Snow. Many. Books!
Get the perfect present for kids this holiday season from Random House Children’s Books. In need of adventure? The perfect storytime read? Something to make you laugh out loud? From beloved bestsellers like PONY by R.J. Palacio (author of Wonder) and GRUMPY MONKEY by Suzanne and Max Lang, to brand-new books like THE SWAG IS IN THE SOCKS by Kelly J. Baptist and THE WITCHES OF BROOKLYN by Sophie Escabasse, find the right gift for your kids today!
Don’t miss the kickoff of the 2021 Lit Crawl Austin with two virtual events! Starting at 8pm on Thursday, October 28, we’re presenting two very cool sessions.
First up is Typewriter Tarot with Hala Alyan and Cecily Sailer. What goes beautifully with great literature? A little Tarot and magic! Join us for a Tarot Town Hall featuring Texas Book Festival author Hala Alyan, with her new book The Arsonists’ City. Alyan will be joined by Typewriter Tarot founder Cecily Sailer, and the two will answer audience questions about Alyan’s book, writing, creativity, and more.
Next up is The Stacks Podcast: Traci Thomas in Conversation with Gabriela Garcia. Join the Stacks Podcast’s Traci Thomas in conversation with Of Women and Salt author Gabriela Garcia. For the first time ever at Lit Crawl Austin!
House on Mango Street author and Texas Writer Award recipient (2005) Sandra Cisneros returns with a story about the permanence of friendship forged by shared struggles and experiences. In this dual-language edition of Martita, I Remember You / Martita te recuerdo, a young Mexican woman, Corina, leaves her family in Chicago to pursue her dream of becoming a writer in Paris. By chance she meets Martita and Paola, and together they support one another as they begin their new lives. Years pass and their paths diverge, until one day Corina discovers a letter that evokes powerful memories about the life-changing bonds of youthful friendships. Cisneros will be in conversation with close collaborator, Martita, I Remember You translator, and TBF alum Liliana Valenzuela.
Sponsored by Hablemos Escritoras and the UT-Austin Division of Diversity and Community Engagement
UPDATE: This session is now streaming. Watch the full panel here.
Since the debut of her revered short story collection, Bad Behavior—which included the story adapted into the 2002 film Secretary—Mary Gaitskill has lent brutal honesty and formal daring to the literary scene. “She catches cruelty and inexplicable desire, what she has called ‘the dirt within,’ as well as any writer we have,” as Dwight Garner of the New York Times has put it. Gaitskill’s new book, The Devil’s Treasure, is no less audacious than her previous work. Linked together by the story of a girl named Ginger who discovers a portal to hell in her own backyard, Gaitskill’s latest, richly illustrated work presents excerpts of her previous novels, including 2005’s Veronica and 2015’s The Mare, as well as a memoir—all of it stitched together with authorial commentary.
This session is available in person on October 31 at the Austin Central Library or live-streamed.
The Fontaine Archive in Austin, Texas, houses the works and letters of painter Paul Fontaine and of Wisconsin-born Virginia Fontaine, a World War II–era denizen of the German art scene and a collaborator with the Jewish underground. Information scientist, former board chair of Austin literary nonprofit Austin Bat Cave, and Paul and Virginia’s daughter Claudia Fontaine Chidester collects in Trusted Eye: Post-World War II Adventures of a Fearless Art Advocate a treasure of photography and personal letters that together paint a richly detailed portrait of her mother Virginia’s life, both during the war and afterward. With Dave Hickey and His Art, journalist Daniel Oppenheimer pens the first definitive biography of Fort Worth–born art critic Dave Hickey, once dubbed by the Guardian as “the enfant terrible of art criticism” for his candid, uncompromising takes on modern art and in particular the art establishment. Join Chidester and Oppenheimer as they talk about two figures who decided to live their lives, and loudly, in artworld.
Austinite Kirk Wilson’s poetry collection Songbox, winner of the 2020 Trio Award, captures with such skill and precision a sensation or impression hard to describe yet immediately felt, a feeling that surely has a perfect term in a language other than English. It’s a feeling of reckoning, of loss, of a past gone by, and of long-held assumptions obliterated. But it is not mere nostalgia or sentimentality—rather it is more current, more immediate, centered to some degree on the pandemic, climate crisis, and social injustice. And in any case, all of it is tempered with a sense of love, community, and shared understanding. Tune in as Wilson paints in readings and commentary the feeling we struggle to sketch here.
Personal, funny, and earnest, the essays in Horse Girls offer new perspectives on the meaning of the term—often used derisively and one-dimensionally— via the experiences of “horse girls” from many backgrounds. Contributors Halimah Marcus, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Allie Rowbottom, and self-described “Texpat” Sarah Enelow-Snyder talk about the stereotypes and gather to redefine the term.
Three authors capture in detail a portrait of an addicted nation—and the powerful industry forces complicit in stoking dependency.
In journalist Sam Quinones’s The Least of Us—the follow-up to his New York Times bestselling and NBCC Award winning Dreamland—the detrimental effects of the opioid epidemic are explored in depth via both community-focused reportage and a close look at the “corporations who act like traffickers” fueling the crisis. Award-winning investigative reporter Lauren Etter’s The Devil’s Playbook brings us into the boardrooms of Philip Morris: How did the tobacco company, blinded by the profit potential of e-cigarette maker Juul, help pave the way for yet another public health disaster? And Dopamine Nation, the latest from Stanford Addiction Medicine medical director Dr. Anna Lembke, delves into our very brains, revealing how our pursuit of instant gratification—a pursuit made increasingly easy by corporations skilled in behavioral economics—opens for us new vistas of pain, dependency, and discomfort.
We’re thrilled to announce the winners of the 2021 Fresh Ink Fiction Contest! This year’s theme was “Thrive in a Hybrid World” and we were blown away by the submissions we received. We are very proud of all these talented young authors and are thankful that they chose to share their work with us!
Congratulations to the 2021 winners:
Middle School
Sara T. – The Princess and the Maid
Tiffany J. – Hold My Hands in the River of Wishes
Dhwani N. – The Power Within
High School
Kayla H. – Ultranet
Thanh-Lan N. – Devotion
Reyna T. – Painting the Future
All Fresh Ink Fiction Contest participants will be awarded a Literati Kids gift card or subscription and invited to our creative writing workshop with featured speakers and authors. The Fresh Ink Fiction Contest is sponsored by AT&T . Thank you to partner Austin Bat Cave for providing workshops and Austin based book subscription company Literati for providing contest prizes!
The 2021 hybrid festival lineup features nearly 200 authors, illustrators, poets, journalists, artists, chefs, and thought leaders across a diverse array of genres and topics including Chandler Baker, Oscar Cásares, Sandra Cisneros, Ann Cleeves, Tamron Hall, Nathan Harris, Louis Menand, Sam Quinones, Rumaan Alam, Mary Gaitskill, R. J. Palacio, Raj Patel, Amor Towles, Colson Whitehead, and more!
Visit the 2021 Festival Schedule to register for our virtual and in-person session!
And if you love the Festival as much as we do, become a Festival Friend today! In appreciation for your donation of $100 or more, you will receive a Festival Friends Pass which provides you with:
Donors of $150 or more will receive a commemorative 25th anniversary enamel pin, and donors of $250 or more will receive the enamel pin, a special edition TBF tote bag, and Texas Monthly one-year home delivery and subscriber-only digital access.
