How smart are American readers? What about readers in Dallas, specifically? These questions lingered in the air last week as representatives from three nonprofit presses publishing works in translation — Chad Post of University of Rochester’s Open Letter, Kendall Storey of New York City-based Archipelago Books and Will Evans of…
Listening is a simple art: Keep your mouth closed, look at the person talking to you, move your head up and down a few times and ask a follow-up question that demonstrates you understood. That’s about it, and yet it’s increasingly hard to master. This is a problem since texting…
Just a few years ago, a serious discussion of the “literary” scene in Dallas would have felt a little forced. Our fair city is known for a lot of things — well, at least a few — but breeding, attracting, inspiring and keeping writers of literature has not been one…
You will think you know what Target in the Night is when you begin reading it, but you’ll be wrong. Ricardo Piglia — the author of this latest release by Dallas’ Deep Vellum publishing house, seamlessly translated from Spanish by Sergio Waisman — sets you down in 1970s Argentina. A…
If you’re hunting for real, down-and-dirty fantasy football tips, and the Dallas Observer arts and culture blog doesn’t strike you as the best possible place to find them, you’re onto us. We don’t have any of those for you. Please stop caring about sports so much and put that brain…
There is no better season for reading a book than winter. The cold chases you inside to the respite of a warm coffee, the licks of a freshly lit fire in the fireplace. In your hand? A new book you’ll devour to keep your mind occupied. But in this winter…
You hear a lot of things about Austin’s Fun Fun Fun Fest, namely that it’s the city’s all-around-best music event, and that it’s a different and specifically less corporate type of festival. We can agree with the former — its 10th anniversary this past weekend functioned remarkably well despite rain…
When Richard Garcia was a kid constantly drawing his favorite comic book characters, he knew he someday wanted to make a living as an artist. But even in art school, where he spent four years working on photo-realistic drawing with graphite and charcoal, he never considered tattooing a viable option…
The Crazy Mouse, a popular and relatively tame roller coaster at the State Fair of Texas, received some unwelcome attention this week when a wheel came off the ride, striking one of its operators in the legs and landing her at Baylor Hospital. She was released the same day and…
Have you ever thought it would be fun to view Earth from space, the whole world seeming so small and delicate you could hold it in the palm of your hand? Well, you can simulate that experience and party while you do it at the fourth Diorama-o-Rama from 4-8 p.m…
Fall creeps into Dallas this month with everything pumpkin and, if we’re lucky, glorious weather. The temperatures are dropping below 80 degrees more often and you might just see a few leaves turn to orange. And if you find this weather, makes your want to curl up with a good…
If you’re on the highway Thursday afternoon and you notice a straight couple on a motorcycle, and the girl looks suspiciously like Tibby from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, don’t strain your neck looking. Yes, that’s actress Amber Tamblyn. And no, that role is not the most interesting thing about…
Welcome to 10 Brilliant Dallas Women, a pop-up online series about 10 awesome women making Dallas a better place to live. Haylee Ryan has a policy that when an opportunity lands on her plate from out of the blue, she seriously considers it. And that’s more or less how the…
It’s better to be lucky than smart, the saying goes, but being both is best of all, if you can pull it off. The first season of thinkspeak, the summer lecture series produced jointly by KERA and AT&T Performing Arts Center, managed to do that, wrapping up earlier this month…
When we heard Exxxotica was coming to town, we imagined a cross between Willa Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and the Playboy Mansion. Lights would be low, porn stars would be just as attractive in person, walls would be draped in velvet and around every corner we’d find a Champagne fountain. (Basically,…
Some musicals are plot-driven, with a few numbers interspersed here and there, but a musical about one of the most beloved record labels of all time and its founder should have lots of them. In that sense, Motown: The Musical surely delivers — perhaps even beyond what is desired or…
In 2005, a political party called the “Rent Is Too Damn HIgh” took off in New York, and last year it expanded, endorsing candidates in D.C. Maybe it’s time for us Dallasites to stand on our tippy-toes and wave really big toward the northeast. Rising rents and home prices in…
Last month, Dallas-based author Sarah Hepola released her first book, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget. The memoir focuses on Hepola’s alcoholism and ultimate recovery, written with a focus on her frequent blackouts. In a tone that’s funny, intimate and often heart-wrenchingly sincere, Hepola shares the early childhood…
In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 20 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Can Turkyilmaz. “At this point I’ve become about 97 percent authentic,” says Rawlins Gilliland, the master storyteller who turned 70 in April and is coming off what…
In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 20 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Can Turkyilmaz. Kate Canales is a problem solver. The current problem she’s working out? Building a master’s in design and innovation, the first of its kind, at…
From the first taste of her grandmother’s boudin, Misti Norris knew she wanted to cook. “It blew my mind,” she says of the traditional Cajun sausage. “That’s one of the first things she taught me how to make.” She started learning everything she could about cooking and took her first…
Podcasts are having a moment. Thanks in no small part to Serial, which of course exists in no small part thanks to This American Life, which reignited oral storytelling in a big way. There is no end to the kinds of podcasts popping up all over the Internet these days. Comedians…
