ShelfLife@Texas

The Keene Prize selection committee of The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Liberal Arts may have been among the first to recognize the power of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s work when they awarded her their $50,000 literary prize.  But they are far from the last. Her prize-winning play “Lidless” will soon be seen on stages both in the United States and abroad.

The 27-year old Cowhig has been in an eddy of career opportunities and artistic accolades since winning the Keene Prize and completing…

Hans Boas, associate professor of Germanic studies, has been awarded the 2011 Leonard Bloomfield Book Award from the Linguistic Society of America for his book “The Life and Death of Texas German.”

In “The Life and Death of Texas German,” Boas presents the first major study of Texas German, a unique fusion of English and 19th century German. The book includes and in-depth analysis of Boas’ Texas German Dialect Project, an online digital archive of recordings, transcriptions and translations of interviews with…

The winners of this year’s University Co-op Robert W. Hamilton Book Awards were announced on Wednesday, October 20, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin. The Hamilton Award is one of the highest honors of literary achievement given to published authors at the University of Texas at Austin. Chairman of the University Co-operative Society, Dr. Michael H. Granof hosted the event and announced the winners. President Bill Powers of The University of Texas at Austin presented the awards.

The Hamilton Awards…

Christian history scholar L. Michael White will discuss his book “Scripting Jesus: The Gospels in Rewrite,” (Harper Collins, May 2010) at a faculty book celebration party hosted by the Department of Religious Studies 5-7 p.m., Wednesday Oct. 29 in Mezes Hall Auditorium..

The gospel stories of Jesus have shaped the beliefs of billions of Christians and deserve to be studied seriously. In “Scripting Jesus,” L. Michael White proposes to do just that — to take them seriously as stories.

He argues…

It’s the story of the Little Novel That Could.  Paul Harding was an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate with a slim manuscript about a dying new England clock repairman and a drawer full of rejections.  After three years of shopping around his novel Tinkers, he finally sold it to the tiny nonprofit Bellevue Literary Press for an advance the size of a big publisher’s paperclip budget.  They printed 3500 copies.  Still, the struggling author was glad to have his work in print.  Harding…

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,…

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…

Carrie Fountain, an alumna of the University’s Michener Center for Writers’ MFA program, will celebrate the publication of her first poetry collection, Burn Lake, at a reading and signing at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 27, 2010 at the Off Shoot, located at the Off Center theatre space at 2211 Hildago Street in Austin.

Fountain—who hails from Las Cruces and did her undergraduate work in theatre arts at New Mexico State—completed her graduate degree at UT in 2004 and now teaches at St. Edwards University.  Her poetry…

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…

David Oshinsky, Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, has been awarded the Cartwright Prize from Columbia University Medical Center for his book “Polio: An American Story” (Oxford University Press, 2005).

He will also present the annual Cartwright Lecture next month.

The lecture series provides a forum for leading scientists and scholars to review important medical research. Previous speakers and prize recipients have included nine Nobel laureates, top officials from the National Academy of Sciences and the National Institutes of Health and a United States…