Books
A New Book Celebrates the Work of Architect John S. Chase
Chase was the state’s first licensed Black architect and the first Black person to receive a master’s degree from the University of Texas.
John S. Chase is the Texas architect you wish you knew about—or perhaps should have already heard of. Inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright with his own ...Read More
The Flâneur of Downtown Dallas
Zac Crain has spent four years getting to know the nooks and crannies of the Big D, which he documents in his new book, A Pedestrian’s Recent History of Dallas.
Within Texas circles, Dallas gets a bad rap. It is, some say, not as weird as Austin, as sophisticated as Houston, as beautiful as San Antonio, as historic as E...Read More
Remembering a Jewish Upbringing in Meyerland, Texas
An excerpt from David Biespiel’s memoir A Place of Exodus.
In his new book, A Place of Exodus: Home, Memory, and Texas, David Biespiel remembers growing up in Meyerland, Houston’s historically Jewish neighborhood; lea...Read More
How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment
An upcoming documentary and book mark the suffrage centennial, focused on Texas contributions.
In the decade leading up to 1920, suffragists in Texas won a series of dramatic victories for women’s voting rights. They organized to impeach a governor, con...Read More
A New Short-Story Collection Imagines a Texas Town’s Secession
With shades of George Saunders, Why Visit America manages to be both fun and socially perceptive.
“There wasn’t anything special about us,” says the collective narrator of the title story in Matthew Baker’s Why Visit America. “We were just an avera...Read More
Improbable, Prophetic Houston
Two new books about the Bayou City—one about its people, one about its places—explore how the fourth largest city in the U.S. became itself.
Our cities sometimes appear inevitable. Once something is built, it’s difficult to remember what the landscape was like before—before a highway cut through ...Read More
Announcing the 2020 Insider Prize Winners
The winners were selected by guest judge Justin Torres.
This post is co-published with American Short Fiction. For the last three years, the Austin-based magazine American Short Fiction has sponsored a contest for in...Read More
‘A Saint From Texas’ Gets the Lone Star State Right
Edmund White chronicles the coming-of-age stories of two Texas sisters in a vivid new novel.
When we first meet Yvonne and Yvette, the twin sisters at the heart of Edmund White’s A Saint From Texas, they seem straight out of The Last Picture Show. The...Read More
‘After the Last Border’ Reveals the Human Cost of Trump’s Draconian Immigration Policies
A new book from Austin writer Jessica Goudeau shows that U.S. refugee resettlement policy has always shifted with the political winds of change.
In 2017, the Trump administration’s Muslim ban effectively set U.S. immigration and refugee resettlement policy back more than 100 years. Trump’s reactionar...Read More
In ‘Crooked Hallelujah,’ Kelli Jo Ford Explores How Pain is Passed Down Through Families
Ford’s debut follows the lives of a mother and daughter who move from Oklahoma to North Texas.
What makes a place home? For the women in Kelli Jo Ford’s debut novel, Crooked Hallelujah, home is a complex, contentious thing. Their homes are comforting or...Read More