Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,

Contributing Editor

MEMOIR/TEXAS MUSIC

illo stage, from blues to country to rock to punk. I mean, really, name a storied musician and there’s a damn good chance Eddie booked him or her. >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archive

Son learned from his father’s coaching

Just in time for Father’s Day comes a book with probably the best title of the year — Son of Bum by Wade Phillips (Diversionbooks, $25.99 hardcover). The subtitle is “Lessons My Dad Taught Me About Football and Life.”

The author’s father was Bum Phillips, the colorful and often quoted coach of the Houston Oilers and New Orleans Saints. Bum passed away in 2013. “My dad was my hero,” Wade Phillips writes. “Pretty much everything I know about life, football, and coaching, I learned from him. He shaped me as a man, as a husband, as a father, and as a football coach.”

Wade starts each chapter with a quote from Bum, and several times he repeats his dad’s philosophy about the instability of the coaching profession, “There are two kinds of coaches in this business: them that get fired and them that’s gonna get fired.” Wade, of course, has seen his share of ups and downs, as did Bum. The son coached alongside his father for about ten years, later was head coach at Denver, Buffalo, and Dallas.

One of the high points of Wade’s career was winning the Super Bowl in 2016, when he was defensive coordinator for the Denver Broncos. “As blessed as I am to have gotten that first Super Bowl ring,” Wade writes, “I’m even more blessed that I got to spend all of those years coaching with my dad.”

Wade, who turns seventy this month, begins a new chapter this year as defensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams. His son, Wes Phillips, is also a pro football coach, following in his dad’s and granddad’s footsteps.

Veteran Buffalo sportswriter and broadcaster Vic Carucci is co-author. The book includes more than three dozen black and white photos, many of them fuzzy and grainy.

One of my favorite stories from the book was when Bum was a high school coach in Nederland. The wife of one of the assistant coaches called the field house one day in tears because her husband was spending so much time away from home. “You love football more than you love me,” she wailed.

The coach thought for a second and then replied, “Yeah, but I love you more than basketball.”

Bum and Wade Phillips are both inductees in the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, headquartered in Waco.

Speaking of that, the hall is hosting a sports book festival on Saturday, July 15, from 10 am to 4 pm, featuring fifteen Texas authors who have written books having to do with Texas sports. Carlton Stowers, Al Pickett, Mac Engle, Chad S. Conine, and Jim Reeves are among the writers who will be speaking and signing books.

Admission is free, and if you contact Jay Black, vice president for operations at the hall, he can give you free VIP tickets with preferred seating and other benefits. Email him at jay.black@tshof.org or call 254-756-1633.

For more on the festival, go to the hall’s website, www.tshof.org.

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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

Dallas Author Expo announced for June 24; registration is now open for free event

Dallas — The Dallas Author Expo has been announced for Sat., June 24, 2017, at the Holiday Inn Plano–The Colony, 4301 Paige Road in The Colony, Texas, from 1 pm to 6 pm. Registration is now open, and admission is free with advance registration. The expo will feature several interactive speaker panels, free food, networking, free prize drawings, and much more. >>READ MORE

2017 Kids’ Summer Reading: Check it out!

LONE STAR LISTENS interviews >> archive

Kay Ellington, Editor and Publisher

6.4.2017 Words of wisdom from Austinite and author Debra L. Winegarten

Debra L. Winegarten is an author, poet, publisher, marketer, and self-described “subverter from within.” She‘s a third-generation Texan and daughter of one of the state’s most significant advocates of women’s history. She talked with us last week via email about the path she has blazed for herself.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: The name Winegarten is a famous one in Texas publishing and history circles. Your mother, Ruthe, was one of the state’s most significant advocates for Texas women’s history. Where did you grow up, and what was it like?

DEBRA L. WINEGARTEN: I grew up in north Dallas in the 1960s, in a Jewish feminist household. We were reform, secular Jews, my parents didn’t attend services except on the Jewish High Holidays, and my mother was known (at least by me) for smuggling a mystery book into the services and only really paying attention during the sermon.

I grew up in a neighborhood where we were the only Jewish family for blocks around, and I was the only Jew in my elementary school classes. Although I attended Hebrew school on the weekends, I keenly felt my “difference” and “otherness” and this shaped who I am today. As you mentioned, I was blessed to have Ruthe Winegarten as my mother, and that afforded me terrific opportunities for early childhood socialization in what we know today as the feminist movement. My mother was good friends with Ann Richards, who later became a Texas governor. >>READ MORE

Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events

Bookish Texas event highlights 6.4.2017
>> GO this week Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor

SPECIAL EVENTS THIS WEEK: Canyon, Abilene, Wimberley, Dallas, Austin, San Marcos, HoustonAUSTIN Sun., June 4 BookPeople, EDDIE WILSON speaking & signing Armadillo World Headquarters, 5PMFORT WORTH Mon., June 5 Bass Performance Hall, as part of the 15th annual Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Stuart Isacoff discusses his new book, When the World Stopped to Listen: Van Cliburn’s Cold War Triumph, and its Aftermath, 10AMAUSTIN Wed., June 7 Barton Springs Pool, Julie Wernersbach and Carolyn Tracy launch The Swimming Holes of Texas, 7PMAUSTIN Wed, June 7 Bullock Museum, High Noon Talks: Photographer Kenny Braun discusses Surf Texas, 12PM

SAN ANTONIO Wed., June 7 The Twig Book Shop, Stew Magnuson discusses and signs The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83 in Texas, 5:30PMALSO SIGNING IN UVALDE Thurs., June 8 El Progreso Memorial Library, 5:30 PMALSO SIGNING IN LEAKEY Fri., June 9 Real County Public Library, noonALSO SIGNING IN LEAKEY Sat., June 10 Frio Canyon Motorcycle Shop, 10:30 amHOUSTON Thurs., June 8 Brazos Bookstore, Paige Bowers discusses and signs THE GENERAL’S NIECE: THE LITTLE-KNOWN DE GAULLE WHO FOUGHT TO FREE OCCUPIED FRANCE, 7PMALSO SIGNING IN AUSTIN Sund., June 11 BookPeople, 2 PMSAN ANTONIO Thurs., June 8 The Twig Book Shop, Elliot Turner reads and signs The Night of the Virgin, 5PMALSO SIGNING IN AUSTIN Sat., June 10 BookPeople, 2 PMABILENE Sat., June 10 Texas Star Trading Co., West Texas writer S.J. Dahlstrom signs copies of his Wilder Good series, 11AMDALLAS Sat., June 10 The Frederick Douglass Center, SankofaTalks: POWER OF EDUCATION with Dennis Kimbro, author of The Wealth Choice: Success Secrets of Black Millionaires, 7PMHOUSTON Sat., June 10 Brazos Bookstore, reception celebrating the release of TEXAS WEATHER: AN ANTHOLOGY, with an introduction by editor Laurence Musgrove, 7PM

News Briefs 6.4.17

2017 Top ELEVEN Readers’ Favorite Texas Bookstores

Texas readers have spoken. Nearly 2,500 of Lone Star Literary Life’s readers have cast ballots in 3 rounds of our statewide contest during May 2017 to recognize Texas’s favorite bookstores. Their final selections are as diverse as the state itself, and honorees include big indies, small indies, chain stores, used bookstores, and new bookstores in every corner of the state. And in the process, we were pleased to learn about places to buy books that we hadn’t even known before.

From the major cities of Dallas and Houston, to our state’s capitol city, from the historic Hill Country to the Piney Woods of East Texas, from the burbs to the beach, Texas bookshops are connecting with their communities. (Note that there was a tie for #6!) We are thrilled to showcase them in our second annual Lone Star Literary Life Readers’ Favorite Texas Bookstores — all 11 of them. >>READ MORE

————— A D V E R T I S E M E N T —————

Win BREAKFAST IN TEXAS

Terry Thompson-Anderson, with photos by Sandy Wilson

Breakfast in Texas: Recipes for Elegant Brunches, Down Home Classics, and Local Favorites

Hardcover, 978-1-4773-1044-1

311 pages, 8 x 10, 123 color photos

Texans love the morning meal, whether it’s bacon and eggs (often eaten in a breakfast taco) or something as distinctively nontraditional as saag paneer omelets, pon haus, or goat curry. A Lone Star breakfast can be a time for eating healthy, or for indulging in decadent food and drink. And with Texas’s rich regional and cultural diversity, an amazing variety of dishes graces the state’s breakfast and brunch tables. The first Texas cookbook dedicated exclusively to the morning meal, Breakfast in Texas gathers nearly one hundred recipes that range from perfectly prepared classics to the breakfast foods of our regional cuisines (Southern, Mexican, German, Czech, Indian, and Asian among them) to stand-out dishes from the state’s established and rising chefs and restaurants.

Enter to win here, courtesy of the University of Texas Press.

Texas Center for the Book seeks applicants for 2017 Literacy Award

Austin — The Texas Center for the Book is seeking nonprofit organizations that have made outstanding contributions to increasing literacy in Texas. Qualifying organizations must be nominated by September 1, 2017.

The winning organization will receive a $1,000 cash award to assist in its future work promoting reading and combating illiteracy. This year as well, an honorable mention recipient will receive an $500 cash award. These awards provide public recognition to 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations committed to addressing the continuing need for literacy services and that increase public awareness of the importance of literacy. The 2017 Literacy Award winner will be announced during the 2nd Annual Texas Author Summit at the Texas Book Festival on Nov. 2, 2017. >>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 31 and will ship around Aug. 1.
Examination and review copies will be available May 31 in watermarked pdf format.

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LONE STAR CLASSIFIED LISTINGS

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