FOUR TREASURES OF THE SKY: A Conversation with Jenny Tinghui Zhang & Gen Padalecki

ANNOUNCING – We’re partnering with fellow Texan Gen Padalecki and her Now & Gen book club for a conversation with Austin author Jenny Tinghui Zhang about her debut novel Four Treasures of the Sky. Grab your copy and read along with us! Be sure to join the conversation on Thursday, May 5 at 12 p.m. CT on Gen’s Instagram Live (@genpadalecki). No RSVP necessary, just stop on by!

When you purchase your copy of Four Treasures of the Sky using this BookPeople link, you will receive an autographed note from Gen! Available while supplies last.

Author:
Jenny Tinghui Zhang
is a Chinese-American writer. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Apogee, Ninth Letter, Passages North, The Rumpus, HuffPost, The Cut, Catapult, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Wyoming and has received support from Kundiman, Tin House, and VONA/Voices. She was born in Changchun, China and grew up in Austin, Texas, where she currently lives. Four Treasures of the Sky is her debut.

Moderator:
Genevieve Padalecki (you can call her Gen) is a daughter, sister, mother, and wife. She’s also a traveler, book nerd, activist, actress, adventure seeker, and aspiring urban homesteader. A California girl from birth and a mountain girl at heart, she now calls Austin, Texas, home and lives with her husband Jared—yes, that guy from Supernatural and Walker—three kids (Tom, Shep, and Odette), 14 chickens, two dogs, and a hive of honeybees.

She blogs about her life, books, parenting, fashion, and more at nowandgen.com and is the co-founder of @towwn – Take Only What We Need, a community that focuses on measurable steps we can take to live a more just and sustainable life for people + planet.

 

Book Tips and Sips at Ani’s Day & Night

Join Texas Book Festival and spring 2022–published Austin authors Dalia Azim and Juli Berwald for our first free, public, in-person event of the year!

We’re bringing together Central Texas readers and members of the literary community for a casual conversation about books—classics, new releases, fiction, and nonfiction—we’re eager to add to our to-be-read shelves this spring. Come gather with us at the Ani’s Day & Night patio on Wednesday, April 13 at 6 p.m. for book recommendations, community, and delicious cocktails available for sale from the Ani’s bar.

No reservations required, but if you RSVP via the form below, you’ll be entered into a drawing to receive complimentary signed copies of Dalia’s and Juli’s new books plus two drink tickets.

Book swap: Bring a book you loved and want to share, add it to the swap, and take home a new read of your own!

Copies of Dalia’s and Juli’s new books for sale on-site courtesy of BookPeople!


Speakers: 

Dalia Azim, Country of Origin (Deep Vellum / A Strange Object, 3/15/22)

Dalia’s work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Aperture, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Glimmer Train (where she received their Short Story Award for New Writers), Other Voices, Alcalde, and Sightlines, among other publications. She serves on the board of Austin Bat Cave—a literary community and writing workshop center—and is the manager of special projects at the Blanton Museum of Art. She graduated with a dual degree in art and literature from Stanford University and grew up in Canada and Colorado.

Juli Berwald, Life on the Rocks (Riverhead, 4/5/22)

Juli, a Texas Book Festival alum, received her Ph.D. in Ocean Science from the University of Southern California. The author of Spineless and a science textbook writer and editor, she has written for a number of publications including the New York Times, Nature, National Geographic, and Slate.

Moderator: TBF Literary Director Matt Patin

Tips & Sips RSVP

  • RSVP

 

Ani’s Day & Night is located at 7107 E Riverside Drive in Austin.


We love putting together free programming in support of authors and readers here in Texas. If you believe in strengthening a love of literature and keeping arts programming free and open to the public in Texas, please consider supporting the Texas Book Festival. 

December Book Club: BEING TEXAN Trivia

Join the Texas Book Festival and Texas Monthly for a very—and in-person!—special December book club! Pull on your boots, literally or metaphorically, for a Texas-themed book club with new publication Being Texan: Essays, Recipes, and Advice for the Lone Star Way of Life, by the editors of Texas Monthly. TM editors, book contributors, and Twin City Trivia will lead guests in all-about-Texas trivia, and you can win a copy of Being Texan and Texas Monthly swag.

