Texas Book Festival is proud to partner with Prizer Arts and Letters to celebrate the opening-night of Nick Flynn’s new exhibition of collage work. That evening, we will host a reading from Nick’s new book, and a reception will follow. Flynn will also be a featured author at the 2023 Texas Book Festival. The exhibition, titled Nick Flynn: Sacred Trash, contains gathered ephemera collaged by Flynn over many years. During the pandemic, Flynn started writing a poem a day in response to his collages. These poems are now part of his forthcoming book, Low (Graywolf), from which Flynn will read at his opening and which will also be part of our Festival lineup.

Join us for this event at Prizer Arts and Letters on Saturday, October 14 from 6–9 p.m. (2023 E. Cesar Chavez Street). A selection of Flynn’s book will be available for sale at the event.

Artist Statement

“Sacred Trash is the title of a book by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole. Its subtitle is The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza. A geniza is a synagogue’s repository for worn-out texts. These repositories were packed not with gold but with paper—contracts, letters, lists of workers, money orders, prescriptions, poems, needed supplies. The belief was that any word or image written out could be (or was) the word of God, and therefore must be saved.

Throughout my life I’ve gathered ephemera (from sidewalks, brochures, magazines, children’s drawing). I cannot say why I do this, but I’ve always had a hard time ignoring an interesting scrap of paper, especially one with some scrawl on it. From this gathering I developed a collage practice, which continues to this day. Inspirations are Kurt Schwitters, Robert Rauschenberg, Hannah Höch—I am drawn to this work, it seems more intuitive, somehow closer to a collective unconscious (if such a thing exists).

In late 2020, at the tail-end of our first long pandemic year, I began a practice of writing a poem a day in response to each of the collages. It was daily meditative practice, which carried over into now. Those poems are now gathered together in my latest book, Low (Graywolf, 2023). To coincide with the release of Low, I’m thrilled to have this chance to present these collages at Prizer Arts and Letters, in collaboration with The Texas Book Festival.”

About Nick Flynn

Nick Flynn is a writer, poet and memoirist. Selected books include Some Ether (2000), Blind Huber (2002), The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands (2011), My Feelings (2015), Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (2004), Being Flynn (2005), The Ticking is the Bomb (2010), and The Reenactments (2013). Many of Flynn’s books are structured by using a collage technique, and he carries this format into his visual work.

Texas Book Festival is proud to partner with BookPeople in welcoming Rick Riordan to celebrate Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Chalice of the Gods!

This event is ticketed. Get your tickets HERE.

• Start time: 6:30 P.M.
• Run time: 45-60 minutes
• Location: AISD Performing Arts Center (1500 Barbara Jordan Boulevard Austin, TX 78723)

If you buy a ticket and are unable to attend:

• We will hold your book at BookPeople for 30 days after the event.
• We cannot guarantee that your book will be signed. While we do our best to try and get all event books signed, priority is given to event attendees and any extra stock is dependent on the author’s availability.

Guidelines:

• Seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis.
• There will not be a live stream or recording available.
• BookPeople reserves the right to cancel or postpone this event if necessary.
• If you have any other questions, please visit our Eventbrite FAQ. If your question is not covered by the FAQ, feel free to email us at online@bookpeople.com.

About the book:

After saving the world multiple times, Percy Jackson is hoping to have a normal senior year. Unfortunately, the gods aren’t quite done with him. Percy will have to fulfill a new quest in order to get the necessary letter of recommendation from Mount Olympus for college.

Readers new to Percy Jackson and fans who have been awaiting this reunion for more than a decade will delight equally in this latest hilarious take on Greek mythology.

About the author:

Rick Riordan is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and the Heroes of Olympus series for children and the multi-award-winning Tres Navarre mystery series for adults. For fifteen years, Riordan taught English and history at public and private middle schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Texas. In 2002, Saint Mary’s Hall honored him with the school’s first Master Teacher Award. His adult fiction has won the top three national awards in the mystery genre—the Edgar, the Anthony, and the Shamus. His first Percy Jackson book, The Lightning Thief, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2005. The Sea of Monsters was a Child Magazine Best Book for Children for 2006 and a national bestseller. The third title, The Titan’s Curse, made the series a #1 New York Times bestseller, and the fourth title, The Battle of the Labyrinth, had a first printing of one million copies. The series concluded with The Last Olympian, which was also a major national bestseller. Rick Riordan now writes full-time. He lives in Boston with his wife and two sons.

By purchasing a book from BookPeople, you are not only supporting a local, independent business – you’re showing publishers that they should continue sending authors to BookPeople.

Thank you for supporting Rick Riordan, Texas Book Festival, and your local independent bookstore!

