Meet the historic Texas writer, Jan Reid and buy his new book, Let the People In: The Life and Times of Ann Richards.

In Let the People In: The Life and Times of Ann Richards,  Jan Reid draws on his long friendship with Richards, interviews with her family and many of her closest associates, her unpublished correspondence with longtime companion Bud Shrake, and extensive research to tell a very personal, human story of Ann Richards’s remarkable rise to power as a liberal Democrat in a conservative Republican state. Reid traces the whole arc of Richards’s life, beginning with her youth in Waco, her marriage to attorney David Richards, her frustration and boredom with being a young housewife and mother in Dallas, and her shocking encounters with Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. He follows Richards to Austin and the wild 1970s scene and describes her painful but successful struggle against alcoholism. He tells the full, inside story of Richards’s rise from county office and the state treasurer’s office to the governorship, where she championed gun control, prison reform, environmental protection, and school finance reform, and he explains why she lost her reelection bid to George W. Bush, which evened his family’s score and launched him toward the presidency. Reid describes Richards’s final years as a world traveler, lobbyist, public speaker, and mentor and inspiration to office holders, including Hillary Clinton. His nuanced portrait reveals a complex woman who battled her own frailties and a good-old-boy establishment to claim a place on the national political stage and prove “what can happen in government if we simply open the doors and let the people in.”

Jan Reid is a contributing editor for Texas Monthly and author of many wonderful books about Texas subject matter–music to moguls, including  His work has also appeared in Esquire, GQ, Slate, and The New York Times, among other publications.

His many works of non-fiction include The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, Close Calls, The Bullet Meant for Me and Texas Tornado: The Times and Music of Doug Sahm, legendary Texas musician.

Richard Dobson is a Texas singer-songwriter from Tyler and former roughneck who gamboled around Galveston and Houston, then Austin and Nashville, before spending the past 13 years living in Switzerland and playing all over Europe. That’s the shorthand. The long version is this fine piece of contemporary literature, Pleasures of the High Rhine – A Texas Singer in Exile.”
Read complete review
by Joe Nick Potoski.

Richard Dobson (born March 19, 1942) is an American singer/songwriter.

He was born in Tyler, Texas. He spent time in the 1970s with Townes Van Zandt, Mickey White, Rex “Wrecks” Bell, Guy Clark,Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell and ”Skinny” Dennis Sanchez.

Although his name is not prominent, some of his songs were recorded and co-written by famous artists like David Allan Coe (“Piece of Wood and Steel”), Guy Clark (“Forever, for Always, for Certain”; “Old Friends”), Lacy J. Dalton (“Old Friends”), Nanci Griffith (“Ballad of Robin Winter-Smith”) and Kelly Willis (“Hole in My Heart”). His song “Baby Ride Easy” was recorded as a duet by Carlene Carter and Dave Edmunds as well as by Billie Jo Spears and Del Reeves. It has also been recorded by the Carter Family. For the TV show Christmas On The Road in Montreux in 1984 it was performed by Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. He wrote an autobiographic book about his years with Townes Van Zandt and the others mentioned before, called The Gulf Coast Boys. Pleasures of the High Rhine — A Texas Singer in Exile, was published in February 2012. He’s also irregularly publishing a newsletter called Don Ricardo’s Life & Times which is mostly about personal experiences. It used to be printed but now is published on his homepage.

He moved to Switzerland in 1999 and has been living there ever since. In November 2005 he recorded an album in Nashville with Thomm Jutz, a friend and musician he played and recorded with in Europe. The album On Thistledown Wind was released in 2006. The following album Back at the Red Shack was recorded at the same studio in Houston, Texas where his first two albums were recorded. For the recording of his album From a Distant Shore he returned to Thomm Jutz’s studio in Nashville again in 2008.

Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Of Hurston’s four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.

SANDERIA FAYE is a PhD. candidate and professor in the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas.  She received an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction from Arizona State University, and a BS degree in Accounting from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.  She taught English Composition for The United States Navy (PACE) through Central Texas College.

An excerpt from her novel Mourning Bench appeared in Mythium Literary Journal, and in Arsnick:  The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, by Jennifer Wallach and John Kirk, that led to her moderating the grassroots panel for the Arkansas Civil Rights Symposium during the Freedom Riders 50^th Anniversary.  Her work received “Best Of” honors at the 2011 Eckerd College Writers’ Conference, Co –Directors Dennis Lehane and Sterling Watson, where the winning excerpt was published in SABAL Literary Journal.

She received scholarships to Vermont, Writers Studio, Hurston/Wright Writers Conference, The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, Callaloo Writers Workshop, and Martha’s Vineyard Writers Residency.

Her novel Mourning Bench will be published January 2014.