Our first book club back in person will be at Easy Tiger South, 3508 South Lamar Blvd., Austin, TX. The event will take place outside, and food and drinks will be available for purchase from Easy Tiger. Please register below for this free event.

Books will be for sale on-site, so grab a copy for yourself and everyone on your gift list.

What: TBF Book Club with Being Texan

Who: The editors of Texas Monthly

When: December 7 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Where: Easy Tiger South, 3508 South Lamar Blvd., Austin, TX.

Thanks, y’all!

September Book Club: FIRST LOVE, TAKE TWO

We’re excited to announce our September Book Club pick, First Love, Take Two by author Sajni Patel. Purchase your copy today! Join us on Thursday, September 30 at 7:30 p.m. CT for a conversation with Patel and author Sonali Dev, who will moderate the discussion. Save your spot

Award-winning author Sajni Patel was born in vibrant India and raised in the heart of Texas. She draws on personal experiences, cultural expectations, and Southern flair to create worlds centered around strong Indian women. Once in MMA, she’s now all about puppies, rainbows, and tortured love stories. She divides her time between Hawai’i (where honu is her #1 obsession) and Austin (where she not-so-secretly watches Matthew McConaughey from afar during UT football games). Queso is her weakness and thanks to her family’s cooking, Indian/Tex-Mex cuisine is a real thing. She’s a die-hard Marvel Comics fan, an ube fanatic, and is always wrapped up in a story.

USA Today bestselling author Sonali Dev writes Bollywood-style love stories that explore universal issues. Her novels have been named Best Books of the Year by Library Journal, NPR, the Washington Post, and Kirkus. She has won numerous accolades, including the American Library Association’s award for best romance, the RT Reviewer Choice Award for best contemporary romance, multiple RT Seals of Excellence, has been a RITA® finalist, and has been listed for the Dublin Literary Award. Shelf Awareness calls her “Not only one of the best but one of the bravest romance novelists working today.” She lives in Chicagoland with her husband, two visiting adult children, and the world’s most perfect dog.

2021 book club picks:

August Book Club: WE ARE ALL THE SAME IN THE DARK

For our August Book Club pick, we’re releasing from the archives a TBF 2020 conversation between Texas author Julia Heaberlin and Texas Monthly writer Christopher Kelly. Heaberlin’s latest novel, We Are All the Same in the Dark, is newly available in paperback at BookPeople. Purchase your copy today! Don’t miss the Crowdcast rebroadcast on Thursday, August 19 at 7:30 p.m. CT. Save your spot.

Julia

Julia Heaberlin is the author of the critically acclaimed We Are All the Same in the Dark, Black-Eyed Susans, a USA Today and Times (UK) bestseller. Her psychological thrillers, including Paper Ghosts (finalist for the ITW Thriller Award), Playing Dead, and Lie Still, have been sold in more than twenty countries. Heaberlin is an award-winning journalist who has worked at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Detroit News, and the Dallas Morning News. She grew up in Texas and lives with her family near Dallas/Fort Worth.

We Are All the Same in the Dark is set in a small Texas town. Character Trumanell Branson disappeared a decade ago, but the town hasn’t forgotten her—and neither has her brother Wyatt. So when Wyatt discovers another lost girl in a field of dandelions, mysteriously mute and missing one eye, he can’t help but suspect something strange is afoot. As the town’s youngest cop fights to solve the mystery of the two lost girls, long-forgotten secrets bubble to the surface.

2021 book club picks:

July Book Club: GOD SPARE THE GIRLS

We’re celebrating Texas authors at the TBF Book Club! Our July pick is God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney. Join us on Thursday, July 29 at 7:30 p.m. CT for a conversation with McKinney and TBF ‘19 author alum Lyz Lenz. RSVP here. Keep up with all Book Club news on our TBF Book Club Facebook group.

Kelsey McKinney is a freelance features writer and cofounder of Defector Media. She previously worked as a staff writer at Vox, Fusion, and Deadspin. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, Cosmopolitan, and New York magazine, among other publications. Raised Evangelical in north Texas, she now lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and dog. God Spare the Girls is her first novel.

