{"id":612,"date":"2018-12-31T13:04:25","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=612"},"modified":"2018-12-31T13:04:25","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:04:25","slug":"lone-star-reviewsmichelle-newby-nbcc-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=612","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/span>Lone Star Reviews<\/span>Michelle Newby, NBCC,<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n

Contributing Editor<\/span><\/h1>\n
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<\/span><\/span><\/span>Texas Reads<\/span>Glenn Dromgoole<\/span><\/h1>\n

>> archive<\/span><\/a><\/span>Photographer presents portraits from the past<\/span><\/h1>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/span>Fort Worth fine art photographer Jack Knox <\/span>spent eight years exploring and photographing images from the back roads of Texas. The result is his impressive full-color 12-by-12, 136-page collection of color photos, Texas: Ghost Towns, Gas Stations, and a 20-Foot Cowboy<\/span><\/a><\/span> (John M. Hardy Publishing, $48.85 hardcover).<\/p>\n

He might well have added \u201cMovie Palaces\u201d to the title since he also includes quite a few grand old small-town theaters, most of them abandoned but a few still in service.<\/p>\n

The 20-foot cowboy Big Tex statue noted in the title and featured on the cover stands on U.S. Highway 54 in the Panhandle village of Conlen (pop. 69 in 2000), between Dalhart and Stratford. In its day, Knox notes, it straddled the doorway of a steakhouse.<\/p>\n

In the foreword, veteran Texas author Joe Nick Patoski<\/span> says Knox\u2019s pictures \u201care not images of Texas past so much as Texas passing, documenting a way of life that once was but somehow still manages to persist in the here and now. In our minds, at least.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knox offers the trip down memory lane by region, beginning with the Panhandle and continuing on to North Texas, Central Texas, East Texas, the Texas Gulf Coast, South Texas and West Texas.<\/p>\n

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Family redemption: <\/span>San Angelo author Dana Glossbrenner\u2019s <\/span>novel The Lark<\/span><\/a><\/span> (Boldface Books, $16.95 paperback, $4.99 e-book) is a story about not giving up on families, even when there doesn\u2019t seem to be a lot going for them.<\/p>\n

I have to admit that I almost gave up on this one after the first twenty pages or so. I\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The main character, twenty-five-year-old male hair stylist Charley Bristow, frequents the local honky-tonk dance hall hoping to find a sweet young gal to dance with and perhaps fall in love with, even though so far he hasn\u2019t been very successful in the love department.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s pretty much struck out with cars and dogs as well as two brief marriages, and lives alone in a scantily-furnished apartment. Two or three times a week he stops by the trailer park to check on his obese, alcoholic, down-and-out mother. Not much ambition or depth and not a guy I particularly wanted to spend a few hours hanging out with or reading about. But I kept going, and pretty soon Charley\u2019s life begins to turn around as he finds a perceptive new girlfriend and discovers some secrets about his family that give him a fresh outlook on life.<\/p>\n

Glossbrenner, a retired English teacher and school counselor who has lived in West Texas all her life, sets her story of family redemption and grace in the fictional towns of Sulfur Gap and Briargrove, somewhere around Abilene, San Angelo and Big Spring.<\/p>\n

Glenn Dromgoole is co-author of 101 Essential Texas Books.<\/a><\/span> Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.<\/p>\n

>> <\/span>Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Lit<\/span><\/a><\/span>erary Life<\/span><\/h1>\n

News Briefs 7.31.16<\/h1>\n

Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference awards $18,000 in cash prizes in writing competitions<\/h1>\n

David Collins of Fulton, MO, received the top prize of $3,000<\/span> and a provisional book contract with the University of North Texas Press in the book manuscript competition sponsored by the 2016 Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference.<\/p>\n

Collins\u2019s manuscript, \u201cAccidental Texas Activists: Mark Phariss, Vic Holmes, and their Fight for Marriage Equality in the Lone Star State,\u201d tells the story of two ordinary men who challenged Texas\u2019s ban on same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n

The Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference is hosted each July by the Frank W. Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism in UNT\u2019s Frank W. and Sue Mayborn School of Journalism. The conference brings together more than four hundred participants who are interested in writing narrative nonfiction to learn from renowned journalists and storytellers in different genres. This year\u2019s conference was July 22\u201324.<\/p>\n

From its first years, the conference has held its Personal Essay, Book Manuscript and Reported Narrative contests to recognize extraordinary literary journalism and creative nonfiction from writers of unpublished works. This year\u2019s conference awarded $3,000 each to the first-place winners of the Personal Essay and Reported Narrative, as well as awarding the first-place cash award in the Book Manuscript competition. The second-place winners in all three categories each received $2,000, while the third-place winners in all three categories each received $1,000. The winners were announced July 23 at the conference\u2019s Literary Lights Dinner, which featured Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sheryl WuDunn as keynote speaker.<\/p>\n

The first-place Book Manuscript prize was sponsored by Voice Media Group. The second- and third-place winners of this Book Manuscript competition, sponsored by Joe Dealey Jr. of Dallas, are:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Second place to Sallie Moffitt of Ovilla, Texas, for \u201cThe Disobedient One,\u201d a memoir detailing the author\u2019s upbringing in a religious environment that required absolute obedience to the words of the Bible.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Third place to Kerri Fisher of Waco for \u201cBlack, White, Other: Stories of Race, Wonder and Self-Integration,\u201d a memoir about the author growing up in a mixed race family. >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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LONE STAR LISTENS interviews\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>>> archive<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n

Kay Ellington, Editor and Publisher<\/span><\/p>\n

7.31.2016\u00a0 Austin writer (& Houston native) Amy Gentry arrives with Good As Gone<\/h1>\n

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Debut novelist Amy Gentry spent years as a book reviewer<\/span>for the <\/span>Chicago Tribune,Los Angeles Book Review, Texas Observer, among other outlets. But now the tables are turned and she has \u201cgone\u201d from reviewer to reviewee with her new novel <\/span>Good As Gone<\/span><\/a><\/span>(out this week from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a psychological thriller that has been compared to best sellers such as <\/span>Gone Girl<\/span>The Girl on the Train.<\/span> We caught up with her via email during the book\u2019s launch week amid a dozen appearances and interviews. She graciously answered our email interview questions within hours of our hitting Send.<\/span><\/p>\n

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE:<\/span> Amy, I understand you grew up in Houston, and your novel is set in the city. What was the Houston of your youth like, and how did it inform your writing?<\/span><\/p>\n

AMY GENTRY: <\/span>I grew up in West Houston for the most part, around what\u2019s now called the Energy Corridor, and that\u2019s where most of the book takes place. Like Jane in the book, I escaped to Montrose and Rice Village in high school to feel more cool and less suburban. But of course, we could do that because we all had access to cars, and what\u2019s more suburban than that? When I think of Houston, I think of this flattened-out, cluttered urban landscape with all these dingy strip malls and gleaming skyscrapers just thrown together because of the minimal zoning laws, and the huge, arching highways providing the only relief from the flatness. I think it\u2019s the most beautiful ugly city in the world. A perfect place to get lost in, or lose your identity.\u00a0 >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events<\/h1>\n

Bookish Texas<\/span> event highlights\u00a0 7.31.2016
<\/span>>><\/span><\/a><\/span> GO this week\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor<\/span><\/h1>\n

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HOUSTON\u00a0 Mon., Aug. 1, <\/span>University of Houston, Houston Public Library Quarterly Author Series: Meet Elizabeth Nunez, author of Even in Paradise, 6:30PM<\/span><\/span><\/span>AUSTIN\u00a0 Wed., Aug. 3\u00a0 Austin Public Library, APLFF presents: Character, Persona & Narrator, a Badgerdog workshop with Amanda North, 6:30PM<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>ANGLETON\u00a0 Thurs., Aug. 4, Brazoria County Historical Museum, Roger Wood discusses and signs Texas Zydeco, 6:30PM<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>DALLAS\u00a0 Thurs., Aug. 4, The Wild Detectives, Amy Gentry reads and signs Good as Gone (with Merritt Tierce), 7:30PM<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>DALLAS Fri., Aug. 5, Half Price Books Mothership, Dallas Poets Community First Friday Reading Series presents readings from their new anthology Cattlemen & Cadillacs, 7PM<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>HOUSTON\u00a0 Fri., Aug. 5, Inprint House, First Friday Reading Series featuring Houston Poet Laureate Robin Davidson, 8:30PM<\/span> Collaboration, 3PM<\/span><\/span><\/span>DALLAS\u00a0 Sat, Aug. 6, B&N – Preston\/Royal, Skip Hollandsworth signs The Midnight Assassin, 1PM<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Remembering the Tower Shootings: Recommended Readings<\/h1>\n

