Postscripts
Curioser and Curioser
By Clay Smith, Fri., Feb. 27, 1998
Texas Monthly senior editor Gary Cartwright will have his book Dirty Dealing reprinted by Cinco Puntos Press of El Paso in June. And Bobby Byrd, Cinco Puntos publisher, has a new book of poetry, How to Eat Stuffed Fish in Juarez: Poems From Armaggedon, to be published in November, just in time for the Texas Book Festival, which this week begins sending out about 20 initial author invitations to this year's festival...
The Texas Center for Writers has invited poet August Kleinzahler to be visiting faculty for spring 1999. His new book of poetry, Green Sees Things in Waves, will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux this spring; readers may know him by the title of his most recent book of poetry, Red Sauce Whiskey and Snow...
And for you literary people who may have been hibernating of late, Southwest Texas State's creative writing program recently received some good news. Of the $17.5 million Austin residents Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte donated to SWT, $5 million was set aside to fund five endowed chairs which 31 departments at the university competed to host. The creative writing program won one of the chairs and so on January 23, SWT placed an ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education announcing the chair. Tom Grimes, director of the program, whose second play New World is about to be produced in L.A. and then Madrid and Buenos Aires, has spoken seriously with some very high caliber writers like Richard Ford, Michael Ondaatje (yes, that Ondaatje), Robert Stone, Ann Beattie, and Lorrie Moore, among others. Basic questions are still up in the air, like when the chair will begin (fall `98 or spring `99) and whether it will function on a permanent or rotating basis; in addition to teaching, the chairholder will likely be expected to hold public talks and lectures...
Austin Family magazine has reason to celebrate, having received two honorable mention awards from the 1997 Parenting Publications of America Excellence Awards for general excellence and feature writing.
Book news for "Postscripts" must be received at least one week prior to issue date. Mail to: The Austin Chronicle, PO Box 49066, Austin, TX, 78765; or fax 458-6910.