Robert Jackson Bennett, an Austin-based writer of fantasy and science fiction. Bennett’s first novel, Mr. Shivers, won the Shirley Jackson Award, and his second novel, The Company Man, won special citations from both the Philip K. DIck Foundation and the Edgar Awards. He will be reading from and signing his new book, American Elsewhere, at an event co-sponsored by Barnes and Noble

Author of over 20 plays, Octavio Solis, is considered by many to be one of the most prominent Latino playwrights in America. With works that both draw on and transcend the Mexican-American experience, he is a writer and director whose style defies formula, examining the darkness, magic and humor of humanity with brutal honesty and characteristic intensity. His imaginative and ever-evolving work continues to cross cultural and aesthetic boundaries, solidifying him as one of the great playwrights of our time.  Octavio’s WordSpace appearance is in conjunction with Kitchen Dog Theater‘s rehearsal for his play Se Llama Cristina, scheduled as part of the New Works Festival Main Stage, May 24-June 22.

In conjunction with their exhibition at Mighty Fine Arts, The Amazing Hancock Brothers return to WordSpace for another highly entertaining presentation of music and their written works. The spoken word program will also feature  Clay Stinnett and Matt Bagley, other artists incorporating text into their visual work and have volumes more to say.

Club Bolaño is not a formerly luxuriant resort gone a little to pot and decadence. It’s a monthly program designed by Joe Milazzo for the obsessed fans of Roberto Bolaño, (28 April 1953 – 15 July 2003), a Chilean novelist and poet. In 1999, Bolaño won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666.

We will be starting “cold”, i.e., as far as we know, no one has done any reading in advance, the program for this inaugural discussion focuses on RB’s bio and a basic critical background for his work (his place in Latin American literature and his “vogue” here in the English-speaking world especially).

The remainder of the meeting would then be dedicated to reading and discussing a few of Bolano’s poems. RB was a poet first and so some consideration of this work is on orer. It also provides a gateway to the fiction. Joe has photocopied about 6 poems (from THE ROMANTIC DOGS) which he will distribute at the meeting. The other virtue of the poems is that they can be read cold.

From there, in successive meetings, we will work through at least one example of the short fiction — ” A Literary Adventure” or the title story from LAST EVENINGS ON EARTH — then shift to NAZI LITERATURE IN THE AMERICAS, and then plunge into the big books: SAVAGE DETECTIVES and 2666.

For most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France, and Spain. He was a founding member of infrarrealismo, a minor poetic movement. He affectionately parodied aspects of the movement in The Savage Detectives. In Mexico, living as a bohemian poet and literary enfant terrible, “a professional provocateur feared at all the publishing houses even though he was a nobody, bursting into literary presentations and reading”.

Joe Milazzo facilitates Club Bolaño, beginning the journey with stories in LAST EVENINGS ON EARTH, followed with the interconnected shorts in NAZI LITERATURE IN THE AMERICAS, and then we dive into THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES, taking us through 2013, if not further.. and hope to eventually arrive at 2666. 

Milazzo is the author of The Terraces (Das Arquibancadas) (Little Red Leaves textile Series, 2012). His writings have appeared in H_NGM_N, The Collagist, Drunken Boat, Black Clock, and elsewhere. Along with Janice Lee and Eric Lindley, he edits the online interdisciplinary arts journal [out of nothing] (http://www.outofnothing.org). Joe lives and works in Dallas, TX, and his virtual location ishttp://www.slowstudies.net/jmilazzo.

Club Bolaño is not a formerly luxuriant resort gone a little to pot  and decadence. It’s a monthly program designed by Joe Milazzo for the obsessed fans of Roberto Bolaño, (28 April 1953 – 15 July 2003), a Chilean novelist and poet. In 1999, Bolaño won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666,

This meeting will focus on LAST EVENINGS ON EARTH — then shift to NAZI LITERATURE IN THE AMERICAS, and then plunge into the big books: SAVAGE DETECTIVES and 2666. .

For most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France, and Spain. He was a founding member of infrarrealismo, a minor poetic movement. He affectionately parodied aspects of the movement in The Savage Detectives. In Mexico, living as a bohemian poet and literary enfant terrible, “a professional provocateur feared at all the publishing houses even though he was a nobody, bursting into literary presentations and reading”.

Joe Milazzo facilitates Club Bolaño, beginning the journey with stories in LAST EVENINGS ON EARTH, followed with the interconnected shorts in NAZI LITERATURE IN THE AMERICAS, and then we dive into THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES, taking us through 2013, if not further.. and hope to eventually arrive at 2666.  Milazzo is the author of The Terraces (Das Arquibancadas) (Little Red Leaves textile Series, 2012). His writings have appeared in H_NGM_N, The Collagist, Drunken Boat, Black Clock, and elsewhere. Along with Janice Lee and Eric Lindley, he edits the online interdisciplinary arts journal [out of nothing] (http://www.outofnothing.org). Joe lives and works in Dallas, TX, and his virtual location ishttp://www.slowstudies.net/jmilazzo.

Dallas Poetry Youth Slam When: Every first Saturday at 4-6 pm Where: Half Price Books, 5803 E. NW Highway, Program Room- Hosted by: Alexandra Marie and Joaquin Zihuatanejo Half Price Books and WordSpace are honored to partner with Dallas Poetry Slam to bring Poetry and Slam outreach to area youth for workshops and performance.