Nonfiction and fiction links >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

AUGUST 1, 2016<\/h1>\n

Remembering the Tower Shootings,
Fifty Years Later<\/h1>\n

special to Lone Star Literary Life by Dave Parsons, 2011 Poet Laureate of Texas<\/p>\n

It seemed like any predictable first of August<\/span> in Austin, Texas: sunny and hot. I left my summer class in European History in the General Academics Building next to the University of Texas Tower forty minutes before the day would suddenly become infamous in the minds and hearts of the citizens of the United States: walking directly under and by the Tower to my car. >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Austin Fire <\/span>by Dave Parsons<\/span><\/h1>\n

Memories from the day of the University of Texas Tower shootings<\/p>\n

& the 100th anniversary of Scholz\u2019s Beer Garden on August 1, 1966.<\/p>\n

Out of the cave<\/p>\n

of European History class<\/p>\n

I am struck<\/p>\n

by squinting bright skies<\/p>\n

strolling on the edge of the shadow<\/p>\n

of the university tower shade<\/p>\n

through the southeast campus quad<\/p>\n

flip flopping to my Mustang<\/p>\n

for my short drive to work<\/p>\n

less than an hour before<\/p>\n

student victim #1<\/p>\n

will have fallen<\/p>\n

in that very path.<\/p>\n

I am traveling back now\u2014<\/p>\n

back to the pool\u2014<\/p>\n

down the hot tar entry<\/p>\n

down the pebbled walkway<\/p>\n

to Barton Springs<\/p>\n

churning shadowy deep blue\u2014<\/p>\n

it\u2019s the blues\u2014the gushing<\/p>\n

blues 68 degrees year-round<\/p>\n

offering a deadening numbness<\/p>\n

making the youngest of skin<\/p>\n

cadaver cold and this ordinary<\/p>\n

workday, I am just another Life-<\/p>\n

guard cut loose too soon.<\/p>\n

And now\u2014again<\/p>\n

I am driving back<\/p>\n

again back and away<\/p>\n

away from the many<\/p>\n

oblique precipices\u2014falls<\/p>\n

hidden undercurrents<\/p>\n

jutting stones in the blinds<\/p>\n

of the limestone aquifer<\/p>\n

traveling back under and through<\/p>\n

the towering pecan trees<\/p>\n

just a short dash\u2014and now again<\/p>\n

Barton Springs Road\u2014<\/p>\n

The Rolling Stones\u2014Can\u2019t Get No<\/p>\n

Satisfaction\u2026. everything<\/p>\n

is heating up the day.<\/p>\n

At Scholz\u2019s Garden<\/p>\n

another grand spring<\/p>\n

100 years of beer flowing<\/p>\n

unjudgmentally through<\/p>\n

the many unruly seasons<\/p>\n

through the untold<\/p>\n

joyous and unfettered<\/p>\n

the anonymous generations<\/p>\n

of the deemed and the damned<\/p>\n

and all their wagging<\/p>\n

Did you know(s)\u2026flying<\/p>\n

around the ever blank<\/p>\n

pages of air\u2014air that receives, never<\/p>\n

recording a single loving or gnashing word<\/p>\n

of the produce of this imperfect garden<\/p>\n

those sweaty hound dog days\u2014I feel<\/p>\n

that very air here again now\u2014the gamey<\/p>\n

smells of the Dutchman\u2019s beer garden<\/p>\n

the care free summer women<\/p>\n

laughing braless in loose tie-dyes<\/p>\n

swilling nickel Lone Stars<\/p>\n

aiming flirtatious glances<\/p>\n

then firing their deadly frank stares<\/p>\n

swinging suntanned legs<\/p>\n

to the juke box beats<\/p>\n

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man<\/p>\n

play a song for me…all<\/p>\n

positioned between<\/p>\n

the two towers: the capitol dome<\/p>\n

topped with Lady Liberty<\/p>\n

and UT\u2019s apex and bastille of education<\/p>\n

and there now\u2026and again\u2014white puffs\u2014<\/p>\n

Sniper! Sniper!<\/p>\n

Girls first! diving under<\/p>\n

stone gray concrete tables<\/p>\n

towering turquoise sky<\/p>\n

ragged clouds<\/p>\n

ripping the battle blue<\/p>\n

drifting\u2026mist like\u2026hiding<\/p>\n

momentarily gun site portals,<\/p>\n

and our shade tree bunkers<\/p>\n

fiery memories<\/p>\n

imbedded<\/p>\n

like so many stray shots\u2014<\/p>\n

He was a crew cut<\/p>\n

every mother\u2019s son<\/p>\n

Boy Scout\u2014Marine<\/p>\n

sharpshooter<\/p>\n

again all paths of mine\u2014<\/p>\n

In his last note to the world<\/p>\n

Charles Whitman<\/p>\n

requested an autopsy<\/p>\n

with special consideration<\/p>\n

to his brain\u2026they found<\/p>\n

a tiny, cloudy gray mass<\/p>\n

of malignant tissue lined<\/p>\n

in crimson\u2014seems it\u2019s<\/p>\n

always the smallest of embers.<\/p>\n

First appeared in Color of Mourning, <\/span>Texas Review Press\/Texas A&M University Press Consortium. Published with permission of the author.\u00a0 >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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News Briefs 7.31.16<\/h1>\n

Writers’ League announces 2015 book awards<\/h1>\n

The Writers\u2019 League of Texas <\/span>recently announced winners, finalists, and Discovery Award winners of its annual book awards competition. >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/span><\/span>WHERE IN TEXAS?<\/span><\/h1>\n

Don’t miss a reading or a good read! Sign up for our FREE weekly
e-newsletter<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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RECENTLY ON TOUR: FICTION<\/h1>\n

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Summer Vacation by Belinda Everette<\/h1>\n

CONTINUING ON TOUR: FICTION<\/h1>\n

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Visit with Dana through August 8<\/p>\n

7\/31 The Crazy Booksellers — Promo<\/p>\n

8\/1 Missus Gonzo \u2013 Guest Post<\/p>\n

8\/2 Byers Editing Reviews & Blog \u2013 Excerpt #2<\/p>\n

8\/3 Kara The Redhead — Review<\/p>\n

8\/4 The Page Unbound \u2013 Author Interview #3<\/p>\n

8\/5 Margie’s Must Reads — Review<\/p>\n

8\/6 Books and Broomsticks — Promo<\/p>\n

8\/7 Forgotten Winds \u2013 Excerpt #3<\/p>\n

8\/8 My Book Fix Blog \u2013 Review<\/p>\n

RECENTLY ON TOUR:
MEMOIR\/TEXAS<\/h1>\n

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A KINE\u00f1O’S JOURNEY<\/h1>\n

by Dr. Lauro F. Cavazos<\/h1>\n

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Lone Star Literary Life Facts and FAQs<\/span><\/h1>\n

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Lone Star Literary Archives<\/span><\/h1>\n

\u2022 Weekly issues<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Lone Star Listens Interviews<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2022 Announcement: LSLL Launches<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC, Contributing Editor Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole >> archivePhotographer presents portraits from the past Fort Worth fine art photographer Jack Knox spent eight years exploring and photographing images from the back roads of Texas. The result is his impressive full-color 12-by-12, 136-page collection of color photos, Texas: Ghost Towns, Gas Stations, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}