In “Language Saved,” one of eight short stories in Calligraphy Lesson: The Collected Stories, Russian author Mikhail Shishkin writes, “The experience of a language and the life lived through it turns languages with different pasts into non-communicating vessels.” Translation is mutation, he insists, which makes Deep Vellum’s release of the…
Picture with me, for a moment, a hypothetical. You’re nearing the end of your life, a fabulously intellectual life. A life people will want to read about (like I said, this is purely a hypothetical). It’s rapidly becoming apparent that you’re going to have to write about it, since people…
George Henson first heard rumors of a man interested in starting a translation publishing house in Dallas about two years ago. Henson was teaching Spanish at the University of Texas at Dallas and working toward a PhD in Humanities with an emphasis on literary and translation studies. He reached out…
One of the most striking passages of Mary Helen Specht’s debut novel Migratory Animals comes in the final pages. After hundreds of pages in which she weaves together a story of friendships, family, love and loss, the novel’s protagonist, Flannery, reflects on her attitude arriving in Nigeria as a scientist,…
Between 1987 and 1989, Nathan Nipper, the Bedford-based author of Dallas ‘Til I Cry: Learning to Love Major League Soccer, was a soccer-obsessed 12 year-old son of missionary parents on the go. In those two impactful years, the Nippers moved from Rose Bud, Arkansas (population 202 at that time), to…
Luke Goebel has something of a reputation in Tyler, Texas. When he goes for a haircut, say, the barber is likely to know him, even if they haven’t met. Word of the eccentric writer spreads throughout the smallish East Texas town via the parents of his students. “People go, ‘Oh,…
Local author Merritt Tierce is quite the media darling these days. After publishing her debut novel Love Me Back, Tierce has made the rounds on TV, been compared to Joan Didion by one critic, and perhaps most famously, told The Dallas Morning News about the time she donated Rush Limbaugh’s…
In downtown Portland, Powell’s Books stretches the length of a city block. Inside, hundreds of wooden bookshelves stuffed to the brim with everything from classic literature to engineering manuals keep crowds of regulars and tourists engrossed. When you go to Portland, you have to go to Powell’s. Even readers who…
Merritt Tierce spent her mid-twenties waiting tables at a Dallas steakhouse. She was a writer, sure, but she spent most of her days serving the elite and struggling toward 30. That this experience would serve as formative life experience and become fodder for her first novel, Love Me Back surprises…
Tonight in Denton at Dan’s Silverleaf local author Darin Bradley will officially release his second novel Chimpanzee complete with a live rendition of the audioplay of the novel. Bradley released his first novel, Noise, through Random House in 2010 while he was still working as a lead video game writer…
Let’s say you took a six-month-long apprenticeship as a publisher with Open Letter Books — a small independent publishing house at The University of Rochester in New York, dedicated to bringing great works from around the world to the English-speaking world. Now let’s say you move to Dallas in 2013,…
The Internet has not been kind to the printed word. It’s deformed language, crippled print journalism, and perhaps most depressing of all, it’s suffocating books. You know, the bouquets of paper you check out from libraries; the gently used paperback you rescue from Half-Priced Books; America’s next great novel available…
It’s 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning and Dr. Charissa Terranova is regretting last night’s purchase of the iPhone 5. “I’m really not happy with Apple as a company right now,” she explains. “I may take it back and get the new Samsung.” This week she may be deliberating on her…
It’s unclear how we got quite so lucky, but indie film’s most famous mug, Parker Posey, will read for Art and Letters Live’s 2014 Texas Bound series. The popular showcase pulls well-known actors (Tommy Lee Jones, Kathy Bates and Larry Hagman have all previously lent their voices) to read short…
This magician’s crate wouldn’t quite fit as a carry-on. It’s a custom-built blend of wood and metal, perched on casters, painted black and decorated by a white rope pattern that crisscrosses its width. It serves as a sculptural rolling library for the 12 books hiding inside. They slide in and…
If you didn’t get enough literary nerdiness at last weekend’s FenCon, never fear. The indie publishing industry descends on Dallas this weekend with vengeance. Indie Vengeance. As in IndieVengeance Day. Get it? No? Either way it goes down Saturday, October 12 at Half-Price Books (5803 East Northwest Highway)…
The Wes Anderson Collection, an artful and comprehensive new coffee table book released today, sheds light on the popular auteur’s films. Featuring a generous spread of rare, behind-the-scenes photos, an introduction by novelist Michael Chabon, critical essays and much more, the book is a must for Anderson fans. The book’s…
It’s well into August and you haven’t made a dent in that super-ambitious summer reading list you made for yourself back in May, have you? Whether you aimed to catch up on the classics or relax with the latest beach-reads, time is just not on your side. Poolside boozing and…
We momentarily empathized with Justin Bieber as he made the walk of shame to a chorus of boos to accept the first-ever Milestone Award at the 2013 Billboard Music Awards, defeating Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars. “I’m 19 years old…I think I’m doing a pretty good job,” he said defensively…
I’m not quite finished with Philipp Meyer’s just-released Texas epic The Son, but unless the ending is a complete disaster I think it’s safe to say it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read, and certainly one of my favorite books about and set in the Lone Star State…
I read something in Esquire the other day that caught me off-guard. It was about how, despite the near-constant bemoaning of our culture’s waning attention span and the media industry’s cratering business model, we’re actually in a Golden Age for writers. The article, by Stephen Marche, makes a pretty good…
Any discussion of the Holocaust is a necessarily sensitive one, with the capacity to get tense. Toss in the possibility of an American technology giant working in collusion with the Nazis to track the inhabitants of the death camps, and you’ve got the makings for one intriguing and possibly uncomfortable…