2021 book club picks:

 

June Book Club: Alex McElroy in Conversation with Jill Meyers

Update: Thank you so much for joining us for the Texas Book Festival Book Club with Austin360 for our June pick, The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy. If you missed the discussionthe video is still available on the Texas Book Festival Crowdcast channel.

Please fill out this book club survey. We look forward to hearing your feedback! The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy is available to purchase here.

We hope to see you at next month’s pick discussion, God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney.

___

We’re excited to announce that our June book club pick is The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy. On Tuesday, June 29 at 7:30 p.m. CT, we are hosting a conversation with McElroy moderated by Founder of Lit Crawl Austin Jill Meyers. RSVP here. Join our TBF Book Club Facebook group for all upcoming Book Club news.

Alex McElroy (they/them) is a nonbinary writer based in Brooklyn. They received their MFA from Arizona State University and their Ph.D. from the University of Houston. Their writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Vice, Tin House, Esquire, and elsewhere and they have received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. The Atmospherians is their first novel.

2021 book club picks:

 

May Book Club: Elizabeth McCracken in Conversation with Gen Padalecki

We’re celebrating Texas authors at the TBF Book Club! For our May pick, we’re partnering with actor and fellow Texan Gen Padalecki and her Now & Gen book club for a conversation with National Book Award finalist Elizabeth McCracken about her new novel The Souvenir Museum. Grab your copy and read along with us! Be sure to join the conversation on Thursday, May 27 at 1 p.m. CT. RSVP here. Join our TBF Book Club Facebook group for all upcoming Book Club news.

Elizabeth McCracken is the author of seven books, including The Souvenir Museum, Bowlaway, Thunderstruck & Other Stories (winner of the 2014 Story Prize and long-listed for the National Book Award), and The Giant’s House (a National Book Award finalist). Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, won three Pushcart Prizes, a National Magazine Award, and an O. Henry Prize. She has served on the faculty at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently holds the James Michener Chair for Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin.

Moderator:
Genevieve Padalecki
(you can call her Gen) is a daughter, sister, mother, and wife. She’s also a traveler, book nerd, activist, actress, adventure seeker, and aspiring urban homesteader. A California girl from birth and a mountain girl at heart, she now calls Austin, Texas, home and lives with her husband Jared—yes, that guy from Supernatural and Walker—three kids (Tom, Shep, and Odette), 14 chickens, two dogs, and a hive of honeybees.

She blogs about her life, books, parenting, fashion, and more at nowandgen.com and is the co-founder of @towwn – Take Only What We Need, a community that focuses on measurable steps we can take to live a more just and sustainable life for people + planet.

2021 book club picks:

TBF April Book Club: NEPANTLA FAMILIAS

UPDATE: If you missed the conversation, no worries – it is still available to watch on Crowdcast.

We are excited to announce that our April book club pick is Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican-American Literature On Families In Between Worlds edited by Sergio Troncoso. On Thursday, April 29 at 7:00 p.m. CT, we are hosting a discussion featuring authors Francisco Cantú, José Antonio Rodríguez, Diana López, and Troncoso on Crowdcast. RSVP for the event. Join our TBF Book Club Facebook group for all upcoming Book Club news.

Francisco Cantú is the author of The Line Becomes a River. A former Fulbright fellow and the recipient of an Art for Justice fellowship, his writing on the borderlands appears in The New Yorker, Best American Essays, and VQR. A lifelong resident of the Southwest, he now lives in Tucson.

José Antonio Rodríguez’s most recent books are the poetry collection This American Autopsy and the memoir House Built on Ashes, a finalist for the PEN American Los Angeles award. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry, The Nation, BorderSenses, Paterson Literary Review, and elsewhere. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University and teaches creative writing at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley.

Diana López is the author of several middle-grade books including Confetti Girl and Lucky Luna. Her debut picture book biography about Selena Quintanilla will be released in the summer. She recently retired as an educator but is still “teaching” by serving as a mentor for Latinx in Publishing and AWP’s Writer to Writer program.

Moderator:
Sergio Troncoso is most recently the author of A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son, a collection of linked short stories on immigration which Luis Alberto Urrea called “a world-class collection.” Troncoso also edited the 2021 anthology, Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in between Worlds, which received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews. A Fulbright scholar, Troncoso is currently president of the Texas Institute of Letters.

2021 book club picks: