Showing posts with label Texas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Texas. Show all posts

Monday, November 18, 2019

This Wednesday: atCentral with Stephen Harrigan and 'Big Wonderful Thing'


Wednesday, November 20
Doors at 6:30 PM
Begins at 7 PM
with Stephen Harrigan and Jeff Salamon
Thursday, November 20 at 7 PM
Central Library Special Events Center
Stephen Harrigan has devoted much of his life to exploring and explaining Texas, ever since his family crossed the Red River from Oklahoma in 1953. He's written numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including A Friend of Mr. Lincoln and The Gates of the Alamo.

Join us for a celebration of Harrigan's latest work, a big wonderful history of Texas! Harrigan will talk about the book with Texas Monthly senior editor Jeff Salamon, followed by a book signing with book sales provided by BookPeople.

This is event is free, but advance tickets are encouraged. Doors open at 6:30 PM, with priority seating for ticket-holders. For front-row seating and priority in the author signing line, become a member of The Library Foundation.
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Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Meet Stephen Harrigan On Tour for ‘Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas'












The University of Texas Press is pleased to announce a fall book tour celebrating Stephen Harrigan's comprehensive, definitive history of Texas titled Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas. Join us in October and November in:

About the book

Big Wonderful Thing:
A History of Texas
Stephen Harrigan
$35.00 Hardcover

The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and of the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world.

Harrigan’s book brings to life with novelistic immediacy the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas, including Spanish explorers, American filibusters, Comanche warriors, wildcatters, Tejano activists, and spellbinding artists—all of them taking their part in the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an indelible idea.


Confirmed Tour Dates

October 1 — Austin, TX
Interview with Dan Rather

October 4-5 — Boerne, TX

October 8 — Dallas, TX
In Conversation with Skip Hollandsworth

October 15 — San Antonio, TX
In Conversation with Clay Smith

October 17 — Waco, TX
FABLED BOOKSHOP
October 26-27 — Austin, TX

October 29 — Tempe, AZ
In Conversation with Mark Athitakis (tentative)

November 3 — Albuquerque, NM
In Conversation with Paul Hutton (tentative)

November 5 — Tulsa, OK

November 6 — Oklahoma City, OK
In Conversation with Lou Berney

November 8 — Dallas, TX
Texas Monthly Live! with

November 13 — Houston, TX

November 18 — New York City, NY
HILL COUNTRY BBQ
In Conversation with Elise Jordan

November 19 — Washington, D.C.

November 20 — Austin, TX
In Conversation with Mimi Swartz

December 5 — Kerrville, TX

December 6 — Alpine, TX

December 14 — Dallas, TX


Praise for Big Wonderful Thing

"Exhilarating . . . As good a state history as has ever been written and a must-read for Texas aficionados."

—Kirkus, Starred Review

“Harrigan uses his stupendous storytelling skills to great effect [in Big Wonderful Thing]. He covers the state's major historical events from inventive angles, introduces newly discovered archaeological and archival research, and excels at puffing up many of Texas's larger-than-life personalities.”

—Foreword Reviews

“Harrigan describes post-Columbian Texas in novelistic style in this eloquent homage to the Lone Star state...History lovers will enjoy this packed, fascinating account of a singular state.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Stephen Harrigan has given us a wonderful new history of Texas. It tells us all we need to know and little that we don't need to know. A splendid effort.”

—Larry McMurtry

“History at its best—comprehensive, deeply informed, pleasurable, and filled with surprise and delight. It is at once a gift to the people of Texas and an unflinching explanation to the world at large of America’s most controversial state.”

—Lawrence Wright, author of God Save Texas

“No one tells the story of Texas better than Stephen Harrigan. He brings to Big Wonderful Thing contemporary and thoughtful analysis along with the most graceful writing anywhere. Harrigan pulls no punches but uses humor and pathos to examine the complexities and contradictions that have made us who we are. Finally, Texas has the rich and honest history it deserves.”

—Mimi Swartz

“Harrigan tacks brilliantly through the shifting winds of Texas history by telling a series of rip-snorting good tales.”

—S.C. Gwynne

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Monday, May 13, 2019

Our Fall | Winter 2019 Catalog is Here!

Browse our forthcoming books in our latest seasonal catalog, featuring Stephen Harrigan's Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas, Asher Price's Earl Campbell: Yards after Contact, María Hesse and Fran Ruiz's Bowie: An Illustrated Life, translated by Ned Sublette, and more! Flip through the catalog below, or download the PDF here.


All forthcoming books can be pre-ordered here on our website! Apply the discount code S19SALE during checkout at www.utexaspress.com to receive 40% off and free shipping through May 31, 2019.
www.utexaspress.com
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Monday, March 18, 2019

UT Press at the San Antonio Book Festival

On Saturday, April 6, the University of Texas Press and five of our authors will enjoy the 7th annual San Antonio Book Festival at the Central Library (600 Soledad) and Southwest School of Art in beautiful downtown San Antonio. The Festival runs from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. We'll have a booth in the Exhibitor Tent with tons of titles for sale at a great discount. There are a lot of fantastic authors in attendance (Tayari Jones! Elizabeth McCracken! Melissa Febos! Joe R. Lansdale! Lawrence Wright!), so we’ve distilled our authors' appearances into a single UT Press schedule.
Signing at 12:00 PM

Panel Location: Festival Room
Signing location: Southwest School of Art Parking Lot
Sauceda is a photographer, entrepreneur, and author of Y’all: The Definitive Guide to Being a Texan, and most recently, A Mile Above Texas. His aerial photographs of Texas were first published in a photo essay in Texas Monthly.

The Golden Ages of Television with Barbara Morgan & Maya Perez

3:15 PM - 4:00 PM
Signing at 4:15 PM

Location: Festival Room
Signing location: Southwest School of Art Parking Lot
Barbara Morgan Morgan co-founded the Austin Film Festival in 1993 and has served as the sole executive director since 1999. She developed and produces the TV and radio series Austin Film Festival’s On Story, currently airing on PBS stations nationally as well as on Public Radio International. She also coedited the previous volumes of On Story.

 Maya Perez Perez is a writer and producer who coedited the previous volumes of On Story. She produces the television series Austin Film Festival’s On Story, currently in its seventh season on PBS, which won a Lone Star EMMY Award® for Best Arts/Entertainment Program in 2014 and was nominated for an EMMY Award® in 2016.

Billy Lee Brammer: Great Texas Writer, Wayward American Son with Tracy Daugherty

3:45 PM - 4:45 PM
Signing at 5:00 PM

Location: West Terrace
Signing location: Southwest School of Art Parking Lot

 Daugherty has written biographies of Joan Didion, Joseph Heller, and Donald Barthelme, as well as four novels, six short story collections, a book of personal essays, and a collection of essays on literature and writing. His stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Paris Review online, McSweeney’s, Boulevard, Chelsea, The Georgia Review, Triquarterly, The Southern Review, and many other journals. Daugherty has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf, Artsmith, and the Vermont Studio Center. A member of PEN and the Texas Institute of Letters, he is a five-time winner of the Oregon Book Award. At Oregon State University, Daugherty helped found the Masters of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing and is now Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing, Emeritus.

Obsessed with Texas with Sarah Bird, David Norman & Mimi Swartz

3:30 PM - 4:30 PM
Signing at 4:45 PM

Location: West Terrace
Signing Location: Southwest School of Art Parking Lot
Sarah Bird’s previous novel, Above the East China Sea, was long-listed for the Dublin International Literary Award. Sarah has been selected for the Meryl Streep Screenwriting Lab, the B&N Discover Great Writers program, NPR’s Moth Radio series, the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and New York Libraries Books to Remember list. Her latest novel is titled Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen, which is the compelling, hidden story of Cathy Williams, a former slave and the only woman to ever serve with the legendary Buffalo Soldiers. She first heard Cathy Williams’ story in the late seventies while researching African-American rodeos. Her forthcoming nonfiction collection, Recent Studies Indicate: The Best of Sarah Bird, will publish April 2.

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Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Scavenger Hunt at the 2018 Texas Book Festival

This weekend, the University of Texas Press and many of our authors will enjoy the 23rd annual Texas Book Festival on the Capitol grounds in downtown Austin and environs.


 The 2018 Texas Book Festival will be extra exciting this year because we have partnered with other Texas university presses and scholarly publishers for a scavenger hunt! Enter to win a big box of books from each participating publisher (listed below), plus discounts and more!


How It Works


 Stop by the booth of any of the participating publishers to pick up your scavenger hunt worksheet. Make your way to all of the booths on the form, obtaining a stamp at each one. To gain additional entries to the contest, share your book festival experience on social media, tagging a scholarly publisher above and using the hashtag #TurnItUP. When you have collected all of your stamps and filled out the worksheet, turn it in at the University of Texas Press booth (#304 / 305) to submit your entry for a chance to win! 

 Winners will be selected and notified on Monday, October 29th by 5pm.

 Mark your calendar for University Press Week 2018—November 12th to November 17th—in celebration of the many ways university presses amplify the voices of scholars and communities, hosted by the Association of University Presses. The theme is #TurnItUP, which was selected to celebrate the work of the scholarly publishing community to find, publish, and amplify subjects, authors, and stories that might otherwise be overlooked by the book publishing community.

The University of Texas Press will be selling great Texas reads at booths #304 and #305 in the exhibitor tents along Colorado Street. We'll have tons of titles for sale at a great discount, so please stop by. There are a lot of wonderful authors in attendance this year, so we’ve distilled our authors' appearances into a single UT Press schedule (browse the full schedule here):

Saturday

2:00 PM - 2:45 PM

More info

An Oral History of Houston Rap
Author: Lance Scott Walker
Location: The Contemporary Austin-Jones Center (700 Congress Avenue)
Booksigning: 3 PM Adult Signing Tent on Congress Avenue

Lance Scott Walker and photographer Peter Beste relate stories and images from a decade spent documenting Houston’s rap scene. Through interviews and photographs with the rappers, DJs, producers, promoters, record label owners, and locations, they show us how Bayou City rap music got its distinctive character.

Follow Lance Scott Walker online: @lanceswalker | Website 

More info

3:30 PM - 4:15 PM

Author: Kenny Braun and Jay B. Sauceda
Location: The Contemporary Austin-Jones Center (700 Congress Avenue)
Moderator: Brian Sweaney
Booksigning: 4:30 PM Adult Signing Tent on Congress Avenue

More info
From high above in the seat of a Cessna and down below in a cypress swamp, photographers Jay B. Sauceda (A Mile Above Texas) and Kenny Braun (As Far As You Can See) have journeyed through Texas to document fantastic new takes on our cherished Lone Star State. Join them for a slideshow of the beautiful Texas country, presented by Texas Highways magazine.

Follow Jay B. Sauceda online: @jaybsauceda | Website 

Follow Kenny Braun online: @KennyBraunPhoto | Website 



More info

3:30 PM - 4:15 PM

Texas BBQ, Small Town to Downtown
Authors: Wyatt McSpadden
Moderator: David Courtney
Location: Central Market Cooking Tent Congress and 11th Street
Booksigning: 4:30 PM in Adult Signing Tent, Congress Avenue

Let’s talk Texas barbecue! Photographer Wyatt McSpadden shares crave-inducing images of the barbecue universe in almost every corner of Texas. He’s joined by Franklin Barbecue’s Aaron Franklin to talk about our favorite food—Texas BBQ.

3:30 PM - 4:15 PM

Authors: Amy Gentry and Jessica Hopper
Moderator: Kayleigh Hughes
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.014
Booksigning: 4:30PM in Adult Signing Tent, Congress Avenue

 Writers, music lovers, and critics Amy Gentry (Tori Amos’s Boys for Pele) and Jessica Hopper (Night Moves) pay homage to the forces and songs that shaped them, from Tori Amos’s iconic album Boys for Pele to the clubs and streets of Chicago’s youthful nightlife.

Sunday

More info
11:00 AM - 11:45 AM
Authors: Maya Perez and Barbara Morgan
Moderator: Jennifer Stayton
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.010, 1100 Congress Avenue
Booksigning: Adult Signing Tent, Congress Avenue

Based on the popular PBS-affiliated television series, Maya Perez and Wendy Calhoun share On Story: The Golden Ages of Television, a collection of insights from several decades of interviews with some of TV's best creators and writers, including Issa Rae, Garry Shandling, Noah Hawley, and many others. Moderated by Jennifer Stayton.


12:00 PM - 12:45 PM

Author: Seamus McGraw
Moderator: Asher Price
Location: Texas Tent, Congress and 8th Street
Booksigning: Adult Signing Tent, Congress Avenue

Water, and the lack thereof, has shaped Texas agriculture, environment, and culture indelibly. Join authors Hugh Fitzsimmons (A Rock Between Rivers) and Seamus McGraw (A Thirsty Land) as they discuss the impact of water on the past, present, and future of Texas. Our shared reliance on water makes this a timely, and timeless, conversation.

