Contributing Editor

POETRY

Wendy Barker and Dave Parsons, editors

Far Out: Poems of the ’60s

Wings Press, 2016

Paperback, 978-1-609405014, 384 pages, $18.95

Reviewed by Leah Lax

Back in the sixties, our country’s biggest demographic was just coming of age. I, too, was a baby boomer. We were young but we elected a president, stopped a war. Universities were the proving ground—where you could walk in on merit and pay tuition with grades—and we transformed them. At times, it seems that for this first generation with effective available birth control, it was all about love, love, love, but there was so much more: the sexual revolution, yes, but also its consequences, and also Vietnam, civil rights, assassinations and runaways, astronauts and LSD.

When Wendy Barker and Dave Parsons set about to create the terrific new anthology Far Out: Poems of the ’60s (Wings Press, 2016) they intended to make a history book of a different order built of voices and art and memory, a form perhaps better suited to capture the more fleeting aspects of an era. >>READ MORE

FICTION / TEXAS

Patrick Dearen

Dead Man’s Boot

Five Star Publishing

Hardcover, 978-1-43228333084, 265 pages, $25.95

December 2016

Reviewed by Carlton Stowers

Back in what some call the Golden Age of western fiction, readers were generally provided a simple and high-speed plot featuring good battling evil, a damsel in need of saving, and plenty of gun play. Now and then there would be an Indian raid, cattle rustling, a slow-moving wagon train, or a beleaguered farmer and his family to stretch the story. The formula worked time and time again for the celebrated likes of Luke Short, Zane Grey, and Louis L’Amour as they told their popular Old West tales, worrying little about anything aside from the nonstop action they were cranking out.

My dad, a devotee of the genre, aptly referred to them as “shoot-em-ups,” and along with him there was a healthy and widespread market for titles like Blood on the Moon and Gunman’s Chance.

Todays’ western is a different breed. >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archive

Writer completes U.S. 83 journey in Texas

Author Stew Magnuson, who lives in Virginia, said he woke up in the middle of the night in 2009 with a fully formed book idea in his head. He would travel the entire length of U.S. Highway 83 from Canada to Mexico — 1,885 miles -— and write about it. Later that year he made the first of two trips on the highway, starting in Westhope, ND, and following it into Kansas. In May 2010 he resumed the journey and explored U.S. 83 all the way to Brownsville, Texas.

His book idea turned into three volumes under the heading The Last American Highway. The first, published in 2014, covered the Dakotas. The second, published in 2015, covered Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. And now he has published the final installment in the trilogy — Texas, all 895 miles of it. Each volume is $19.99 paperback.

It is a fascinating narrative. Magnuson, who grew up in Nebraska, mixes in history, interviews, observations, stories and personal feelings as he drives through the various small towns and cities along the route.

Abilene, Texas, being the largest city on U.S. 83, gets about fifteen pages, including an interview with hamburger proprietor Larry Olney of Larry’s Better Burger Drive-In on Treadaway (U.S. 83); a recounting of the shootout involving two newspaper editors in 1885; and a lengthy account of horseless carriage salesman Eddie Rickenbacker coming to Abilene in 1909 in hopes of driving William Jennings Bryan around town and then selling cars to cowboys.

U.S. 83 in Texas follows a fairly straight route south from Perryton to Laredo, then turns east to Harlingen, then south to Brownsville. Magnuson stopped at libraries, gas stations, cafes, newspaper offices, and other venues gathering material for his book. He made the trip alone in his 1999 Mazda Protégé, accompanied only by an eclectic selection of Texas music CDs. Well, once he picked up an eighty-year-old hitchhiker outside Junction, who rode with him to Uvalde.

“Every town has a story to tell,” Magnuson says. Comanches, Spanish explorers, Bonnie and Clyde, race relations, politics, football, music, curio shops, drive-in theaters — all come into play as the writer travels Texas along U.S. 83. At the end of the book Magnuson includes a four-page update about a few things that have changed since he made the trip seven years ago. Some people have died, some businesses have closed, there’s been an oil boom and bust or two.

“I’m convinced,” Manguson concludes, “that if I turned around and headed back north on Highway 83 I could write an entirely new book covering what I have left out.” Well, he didn’t. So read this one. Sitting in your comfortable chair, instead of behind the wheel, you too can explore the Last American Highway.

>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life

Texas Library Association to host more than 350 speakers and authors April 19–22 in San Antonio

More than 350 speakers and authors will take part in the 2017 Texas Library Association Annual Conference April 19-22 in San Antonio. Kicking off the conference will be New York Times-bestselling author Cory Doctorow, who will deliver the opening general session keynote (Thurs., April 20 8:15 to 9:45 am). Doctorow writes both YA and adult fiction and blogs regularly on a range of issues key to librarians—including technology and DRM—for Boing Boing, the site he cofounded and coedits. He is also a contributing editor at Publishers Weekly. His most recent book, Walkaway, will be published this month by Tor.

NPR contributor, storyteller, and New York Times best-selling author Carmen Agra Deedy will keynote General Session II (Fri., April 21 from 4 to 5 pm). Born in Cuba, Deedy, an ardent supporter of libraries, came to the U.S. as a refugee and has become famous for her poignant, humorous stories and sharp narratives.

Chelsea Clinton will deliver the closing general session keynote Sat., April 22, from 1:30 to 2:10 pm. Clinton will focus on her work across the globe, and on the young people who are making a difference in the world today. Clinton will also answer questions by Sam Houston State University assistant professor Rose Brock and will discuss ways to help children become informed, inspired global citizens. Clinton is the author of It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going! (Philomel). >>READ MORE

Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,