ShelfLife@Texas

Her poems are like no one else’s—hard and luminous, weird in the sense of making a thing strange that we at last might see it. —AMERICAN POET

Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Brigit Pegeen Kelly, who is a visiting professor at the Michener Center for Writers this spring, will give a reading of her work at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, April 1, in the Avaya Auditorium, ACE 2.302, on campus at 24th and Speedway.

The author of three acclaimed volumes, Kelly has won some of the most…

Distinguished Mexican writers Héctor Aguilar Camín and Ángeles Mastretta will speak Thursday, March 25, as part of the Mexican Center’s “Many Mexicos” series.

One of Mexico’s foremost intellectuals, Héctor Aguilar Camín is a journalist, historian and writer, or, as he puts it, “ a historian by accident and novelist by vocation.” Born in 1946, Aguilar Camín has been a Guggenheim scholar and editor of NEXOS, one of Mexico’s leading cultural magazines. Some of his most renowned novels are “La frontera nómada”…

ShelfLife sat down with Suzanne Harper, an English and journalism alumna, to talk about her two young adult novels, “The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney” (Harper Collins, 2008) and “The Juliet Club” (Harper Collins, 2008).

Did you set out to write fiction for young adults?

All through college and graduate school and many writing courses after that, I really wanted to write mysteries for the adult market, although I kept reading children’s books during that time simply because I enjoyed them so…

This month, Austin will be pulsating to the dizzying array of beats coming from thousands of musicians from all over the world who are trying to get their big break into the music industry. For four days, up-and-coming crooners, strummers and drummers will be showcasing their talents in hopes of making connections with record labels at the annual South by Southwest music festival.

So what does it take for a band to get its big break? In “Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk…

With its French, Spanish and Creole influences, New Orleans has the oldest black urban community of any city in the country. It also has a shocking history of police brutality that is told in “Black Rage in New Orleans: Police Brutality and African American Activism from WWII to Katrina,” a new book by Leonard N. Moore, Ph.D., to be released by LSU Press in April.

Moore recounts the history of police brutality in the Crescent City along with the energetic opposition waged…