I last saw Roy Blount Jr. at the Texas Book Festival, where he was amusing in discussing Alphabet Juice. Frankly, he was better Saturday afternoon in Grapevine. The master of digression -- a title I suspect he wears proudly --...
Julia Reed, author of The House on First Street and Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena among other books, was a big hit Saturday afternoon at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference in Grapevine. By the time Reed...
The Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference is offering $15,000 in prizes to narrative writers who take part in the annual gathering. Personal essays, reporting-and-research-based narratives and book manuscripts are eligible. The best work will be published in the journal Ten Spurs,...
As always when writing about the Mayborn, I really wanted to spin this note as a narrative: "Feeling fatigued yet doggedly determined to serve the readers of Texas, the editor cracked his knuckles, sipped his coffee and faced his computer."...
It should come as no surprise that the president of the Authors Guild is in favor of book-buying. But said president, Roy Blount Jr., makes his case better than most: "We don't want bookstores to die. Authors need them, and...
The biggest crowd I saw today was for Roy Blount Jr. and Peter Sagal, who drew several hundred people to the Senate chamber -- so many that people were turned away, and some who made it in had to be...
After a nice chat with Susan Orlean (actual detail to follow, I promise), I have slipped into the Roy Blount/Peter Sagal session. Which took some doing, because a perturbed trooper was shooing the overflow crowd out of the Senate chamber....
Our review of Alphabet Juice appears in today's Guide Sunday and on GuideLive. If you're interested in catching Roy Blount Jr. in Austin, he'll be with NPR's Peter Sagal 3:30 Saturday in the Senate Chamber. Details are posted here. You...
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