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…

Joseph Skibell, a native of the Texas Panhandle, was an accomplished playwright and screenwriter living in Los Angeles when he joined the first-admitted class of UT’s Michener Center for Writers in 1993.  Switching his emphasis to fiction after a year in the program, he graduated in 1996 with a novella submitted as his thesis, which grew into his debut novel, “A Blessing on the Moon,” published by Algonquin in 1997.  Skibell joined the English Department/Creative Writing faculty at Emory University in 1999, where he…

The UT Michener Center for Writers will sponsor a reading of the award-winning play The Happy Ones by its current Michener Residency Author,  Julie Marie Myatt, at 7 p.m., Thursday, October 28, at the Avaya Auditorium, ACE 2.302 on the southeast corner of 24th and Speedway.

Myatt is a Los Angeles-based playwright whose most recent productions include Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter, the story of an amputee GI and her difficult return from the war in Iraq; Boats on a River, which deals with Cambodian sex-slave trafficking; and…

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…

Historian William H. Goetzmann, professor emeritus of history and American studies, died Sept. 7 at age 79.

A specialist in the American West, Goetzmann won both the Pulitzer and Parkman prizes in 1967 for his seminal book “Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West.” He later authored with son William N. Goetzmann “The West of the Imagination,” which became a PBS series in 1985. His most recent book “Beyond the Revolution: A History…

Acclaimed Irish author Colm Tóibín is on campus as a guest of the Michener Center for Writers and will read at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 25 in the Avaya Auditorium, ACES 2.302.

Tóibín, a former visiting professor of the Michener Center’s master’s of fine arts program, began his career in journalism before turning to novel writing.  His first novel “The South” was published in 1990, followed by “The Heather Blazing,” “The Story of the Night” and “The Blackwater Lightship,” which was shortlisted for the…

Brian Hart, author of "Then Came the Evening"

UT alumnus Brian Hart likes to work against the grain. Maybe that explains why he was able to sell his first novel in the aftermath of Black Wednesday—December 3, 2008—when many of publishing top names announced layoffs, firings, suspended acquisitions, salary freezes, or major restructurings. A week later, Hart signed a deal with Bloomsbury for his debut work “Then Came the Evening.” The book released in December 2009 with a coveted starred review from Publishers Weekly and advance…

This spring, author Elizabeth McCracken assumes the Michener Endowed Chair in Creative Writing with UT’s Department of English and the Michener Center for Writers, the latest distinguished joint hire by the two programs.

McCracken is the author of a 1993 collection of stories, “Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry,” a debut the New York Times called “elegantly written.” Her first novel, “The Giant’s House” was a finalist for the 1996 National Book Award, and Granta magazine named McCracken one of the Twenty Best Young American Novelists that year.…

Oscar Casares’ novel, “Amigoland,” (2009, Little, Brown) is the ninth annual official selection of the Mayor’s Book Club. The selection was announced at a press conference held by Mayor Lee Leffingwell on Wednesday, Dec. 9, at City Hall in downtown Austin.

Casares was in attendance during the announcement. His novel, set on the South Texas-Mexico border, is the story of estranged brothers Don Fidencio Rosales, nearly 92 years old, and Don Celestino, 20 years his junior. Celestino finds himself involved with…

Roger Reeves, left, and Malachi Black, Lilly Fellows

For the second year running, a student in the Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in Writing program of the Michener Center for Writers has received a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, among the most distinguished awards for aspiring poets who have yet to publish a book.  The fellowships are given by the Poetry Foundation, one of the largest literary foundations in the world and publisher of Poetry magazine.

Roger Reeves was one of the five Lilly fellows chosen in…