Texas Book Festival and The Library Foundation are thrilled to co-present another In Conversation event featuring Terrance Hayes and Roger Reeves in an author-to-author dialogue on August 2, 2023, at 7 PM in Austin Central Library’s Gallery Room. The event is free and open to the public, and books will be available for purchase thanks to Black Pearl Books. Find tickets here.

Terrance Hayes is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and the author of So to Speak, a powerful and timely new collection of poems, and the brilliant essay collection Watch Your Language (Penguin). Roger Reeves is the winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize and the author of the groundbreaking essay collection Dark Days: Fugitive Essays (Graywolf).

The In Conversation series is sponsored by Amplify Credit Union.

The Library Foundation and Texas Book Festival are thrilled to launch a new author series. In Conversation pairs writers for intimate discussions of their work.

The inaugural In Conversation features Katie Gutierrez and Rubén Degollado, whose novels explore families encountering folkloric curses, secret double lives, and the generational passage of time.

Gutierrez’s debut literary novel, More Than You’ll Ever Know, follows a woman caught leading a double life after one husband murders the other, and the true-crime writer who becomes obsessed with telling her story. Degollado’s debut, The Family Izquierdo, weaves together the lives of three generations of a Mexican American family bound by love, and a curse.

The free event is at 7 p.m. on June 21 at the Austin Central Library. The authors will sign books following the program. Books will be available for purchase thanks to Black Pearl Books. Get tickets here.

Rubén Degollado’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Lit Hub, Texas Highways, The Common, and the anthologies Living Beyond Borders and Nepantla Familias. His YA novel, “Throw, “was published in 2019 and won the Texas Institute of Letters 2020 Award for Best Young Adult Book, was included on the Texas Library Association 2020 TAYSHAS list of best books for teen readers. Rubén’s debut literary novel, “The Family Izquierdo”, published in 2022 by W.W. Norton, was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award, is a Texas Institute of Letters Best Fiction Award finalist, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2022. rubendegollado.com

Katie Gutierrez is the author of the national bestselling debut novel “More Than You’ll Ever Know” (Morrow/Michael Joseph), which is also a Good Morning America Book Club pick for June 2022. She is a National Magazine Award finalist whose writing has appeared in TIME, Harper’s Bazaar, the Washington Post, Longreads, and more. She has an MFA from Texas State University and lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband and their two kids. katiegutierrez.net

The In Conversation series is sponsored by Amplify Credit Union.

Amplify Credit Union and Texas Book Festival are thrilled to present author, Laekan Zea Kemp, discussing her new young adult novel-in-verse, An Appetite for Miracles, in conversation with fellow author, Jennifer Ziegler (Worser, How Not to Be Popular). The event will be held at 6 PM on Thursday, June 8, 2023, at Amplify Credit Union’s Esperanza event space (2800 Esperanza Crossing #2, Austin, TX 78758). Admission is free and tickets are available here.

The event will include a reading and moderated Q&A followed by a signing line. Masks are encouraged but not required. Amplify will provide hand sanitizer and masks onsite. Seating will be offered on a first-come, first-serve basis. For additional questions or concerns, please contact feedack@goamplify.com.

About An Appetite for Miracles:
Danna Mendoza Villarreal’s grandfather is slowly losing himself as his memories fade, and Danna’s not sure her plan to help him remember through the foods he once reviewed will be enough to bring him back. Especially when her own love of food makes her complicated relationship with her mother even more difficult. Raul Santos has been lost ever since his mother was wrongly incarcerated two years ago. Playing guitar for the elderly has been his only escape, to help them remember and him forget. But when his mom unexpectedly comes back into his life, what is he supposed to do when she isn’t the same person who left. When Danna and Raul meet, sparks fly immediately and they embark on a mission to heal her grandfather…and themselves. Because healing is something best done together—even if healing doesn’t always look the way we want it to.

About the Author:
Laekan Zea Kemp is a writer living in Austin, Texas. Her debut novel, Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet was a 2022 Pura Belpré Honor Recipient. She has three objectives when it comes to storytelling: to make people laugh, cry, and crave Mexican food. Her work celebrates Chicane grit, resilience, creativity, and joy while exploring themes of identity and mental health.

About the Moderator:
Jennifer Ziegler is the author of several novels for young and young-at-heart readers, including Worser, Revenge of the Flower Girls, and How Not to Be Popular. She also serves as faculty co-chair of Vermont College of Fine Arts’ MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. A native Texan of Mexican American heritage, Jennifer lives in Austin with her husband (and favorite author), Chris Barton, and their boss, a terrier mix named Ernie.