SAN ANTONIO Sat., Jan. 7, The Twig Book Shop, Debi Cole reads and signs The Homestead, 11AMAUSTIN Sun., Jan. 8, Malvern Books, Austin Writers Roulette presents “Spiritual Renewal,” 4PM

SAN ANTONIO Sun., Jan. 8 The Twig Bookshop at the Pearl, Wendy Barker and Sarah Cortez, Poetry reading, 2:00pm

News Briefs 1.1.17

Celebrate Kwanzaa at the Dock Bookshop, Fort Worth, through Jan. 1

The Dock Bookshop will host its annual seven-day celebration of family, community, and culture Mon., Dec. 26, 2016 through Sun., Jan. 1, 2017

The Dock Bookshop – 6637 Meadowbrook Dr. Fort Worth, TX 76112. All Kwanzaa events are open to the public. Here is the schedule, published on the Dock website.>>READ MORE

Writers Resist events slated for Jan. 15, 2017, in three Texas cities

Writers Resist, a literary collective born of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election that publishes creative expressions of resistance by diverse writers and artists, has prompted the grass-roots organization of events around the nation, including those organized in Austin, Houston, And San Antonio for Sun., Jan. 15. >>READ MORE