The Big Texas Author Talk is a *free* lecture series devoted to showcasing Texas authors from across our big state. Each month we feature one Texas author in conversation with another—from New York Times bestsellers living in Dallas, Houston, and Austin to our rich Texas Latinx border authors living in Laredo and McAllen, not to mention from other deep pockets and corners of our culturally diverse state. Our lecture series is as entertaining as it is informative—and like Texas itself, we offer a vast array of storytellers who represent the spirit of our extremely distinct Lone Star State and continue to keep us on the literary map. In the past, we’ve featured novelists such as Kathleen Kent, Marisol Cortez, Joe Lansdale, and Antonio Ruiz-Camacho and Texas poet laureates such as Carmen Tafolla, Laurie Ann Guerrero, Jenny Brown, and Emmy Pérez.
If you’ve visited with us over the last three years, you know who we are and what we do, and we thank you for your ongoing support. We value your presence and love seeing your faces! If you’re new to the Big Texas Author Talk and are just discovering who we are and what we do, we welcome you to join us virtually on the third Wednesday of every month at 7 pm CST.
See some of our past Big Texas Author Talks (formerly The Big Texas Read) at our YouTube Channel.
Wednesday, September 20th, 2023 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: Thomas H. McNeely’s story collection, Pictures of the Shark. Stephanie Reents is the moderator.
2023 Foreword Reviews INDIES Awards Finalist in Literary Fiction
2023 Houston Chronicle Notable Book
2023 Massachusetts Book Award Must-Read
“An emotionally taut and often haunting collection.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[An] always compelling novel in short stories.”
—Foreword Reviews
“[A] powerful family portrait … heartbreaking authenticity.”
—Booklist
“A tightly written and often emotionally gripping collection.”
—Lone Star Literary Life
A sudden snowfall in Houston reveals family secrets. A trip to Universal Studios to snap a picture of the shark from Jaws becomes a battle of wills between father and son. A midnight séance and the ghost of Janis Joplin conjure the mysteries of sex. A young boy’s pilgrimage to see Elvis Presley becomes a moment of transformation. A young woman discovers the responsibilities of talent and freedom.
Pictures of the Shark, by award-winning Houston writer Thomas H. McNeely, moves from its protagonist Buddy Turner’s surreal world of childhood into the wider arenas of sex, addiction, art, and ambition. Appearing in the country’s finest literary journals, including Ploughshares, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Epoch, and Crazyhorse, shortlisted for the O. Henry Award, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize collections, the stories in Pictures of the Shark are gems that refract their characters’ complex relationships.
An East Side Houston native, THOMAS H. McNEELY has published short stories and non-fiction in The Atlantic, Texas Monthly, Ploughshares, and many other magazines and anthologies, including Best American Mystery Stories and Algonquin Books’ Best of the South. His stories have been short-listed for the Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Award anthologies. He has received National Endowment for the Arts, Wallace Stegner, and MacDowell Colony fellowships for his fiction. His first book, Ghost Horse, won the Gival Press Novel Award and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize in Writing. He currently teaches in the Stanford Online Writing Studio and at Emerson College, Boston.
Stephanie Reents received a BA from Amherst College, a second BA from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and an MFA from University of Arizona. She is the author of The Kissing List, a collection of connected stories that was an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times Book Review, and I Meant to Kill Ye, a bibliomemoir that is an account of her journey into the strange voice at the heart of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. She has twice been awarded an O. Henry prize for her short fiction. Her novel I Loved to Run is under contract at Penguin Random House.
UPCOMING 2023 AUTHORS AND TITLES
September Thomas McNeely–Pictures of the Shark
October Katie Guttierrez–TBA
November Carmen Tafolla–Girl Warrior (Sept 2023 – Penguin)
December TBA
PREVIOUS AUTHORS AND TITLES
Rubén Degollado, The Family Izquierdo
Jehanne Dubrow, Taste: A Book of Small Bites
Richard Z. Santos, Trust Me
Andrew Porter, The Disappeared
Steve Adams, Remember This
Leticia Urieta, Las Criaturas
Vincent Cooper, Zarzamora
Allison Hedge Coke, Look At This Blue
Tomás Q. Morín, Let Me Count the Ways
Daniel Peña, Bang
Alexander Essbaum’s Hausfrau: A Novel
Carmen Tafolla and illustrator Regina Moya, The Last Butterfly
Laurie Ann Guerrero, I Have Eaten the Rattlesnake
Alexandra van de Kamp, Ricochet Script
Wondra Chang, Sonju
Johnnie Bernhard, Sisters of the Undertow
Barbara Ras,The Blues of Heaven
Mike Soto, A Grave is Given Supper
Deb Olin Unferth, Barn 8
Marisol Cortez, Luz At Midnight
Sergio Troncoso, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son
Edward Vidaurre, Pandemia & Other Poems
Octavio Quintanilla, If I Go Missing
Sherry Kafka Wagner, Hannah Jackson
Nan Cuba, Body and Bread
Cliff Hudder, Pretty Enough for You
Rebekah Manley, Alexandra and the Awful, Awkward, No Fun, Truly Bad Dates A Picture Book Parody for Adults
Jenny Browne, Fellow Travelers: New and Selected Poems (TCU Poet Laureate Series)
Amanda Eyre Ward, The Jetsetters
Heather Harper Ellett, Ain’t Nobody Nobody.
Andrea Vocab Sanderson, She Lives in Music
Antonio Ruiz-Camacho: Barefoot Dogs
Poet Wendy Barker: Gloss
Debut Novelist Fowzia Karimi: Above Us the Milky Way
Edgar-winning novelist Joe R. Lansdale: Edge of Dark Water
Winner of the Iowa Prize for Nonfiction Kendra Allen: When You Learn the Alphabet
2020 Texas Poet Laureate Emmy Pérez: With The River on Our Face
New York Times Bestselling Author Kathleen Kent: The Dime & The Burn
Critically Acclaimed Novelist David Samuel Levinson: Tell Me How This Ends Well
PARTNER BOOKSTORES
We’re grateful to partner with independent bookstores Interabang Books in Dallas and The Twig Book Shop in San Antonio for The Big Texas Author Talk. Order your book directly from either bookstore and have it delivered to your front door!
