Photo of James Salter by Linda Gervin.

James Salter, whose archive is housed at the Ransom Center, will receive the 2012 PEN/Malamud Award, which honors excellence in the art of the short story.

Salter is the author of more than a dozen books, including novels Light Years (1975), A Sport and a Pastime (1967), The Arm of Flesh (1961), and The Hunters (1957); the memoirs Gods of Tin (2004) and Burning the Days (1997); and the short story collection Dusk and Other Stories (1988), which won the 1989 PEN/Faulkner Award.

His latest novel, All That Is, will be published in October.

Other Ransom Center authors who have received the PEN/Malamud Award include T. C. Boyle and Andre Dubus.

Salter will be presented the award on December 7. The award was established by the family of Bernard Malamud, whose archive also resides at the Ransom Center.

To…

Cover of "Industrial Light & Magic: The Art of Special Effects" by Tom Smith.

The archive of visual effects producer Thomas Smith has been donated to the Ransom Center. Smith worked on the special effects for such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. (1982), Star Trek: The Search for Spock (1983), Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989). Below, he shares why he chose the Ransom Center as the repository for his papers and why it’s important to preserve these materials.

Why did you choose the Ransom Center as the home for your archive?

I began making 16 mm films right after I was discharged from the Air Force. I worked in…

Student volunteer Carly Dearborn and Ransom Center Curator of Film Steve Wilson with materials from the Tom Smith collection. Photo by Pete Smith.

Thomas Smith (b. 1938), visual effect producer for such films as Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back (1980) and E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982), has donated his archive to the Ransom Center. Smith was hired by George Lucas as the first head of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and worked on the special effects for such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989).

The Smith collection comprises 22 boxes and documents Smith’s professional work through the 1980s…

Letter from David Foster Wallace to Frederick Hill Associates, dated Sept. 28, 1985, containing a chapter from "Broom of the System." Bonnie Nadell collection.

On Thursday, April 5, the Ransom Center kicks off The David Foster Wallace Symposium with a public event featuring Wallace’s literary agent, Bonnie Nadell, and his editor, Michael Pietsch, in conversation with Los Angeles Times book critic David Ulin. The free, public event will take place at 7 p.m. (C.S.T.) at Jessen Auditorium, across the plaza from the Ransom Center on The University of Texas at Austin campus. Please note that seating will be limited. Registrants of the symposium will have reserved seating, and Ransom Center members will receive priority entry at 6:20 p.m. Doors will open to…

Undergraduate intern Kelsey McKinney with the authors' door at the Ransom Center. Photo by Pete Smith.

Each academic year, the Ransom Center hosts undergraduate interns sponsored by various programs and departments at The University of Texas at Austin. For the 2012–2013 academic year, the Center is pleased to announce the addition of four Ransom Center–sponsored undergraduate intern positions. Students do not need to be affiliated with any particular program or department but must be full-time undergraduate students at The University of Texas at Austin. Application materials should be delivered to the Administrative Suite on the third floor of the Ransom Center by April 9, 2012. Below, current undergraduate intern Kelsey McKinney discusses her internship experience at the Ransom Center.

I fell in love with the…

Russell Banks, Don DeLillo, and Anita Desai were selected as finalists for the 2012 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Authors Russell Banks, Don DeLillo, and Anita Desai were selected as finalists for the 2012 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.  The Ransom Center holds the archives of Banks, Delillo, and Desai.

Banks was nominated for his twelfth novel Lost Memory of Skin, DeLillo was nominated for his collection of short stories The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories, and Desai was nominated for The Artist of Disappearance, a collection of three novellas.

DeLillo was awarded the PEN/Faulkner award in 1991 for his novel Mao II (1991). Banks was previously nominated for Affliction (1990) and Cloudsplitter (1999). This is the first nomination for Desai.

The winner of the 2012 PEN/Faulkner award will…

"The Gernsheim Collection" (UT Press, 2010).

The Gernsheim Collection, co-published by the Harry Ransom Center and the University of Texas Press, has been awarded an Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, which honors a distinguished catalog in the history of art published during the past year.

Edited by Ransom Center Senior Research Curator Roy Flukinger, The Gernsheim Collection coincided with the Ransom Center’s 2010 exhibition Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection, which explored the history of photography through the Center’s foundational photography collection.

The Gernsheim collection is one of the most important collections of photography in the world. Amassed by the renowned husband-and-wife team of Helmut and Alison Gernsheim between 1945 and 1963, it contains an unparalleled range of images, beginning with the…

Playwright Tom Stoppard wanted to incorporate ideas of chaos theory and thermodynamics into the intricately structured plot of his play Arcadia. His archive shows how he consulted with his son, a physics graduate student at Oxford University, and with his son’s colleagues to get the details just right.

The play opened to acclaim at the National Theatre in London on April 13, 1993, and now Austinites can see an Austin Shakespeare performance of Arcadia, which opens Thursday and runs through February 19 at the Rollins Studio Theater at the Long Center for the Performing Arts.

The Stoppard archive, which was acquired in batches between 1991 and 2000, spans more than 60 years and includes materials related to Arcadia and other well-known works, such as…

Opening page of corrected proof of Wallace's 1996 essay 'Shipping Out: On the (Nearly Lethal) Comforts of a Luxury Cruise' for Harper's magazine.

The Harry Ransom Center will host the David Foster Wallace Symposium on April 5 and 6 at the Ransom Center. The symposium includes a public program on Thursday, April 5, at 7 p.m. in Jessen Auditorium.

Symposium
registration is limited and opens January 23 at 11 a.m. CST. Participants must register online. The $55 registration fee includes access to all events on the schedule.

All symposium events will be webcast live.

The Ransom Center holds Wallace’s archive, which was made accessible for research in September 2010. For the symposium, writers, editors, journalists, and critics gather to discuss Wallace’s life and work in panel discussions on such…

Twenty of Santa's helpers attend a March of Dimes Christmas party for Patricia Reilly and the Volunteers of America at the Tavern-on-the-Green. New York Journal American collection.

Holiday hours for the Ransom Center are as follows:

Ransom Center Galleries
10 a.m.–5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday
10 a.m.–7 p.m. Thursday
Noon–5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Please note that the Ransom Center Galleries are closed Mondays and the following holidays:
Christmas Eve Day (Saturday, December 24)
Christmas Day (Sunday, December 25)
New Year’s Day (Sunday, January 1)

Please also be aware that the Reading and Viewing Rooms and administrative office will be closed during the University holidays from Friday, December 23, through Monday, January 2.

Visitors can see the current exhibitions, Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored and The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to…