Books

Whether your hands are weathered from snapping or you’re new to the sport, slam poetry is a great point of access to art, culture and a passion for the human condition. Poets take stories of love and heartbreak, unique perspectives on color and gender or political angst, bottle it up…

When he’s not shape-shifting into a part-time Bedford library assistant, Bret McCormick writes and edits hellacious horror stories. McCormick, along with E.R. Bills, another Texas author, began compiling an annual anthology of dreadful Lone Star-tinged tales about four years ago called Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers that’s been…

Arturo Torres has the best reason for missing my first phone call: His son was asleep on top of him. “Sorry, bro,” the illustrator is quick to say. “I’m a father now, so you know how it goes.” I do not, in fact, know how it goes, but anyone who…

After the reboot was set to take place in Austin, Good Christian Bitches is headed back to its home: Dallas. Good Christian Bitches, Kim Gatlin’s “semi-autobiographical” novel set in Hillside Park — an obvious riff on Highland Park — was turned into a TV series starring Leslie Bibb and Kristin Chenoweth in 2012…

Monday, October 28 Ghost Tour DallasDon’t let the sparkling uptown high-rise condo buildings fool you: Dallas can be creepy as hell. (We have a giant eyeball sculpture in the middle of downtown, for Christ’s sake.) And what better night to discover how dramatically haunted the city really is than Halloween?…

Monday, October 14 Sontag: Her Life and WorkThe DMA Arts & Letters Live series will feature a talk with biographer Benjamin Moser about his newest book, Sontag: Her Life and Work, which dissects the words and life of essayist, playwright, filmmaker and activist Susan Sontag — who examined controversial topics…

Tuesday, October 8 Four Hours of Fury Author and U.S. Army vet James Fenelon will sign copies of his book Four Hours of Fury: The Untold Story of World War II’s Largest Airborne Invasion and the Final Push into Nazi Germany, a nonfiction account of … well, read the title,…

Budget travel has seen a surge of popularity in recent years. Bare-bones airlines promise flights to Europe for less than your weekly paycheck. Airbnb makes it easy to find a comfortable spot to stay literally anywhere. A result of this popularity is an increase in advertising for travel. Social media…

A friendless teenage girl with superpowers and an aversion to pig’s blood. A group of sociopathic children with an addiction to corn. A vampire who chills in a crate only to crawl out at night to spread a rare disease. A killer clown from outer space lingering like a pedophile…

Imagine being a neo-grunge musician and receiving a letter from Kurt Cobain that your band’s latest record is a masterpiece. Shaun Hamill is making that kind of splash in the horror and fiction literary world. On Sept. 17, his first novel, A Cosmology Of Monsters (published by Pantheon Books in New…

Now is the time to get your creative projects off the ground. The Dallas Public Library is opening three maker spaces for creative types and novices to launch storytelling projects, make their own clothing and preserve their family history. Dubbed Creative Spaces, the three studios, a Story Center, Fiber Arts Workroom…

Monday, September 9 Faiths in Conversation These days, it must take a ton of faith and a secure notion of where you stand in the afterlife to bring together people of all faiths to share information about their religions. Shoot, even before the Trumpian age of meanness, religion was a…

Monday, September 2 Garland Labor Day Parade and Car ShowDo you enjoy Labor Day, summer’s last hurrah and a time to kick back with beer and barbecue? Well, you’d better get your pleasure in now, because you just never know. America could elect a socialist, globalist president in 2020, and…

Plastered under any lovey-dovey picture of a couple kissing, or traveling, or doing ridiculously contorted workout moves, it’s likely you’ll see the words #relationshipgoals. And while we know social media serves as more of a highlight reel than an accurate depiction of what a true relationship is like, people double…

The year was 2015, and America was having a conversation about gender. In Dallas, the emergent press Deep Vellum Publishing partnered with a French author to publish a book all about that very topic. The catch: author Anne Garréta’s book Sphinx first hit shelves in 1986. “It was kind of…

Being globally recognizable by one’s first name is certainly a prime indicator that an artist’s star shines with a level of brightness that only a few musicians could even imagine. But with apologies to Madonna, Prince and Elvis, even more rare are the legends strong enough to survive in the…

LeakyCon, one of the biggest Harry Potter conventions in the U.S., is turning the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center into a temporary Hogwarts Castle from Aug 9-11. The question is: Are you a big enough fan of all things Potter to warrant buying a ticket? Let’s find out by going…

Close to 80 graves, some of them tiny and nameless, rest near some old oak trees along the southern edge of the University of Texas at Arlington. There, at Doug Russell Park, near the intersection of Cooper and Mitchell Streets, lay the remnants of a story that played out during…

Organizers of a Denton event hope to see anarchists flock to their city this weekend. Their goal isn’t to protest, but to invite others to learn about their cause. “We want to bring the radical community in North Texas, and/or regionally, closer together. And (with) the local community, we want…

It was a cultural explosion that still reverberates today. The 1920’s Harlem Renaissance was a period of legendary creative output. A group of poets, writers, painters, sculptors, dancers and musicians that sprouted the likes of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B. Du Bois. According to Alain Locke, a writer,…

While the rest of us blame autocorrect for our misspellings, kids are still taking spelling to new competitive levels, and for the first time ever in its 92 years, the Scripps National Spelling Bee Championship had an eight-way tie. Three of the winners came from the North Texas area, and…