Autumn in Dallas Is a Many Sun-Splashed Thing
BACK from Carmen Boullosa’s incredible book tour across the state of Texas. Five days. Six readings. Four cities. Hundreds and hundreds of readers reached. Copies of TEXAS for sale across the state now ahead of the December publication date. The tour was unbelievable. Thank you to everyone who came to a reading, who put on the events, who planned the festivals, who teach the kids, who love to read…it was amazing!
Back in the Dallas world, join me tomorrow night for a discussion of the future of books, of reading, and literary life at the Allen Public Library with my good friend Mike Merschel. This talk should be super interesting and engaging. It’ll be a good way to learn a little bit about how the wide-ranging publishing industry works, and hell, I’ll probably learn as much as anybody in the room by listening to Mike speak and answer your questions:
What will come of books? Of book reviews? Of reading? Michael Merschel, editor of book- related articles for The Dallas Morning News, and Will Evans, founder of Dallas’ Deep Vellum Publishing, offer their insights on book trends at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30, at the Allen Public Library.
And if you are in New York City, make sure to head to McNally Jackson at 8pm tonight as Carmen Boullosa & the translator of TEXAS, Samantha Schnee (a native Texan who now lives in London), discuss the book and the translation process as part of the amazing Bridge Series, sponsored the PEN American Center.
While in Austin over the weekend, a wonderful article ran by Liliana Valenzuela about how few Mexican works of literature are translated and published in English. The article originally ran in Spanish in the Austin American-Statesman’s ¡Ahora Si! Spanish-language supplement (available here), and then ran in English in the paper over the weekend (read the article in English here). I particularly like this article because it is: A) In the Metro/Life/Community portion of the paper; B) It talks about the larger issue of how few works of literature are published in translation; and C) It features a prominent and awesome photo of Carmen as the centerpiece to this short but powerful look at the issue of literature in translation (okay, secretly I like that I got a couple good quotes in, including the “That’s absurd!” and the last paragraph, I love it):
Austin American-Statesman (Oct. 26, 2014)
I’m knee-deep in the editing process for all of the amazing spring novels we are putting out, and I’m getting a crash-course in literary history from Sergio Pitol in the process. This is so amazing. Signed a new author from Morocco I keep teasing, can’t wait to tell you all about him soon. More authors, more books, more info, more everything coming soon.
And for those who are curious, we are developing a new website that we hope to have live sometime in late 2014. Or early 2015. But it’ll be awesome. Just you wait. I promise. Seriously.
In the meantime, I took tons and tons of pictures on Carmen Boullosa’s Texas book tour, but here are some highlights from an unforgettable week. Thank you to everyone, again, who came out, who bought a book, who supported literary culture in Texas. Y’all are amazing. Don’t miss out, order your copy of TEXAS from me, or head to one of these fine bookstores to buy a copy in person (The Wild Detectives in Dallas; The Twig in San Antonio; Brazos Bookstore in Houston; Barnes & Noble Arboretum in Austin; McNally Jackson in NYC), preorder on Amazon, or wait until December and buy the book from your favorite local indie store!!!
