The Bookshelf, Young Texas Reader, Blog Notes, & Texana Youtube Channel


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The Texas Bookshelf is for single, specific books' reviews and author interviews . The Texas Parlor ranges more broadly than my other websites. The Young Texas Reader focuses on the youngest through teenagers. Texas Blog Notes surveys blogs of historical and literary interest. I've started a Will's Texana Youtube collecting channel where 1,000 videos are collected in 100 playlists . Find Will in Houston or at willstexana {at} yahoodotcom

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Lone Star Lit 101

Cyndi   Cindy Hughes , Executive Director of the Writers League of Texas and founding director of the Texas Book Festival, provides an interesting list of Texas authors from the previous two decades in the "Dog Canyon."  She calls it "Lone Star Lit 101."  Includes literature, history,  a wide variety of literary forms: Bestsellers, Prize winners, Westerns, Children's books, Poets, Journalists, Texas Monthly, Dang Good Books, Mysteries, Inspirational, Grand Dames, Romances, Science Fiction, and Historians. About 70 authors in all.
 
She says "Unlike so-called Southern literature, which tends to focus on family, the history of the south, and even race and Gothic mystique, Texas lit doesn't have a distinctive Texas voice or typical subject matter. That is quite okay with me. Why should Texas writers echo one another and all be forced to write about Texas? I would argue that the fact that Texas writers crank out such an amazing variety of books makes our literary scene the most vibrant in the whole United States. Take that, Big Apple!"
 
Folks at the Parlor and Bookshelf suggest that the lack of a distinctive voice simply marks Texas as a large and diverse community where the wide open spaces also reflect the wide open minds of Texans.
 

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