A Week in #LiteraryDallas
In the new #LiteraryDallas (check the hashtag, The Wild Detectives & us are spreading the love, get into it!), life is packed with literary events.
Tonight, the Austin-based Writers’ League of Texas is presenting a panel discussion on the topic: “Being a Good Literary Citizen” with authors Sanderia Faye, Karen Blumenthal, Jeramey Kraatz, and our very own founder (editor, publisher, translator in his own right) Will Evans, at the Half Price Books Flagship location on Northwest Highway at 6:30pm.
Then tomorrow night, Tuesday January 12th, join us at The Wild Detectives for Indie Publisher Night, with editors from three of America’s greatest publishers of literature in translation—Chad Post of Open Letter Books, Kendall Storey of Archipelago Books, and Will Evans of Deep Vellum—who will give a glimpse behind the scenes of how four of the most renowned indie presses in American uncover and cultivate such international literary sensations as Karl Ove Knausgaard, Anne Garétta, and Carlos Labbé. Here’s a preview of what to expect from the evening, from an interview with a bookseller from Houston’s Brazos Bookstore, hosting an indie press night tonight. Curious about what distinguishes indie publishers from their corporate or university peers? Curious about why translation? Come ask us! The discussion will start at 7:30pm.
On Wednesday night, come back to The Wild Detectives for the Chilean literary sensation Carlos Labbé reading from his newest novel Loquela, published by Open Letter Books, and then in conversation with his editor, Chad Post (who, you may remember, is our founder Will Evans’s publishing mentor!). The event will kick off at 7:30pm.
Then on Thursday, again at The Wild Detectives, Wordspace presents our city’s very own David Searcy will discuss his newest book of essays, Shame and Wonder, just published by Random House (!), with Ben Fountain. Gay Talese is a David Searcy fan:
“Strange, wonderful, and full of curiosity and nostalgia, David Searcy’s essays chip away at the world around us to lay bare the beauty and sadness at the heart of it all.”
The New York Times loves David Searcy too, saying in their recent review of Shame and Wonder:
“The novel served Woolf the way the essay does Searcy: as a mode within which to pursue that shock, to give form to the formless, to make deeply felt and dramatic the place of each well-apprehended moment — each geranium and writing desk — in a unified, timeless whole. Searcy stages his fond, acutely critical argument with all manner of formal boundaries, of course, on pages that are square and uniform: each one a window.”
Two of the greatest writers our city have ever known in discussion of their literary crafts and the inspiration for their creations?!? Sign me up! Be there, 7pm!
This is just the tip of the iceberg, so many events all the time…check our calendar, or Art & Seek, for more information on these and future literary events coming up!
And if you missed it over the weekend, Tram 83 was written up in The Guardian with an excerpt and some high praise, check it out!
“Tram 83, the Congolese novel that’s wowing the literary world…a critique of neocolonialism featuring a cast of drunkards and dreamers, is the dazzling voice that DRC has been waiting for.”
And the novel was recently listed as one of the best African books of 2015 by the popular blog Afridiaspora!! We’re just back from the #MLA16 convention, where we had a ton of interest in the book from Africanist scholars, look for Tram 83 on university syllabi across North America in the coming year! If you’re interested in a reading copy of Tram 83 to consider for course adoption, contact us!
