Embarrassment of Riches

Tomorrow night!

Karen Tei Yamashita, author of five novels including last year's National Book Award finalist, I Hotel, reads September 20th, at 7PM, at the Etter-Harbin Alumni Center, The Connally Banquet Hall, at 2110 San Jacinto.

There's no better ad than this transfixing five minute reading at the Makeout Room in San Francisco. 

An interview with Karen Tei Yamashita at Bookslut (one of my favorite book sites, if you can't tell).

Also!  Nicole Krauss, author of Great House, reads from her work and speaks with Michener Center for Writers director James Magnuson at the Harry Ransom Center at 7PM.  


There are lots of goodies, including audio interviews, at her beautifully designed website.


A PBS interview with Krauss at PBS.org

Bat City Reading Series Begins!

Monday night is the first of the Bat City readings.  This year the readings will be held at Tom's Tabooley at 2928 Guadalupe.  If you like excellent literature and bulgur wheat, you're in luck.  (You're in luck even if you don't like bulgur wheat.)

This Monday, September 19th, at 8PM, the series presents Michener Center for Writers Fellows Claire Sylvester Smith, a poet whose work has won the Hopwood Award from the University of Michigan, and Ben Roberts, whose fiction has been published in the Harvard Review and Quarterly West.

The Bat City Review website.

Unstuck, the new annual of speculative fiction (Ben Roberts is an assistant editor).

Two readings coming up by two wonderful fiction writers on Tuesday, Karen Tei Yamashita and Nicole Krauss.

Dominic Smith at Book People this Friday

Dominic Smith--MCW alum and frequent visitor to the UT English Department and terrific writer--has a new book out, and it's already getting extraordinary reviews.  He's appearing at Book People Friday, September 16th.  According to the Book People Website, he will be serving "his own Rooftop Punch inspired by the novel."  (Boldface Book People's own.)  According to someone in my fiction workshop this morning, said punch has gin in it!

The Kirkus Reviews review will make you want to read it instantly.

You can listen to an interview or read the transcript here.

Dominic Smith's website.

TILTS!

This year's Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies, co-directed by Professors Lisa Moore and Meta DuEwa Jones, is bringing some incredible poets and scholars to campus.  This week is the fall symposium, with two packed, wonderful days:

Wednesday September 14th:

At noon, Poetry on the Plaza in front of the Harry Ransom Center: The Emperors of Ice Cream, featuring poetry and also actual ice cream.

At 3PM, in the Denius Room at the HRC, a Poets' Roundtable on African-American writing, feminism, and queer diasporas with Evie Shockley, Dante Micheaux, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Dawn Lundy-Martin, and Chanel Clarke.

At 5:30PM, a reception and book signing in the lobby of the HRC before

At 7PM, a reading in honor of David Wevill by poet and scholar Harryette Mullen, winner of the Wallace Stevens Award from the American Academy of Poets.

Haryette Mullen's biography at the Poetry Foundation.

Harryette Mullen reading "Wipe that Simile off Your Aphasia."

A review of Sleeping with the Dictionary at The New York Times.

On Thursday:

At 3PM in the Denius Room at the HRC, a Scholars' Roundtable with Yolanda Pierce, Aldon Nielsen, Keith Leonard, Gershon Avilez, and Roger Reeves.

At 5PM, a reception and booksigning before,

At 7PM, the TILTS Poetics Lecture in Honor of Thomas Cable, by Arnold Rampersad, winner of the National Humanities Medal.

Arnold Rampersad’s biography at Stanford.

An interview with Arnold Rampersad at Bookslut.

Arnold Rampersad speaks about Langston Hughes.

New Fellowship at Kenyon College

A terrific new post-grad fellowship at Kenyon College:

$32,500 a year plus health insurance.
One semester of teaching.
One semester of working with the Kenyon Review and the Kenyon Review Online.
Deadline December 1st.

More details here.

Opener

Hello!

I've been meaning to start this blog for a while.

Here I'll post announcements for readings, deadlines for contests and fellowships, and the occasional literary curiosity, aimed at creative writers here at the University of Texas, Austin.

A few upcoming events on campus:

First fiction:

Thursday, September 8th, Alex Shakar, Michener Center for Writers alum, reads at Book People from his new novel, Luminarium.


Here is his website.

Here is an essay about the publication of his first novel.

Thursday, September 15th, at 7PM, Chang-Rae Lee, finalist this year for the Pulitzer Prize, reads at the Joynes Reading Room.

A review of The Surrendered at The New York Times.

Chang-Rae Lee reading at Warwick's Books in La Jolla, CA

Coming up: a packed week for the 3rd Annual Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies!