Kay Ellington, Editor and Publisher

5.7.2017  Join us for Breakfast in Texas with veteran chef and cookbook author Terry Thompson-Anderson

To read Terry Thompson-Anderson describe a meal is like listening to Maya Angelou recite a poem: the reader is transformed with depictions of spices, flavors, and aromas. Texas’s most awarded and prolific cookbook author took time from her busy schedule last week to talk about cooking, writing and her most favorite dinner in this week’s Lone Star Listens.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Terry, you’re a professional chef, cookbook author, culinary instructor, and restaurant consultant. But I understand that you grew up in a household that didn’t emphasize cooking, and when you married and set up housekeeping, you had to learn a lot about cooking from your mother-in-law. What was one of the first dishes/meals that inspired you to take your cooking to the next level?

To be sure that I don’t paint a picture of my mother as having had an uneducated palate, she very much enjoyed fine food. She just wasn’t an enthusiastic cook and didn’t know a great many kitchen techniques. Both of my parents loved to dine out and we did often as a family, exploring all types of food from diner delights to steakhouses, to seafood, and upscale fine dining. >>READ MORE

Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events

Bookish Texas event highlights  5.7.2017
>> GO this week   Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor

News Briefs 5.7.17

Vote for your favorite Texas bookstore throughout month of May

Lone Star Lit’s second annual Texas Readers’ Favorite Bookstores voting will be held May 1 through May 31, 2017. Readers, vote as often as you wish for your Favorite Texas Bookstore. >>READ MORE

O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships to mark 40th year, Sat., May 13, in Austin

“Lend us and ear and we’ll give you more corn,” was how those who attended the first O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships were welcomed in 1977. Shucks! Now, forty years later the Pun-Off continues to a-maize people with wacky wordplay and home groan wit from powerful punsters who are out standing in their field. >>READ MORE

Awards go to Cortez, Dahlstrom for recent books

Houston poet Sarah Cortez has won the Editing Award from the Press Women of Texas for Vanishing Points: Poems and Photographs of Texas Roadside Memorials (Texas Review Press, 2016).

Selected as one of 2016 Southwest Books of the Year, Vanishing Points features the poignant drama of Texas’s lonesome highways and bustling intersections illustrated by the stunning photography of Dan Streck. Four poets respond to the visual summons of roadside memorials with lyric intensity: Larry D. Thomas, Jack B. Bedell, Sarah Cortez, and Loueva Smith. Graphic designer Nancy J. Parsons was responsible for layout and design.

At the 2017 Western Heritage Awards in Oklahoma City in April, S. J. Dahlstrom of Lubbock won the Outstanding Juvenile Book award for The Green Colt (Paul Dry Books, 2016), which was also a Spur finalist earlier this year. Dahlstrom’s Wrangler award was presented by legendary stuntman Dean Smith. >>READ MORE

Texas book festival to host Reading Rock Stars  presentations by Laura Bush and other renowned authors

Mrs. Bush will also announce the 2017 recipients of the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries grants

Austin — The Texas Book Festival will host its Reading Rock Stars program on Friday, May 19, 2017, at Thomas Tolbert Elementary School. Beginning at 11 a.m., the school will host three authors —James Luna, author of two bilingual picture books; Hena Khan, Pakistani-American author of Amina’s Voice, and Texas Book Festival Founder, beloved First Lady, and bestselling children’s book author Laura Bush.

Lady Bird Johnson Environmental Award to Ken Burns

Press release by Anne Wheeler, LBJ Foundation,  May 4, 2017

The 2017 Lady Bird Johnson Environmental Award has been presented to Ken Burns for reawakening a nation’s consciousness to the natural world through his work, including The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. As a direct result of the publicity and broadcast of this documentary, national parks across the country saw a dramatic increase in attendance. Burns has directed and produced some of the most influential, important and popular historical documentaries of our time.  >>READ MORE

Brookins to discuss her memoir, Rise, at WTAMU’s summer Roundup event June 5; Thomas, Lewis, Claire, Navarro also featured

CANYON — West Texas A&M University will welcome author and motivational speaker Cara Brookins as the keynote speaker for the West Texas Writers’ Academy Writers’ Roundup dinner on Monday, June 5. Brookins’s memoir, Rise: How a House Built a Family, details how she and her children left a traumatic situation and built a house from the ground up with their own hands. >>READ MORE

TOP BOOKISH DESTINATIONS 2017

From the spur of Texas’s boot-heel to the tip of the toe, we’ve traveled the state in search of some delectable destinations for book lovers. Check out all ten on the map as you plan your literary travels!  >>READ MORE

Lone Star Listens compilation available Aug. 1, 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 Fall 2017

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.

• Lone Star Listens will be available for preorder May 1 and will ship around Aug. 1.
• Examination and review copies will be available May 1 in watermarked pdf format.

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