ShelfLife@Texas

Named Best Young American Novelist by Granta, Elizabeth McCracken traveled to London this July for an event promoting the British literary quarterly’s latest issue. Granta hosts a week of events featuring its writers and editors as they discuss the issue’s content and central ideas. This issue’s theme is “Going Back” which includes McCracken’s short story “Property.”  She appeared at several of the week’s events, including a conversation at the British Library with Salman Rushdie, Richard Russo, A.L. Kennedy, and Granta editor John Freeman.

McCracken,
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“American Dreams” mean different things to different people, but for historian and University of Texas at Austin Professor H.W. Brands, it’s the title of his latest book. “American Dreams: The United States Since 1945” (Penguin Press, June 2010) takes a historical journey from the end of World War II to the Obama administration.

“After spending a lot of time dealing with the nineteenth century, I decided to return to the twentieth – and, not coincidentally to that part of American history
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Historian Emilio Zamora has been named a fellow of the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), in addition to winning its annual Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for best book on Texas for his work “Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas: Mexican Workers and Job Politics during World War II,” (Texas A&M University Press, 2009).

The award bears the name of the late Tullis (UT alumnas, B.A. ’24 and M.A. ‘27), who was one of the first women on faculty in the History Department.

In
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ShelfLife asked Robert Geraci, author of “Apocalyptic AI,” (Oxford University Press, Feb. 2010), to shed light into the world of artificial intelligence and the making of his new book. Geraci, an alumnus of The University of Texas at Austin (Plan II ’99) says the interdisciplinary approach that characterized his time at UT is apparent in his research now, where religious studies meets anthropology and science.

As an author, how do you feel your Plan II education factored in during this experience?

Along with
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Nora Boxer, winner of this year's Keene Prize.

Nora Boxer, a graduate of the Creative Writing Program in the English Department at The University of Texas at Austin, has won the $50,000 Keene Prize for Literature for her story “It’s the song of the nomads, baby; or, Pioneer.”

The Keene Prize is one of the world’s largest student literary prizes. An additional $50,000 will be divided among three finalists.

Boxer’s story was chosen from 61 submissions in drama, poetry and fiction. Laconic in
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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”
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ShelfLife@Texas sat down with Chef Allie Kent, University of Texas at Austin alumna (English ‘86), to discuss her new book “7 Secrets to Living Raw Foods” and her tips for a healthier lifestyle.

What inspired you to write “7 Secrets to Living Raw Foods”?

I was tired of being tired all of the time, of being overweight, of getting “4-5″ colds a year consistently, and as I am getting older (in my 40s now) I knew that I had to make changes
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The turbulent and violent period just after the onset of the French Revolution known as the Terror of 1793–1794, is the backdrop for University of Texas alumna Bette Oliver’s book “Orphans on the Earth” (Lexington Books 2009). The book tells the story of the Girondins, specifically those elected deputies who helped establish the new republic, and who would later became fugitives from their own government—hunted down by their political opponents the Jacobins.

The story draws on the memoirs of revolutionary leaders:  François Buzot,
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Richard Ford

Richard Ford, the 2010 Michener Residency Award author, will speak at 7:30 p.m., Thurs, Feb. 4, in the Avaya Auditorium, ACES 2.302.

He is the author of six novels—including “A Piece of My Heart,”  “The Sportswriter,”  “Independence Day,” “Wildlife,” and “The Lay of the Land”—and three story collections: “Rock Springs,” “Women with Men,” and  “A Multitude of Sins.”

He received the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for “Independence Day” in 1995. In 2001, he was honored with
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The University of Texas School of Law and the Tarlton Law Library will host an author’s reading and book signing featuring Mimi Clark Gronlund, daughter of United States Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark, ’22. It will be held in the Law School’s Sheffield Room (TNH 2.111) at 3:30 p.m., Thurs., Jan. 28. The event is free and open to the public.

“Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark,” (University of Texas Press) is the first biography of this important American jurist whose landmark ruling in Brown
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