Whenever I cover the Texas Book Festival, it's with an unspoken acknowledgment that any single person purporting to cover such a sprawling event is a liar. I figure I'm able to sample maybe 10 percent of the weekend's events, and...
Sales were clearly brisk at the Barnes & Noble tent, where the good people running things told me that the big sellers included many you'd expect -- Buzz Aldrin, Margaret Atwood, Gail Collins, Richard Russo, Jeannette Walls. Long lines were...
Do not tell Barbara Ehrenreich to have a nice day. She's not technically against it, but her book, Bright-Sided, How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America is not for the blindly optimistic. Ehrenreich talked about her book...
My nominee for best line of the festival goes to Luis Alberto Urrea. The author of nto the Beautiful North was on a panel with fiction writers who have dealt with Mexico. Urrea, son of a Mexican father and American...
I've ended up at a lot of sessions that have an Apocalyptic air to them, so it was nice to stop in on Jeannette Walls (whom Chris Vognar wrote about recently) and get some inspiration. Walls, as Chris' article noted,...
I slipped away from this morning's David Wroblewski session (I'd interviewed him last night for a story that will run ahead of his upcoming Dallas appearance) to see what was happening in one of the sessions at the deepest end...
Thinking of writing a family memoir? Be ready for some cold shoulders - from your family. That was the word from Tad Friend and Danzy Senna, who joined with moderator Blake Bailey for a Saturday panel by turns sad...
Margaret Atwood had a crowd of about 750 people waiting to hear her at the Paramount Theater, and the only person who had reason to be less than delighted was her interviewer, Benjamin Moser. She made him work. Luckily, Moser...
Andrew Ross Sorkin turned in maybe my favorite presentation of the day as he discussed his book on the economic collapse, Too Big to Fail. I'm not particularly a junkie of financial journalism. But I am an admirer of reporters...
I have to confess to being somewhat disappointed in Buzz Aldrin's generally well-received memoir, Magnificent Desolation. I respect and admire his willingness to discuss his battles with alcoholism and depression after his famous mission, but it certainly felt to me...
On a crisp fall morning in Austin, I thought I would start of the day with an uplifting chat on whether everything I write about is doomed to collapse. (Aside: If books are dead, my office is gonna smell awfully...
If you're looking for information about authors headed to Austin this weekend, here's a roundup of some of the coverage from the books pages of The Dallas Morning News. We have interviews with Gail Collins, Jeannette Walls and Richard Russo....
I'm packing up and headed down I-35 to the Texas Book Festival tomorrow. You can watch for updates here and on Twitter, where the official tag of the day is #TXBF. News is officially breaking already, as the Writers' League...
The Texas Book Festival just announced that Julia Glass has canceled her appearance because of illness....
In announcing the lineup of the Texas Book Festival yesterday, Laura Bush did offer a few peeks into the reading habits of the former first family, just not their home. As was noted in this morning's print edition, the former...
The Texas Book Festival lineup was announced last night at the home of Laura Bush. More on that in a moment; here is our story about the highlights. And below is the list of authors, as provided by the festival....
Austin has the Texas Book Festival. But Dallas has Laura Bush. And festival organizers like to emphasize that the festival celebrates all of Texas, not just the city where the former first lady established the event in 1995. All of...
The National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. has announced a lineup that includes John Grisham, John Irving, Jodi Picoult, Judy Blume, Julia Alvarez, Ken Burns and Gwen Ifill. You've got until Sept. 26 to make your way there. A complete...
David LaBounty produces one of Plano's finest literary journals, The First Line. TFL is coming up on its 10th year, which is quite amazing for any publication of any kind, when you get right down to it. But he always...
There's a long road to Dallas stretching out ahead (hey, that sounds catchy -- maybe I should record a country record while I'm here in Austin), so let me post a roundup of observations before I head out on that...
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