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM

More info
Making History: The Civil Rights Movement In Texas
Author: Virginia Cumberbatch, Leslie Blair, Judge Harriet Murphy
Moderator: Doyin Oyeniyi
Location: Texas Tent (Congress and 8th Street)
Booksigning: 2 PM, Adult Signing Tent on Congress Avenue

More info
The story of the civil rights movement in Texas is complex, momentous and highly relevant to discussions today. Harriet Murphy, the state’s first female African American judge and author of There All Honor Lies, sits down with Virginia Cumberbatch and Leslie Blair, chroniclers of the history of integration at the University of Texas in As We Saw It, to discuss the activism, effort and courage that moved equality forward in Texas.

3:00 PM - 3:45 PM

Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.010 (1100 Congress Avenue)
Booksigning: 4 PM Adult Signing Tent on Congress Avenue


Beyoncé's blockbuster album and video Lemonade became an instant soundtrack for vital new-millennium narratives about race, gender and sexuality. Professor Tinsley, who made headlines with her undergraduate course “Beyoncé Feminism, Rihanna Womanism," discusses how Beyoncé models feminism and femme-inism and how Lemonade created space for non-ciswomen to explore their own identity and feminism.

More info

3:00 PM - 3:45 PM

Authors: Martha Cotera
Location: Latinx Lit Tent 804 Congress Avenue
Booksigning: 4 PM Adult Signing Tent on Congress Avenue

A groundbreaking new anthology brings together generations of Chicana scholars and activists to offer the first wide-ranging account of women’s organizing, activism, and leadership in the Chicano Movement. Join contributors Martha Cotera and Brenda Sendejo for a look at the intellectual and political legacies of early Chicana feminism.
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Thursday, July 26, 2018

Backlist Reads: Sharon on Roy Bedichek's 'Adventures with a Texas Naturalist'


After sixty-eight years, the University of Texas Press has published approximately four-thousand, two-hundred books on subjects ranging from Indigenous anthropology to hip-hop and rap. We currently have around two-thousand, eight-hundred books available in print, largely thanks to over two-thousand previously out-of-print titles that our Digital Publishing and Reprints Manager Sharon Casteel brought back in print thanks to print-on-demand technology. We asked Sharon to review one of her favorite backlist books, Roy Bedichek's Adventures with a Texas Naturalist.

Roy Bedichek, Texas Naturalist


 Roy Bedichek's best-known book, Adventures with a Texas Naturalist, was first published in 1947, revised in 1961, and reissued with a new introduction in 1994. It's a lovely collection of observations about the natural world. At seventy years after its first publication, it's also a
An older edition of Adventures with a Texas Naturalist
fascinating record of how much this region has changed.

One of Bedichek's anecdotes is of a pair of Inca Doves nesting at the intersection of trolley wires on what is now part of the University of Texas at Austin campus. Every time a trolley passed—every fifteen minutes during most days, and every five minutes on baseball game days—it lifted the wires, and the nest, up two feet and then dropped it again as it passed. Bedichek was impressed that the doves managed to raise their fledglings despite these regular disturbances. The trolleys are long gone, but Inca Doves still live in the area. In another example, Bedichek writes about six hundred pairs of swallows nesting under the Congress Avenue bridge. The bridge was reconstructed in 1980, and now it isn't known as a home for swallows; it's known as a home for a million Mexican Free-tailed bats. Bedichek would have been delighted.

Many of Bedichek's concerns are still timely today, and not only the obvious concerns about how plants and animals are affected by human activity or how humans cope with separation from the natural world. Did you think that concerns about factory farming are a recent development? (Or, for that matter, that factory farming is a new idea?) Read Bedichek's essay "Denatured Chickens."

What I found particularly interesting about Adventures with a Texas Naturalist: He's writing about the same city and region I live in now, but much of the plant life he describes, I'm unfamiliar with. It's a fun challenge to figure out how much of my unfamiliarity is because the local ecology has changed over more than seventy years, and how much is simply my own ignorance. Take poverty weed, for example. Bedichek describes it as a frequently-seen plant, particularly on abandoned farmsteads; I've lived here for a couple of decades, and even after looking at pictures of the plant I don't recognize it. Is it less common than it used to be, or am I oblivious to its growing in my back yard?

Adventures with a Texas Naturalist is a book I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys nature writing, and especially to people living in the Austin area who want to know more about the natural history of the region.

Sharon Casteel is the Press’s digital publishing and reprints manager. She joined the Press in 1994, two months after Adventures with a Texas Naturalist’s reissue. Her yard may or may not contain poverty weed, but it definitely contains sandburs.


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