ShelfLife@Texas

The South has always been celebrated for its food. From collard greens and okra to heaping plates of biscuits and gravy, Southern food is as much a state of mind as it is a matter of geography.

Combining the study of food culture with gender studies, Elizabeth Engelhardt, associate professor of American studies, explores the many hidden culinary contours of Southern life below and beyond the Mason-Dixon Line.

Digging deep into community cookbooks, letters, diaries, and other archival materials, Engelhardt describes the
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Book lovers, foodies, artists and scholars will partake in an annual rite of fall here in Austin: The Texas Book Festival. The 16th annual Texas Book Festival will take place in and around the Texas State Capitol and nearby venues on Oct. 22-23.

The lineup includes more than 250 authors, an eclectic mix of top literary names, bestselling novelists, political and nonfiction notables, cookbook superstars, Texas writers, children’s authors and promising newcomers.

The talent pool also includes University of Texas at Austin
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The accent is still there, made faint by long years away from Australia.

Dominic Smith, a 2003 alumnus of the Michener Center’s MFA program in writing, was born in Brisbane and grew up in Sydney, but his education and work have taken him far from the continent since—he earned his B.A. in Iowa and worked in the dotcom boom in Europe before coming to The University of Texas at Austin for graduate school.  Smith seems to have found Texas to his liking,
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Alex Shakar

“It’s exciting to meet an author who’s unafraid of heights.”

So writes one New York Times reviewer of Alex Shakar, a 1994 graduate of the University of Texas at Austin Department of English graduate program in creative writing and former Michener Fellow.  Shakar, whose newest book “Luminarium” was released from Soho Press last month to critical praise, will be in Austin this week to read and sign at Austin’s BookPeople.  Friends and fans will get a chance to hear new work from
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The words people use are like fingerprints, revealing amazing insight into their personalities, emotional health, thinking style, group status and relationships. Social psychologist James W. Pennebaker, uses his groundbreaking research in computational linguistics to analyze pronouns, articles, prepositions, and a handful of other small function words in his latest book “The Secret Life of Pronouns:  What Our Words Say About Us” (Bloomsbury Press, August 2011).

“On their own, function words have very little meaning,” says Pennebaker, the Liberal Arts Foundation Centennial Professor
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Alberto Martinez. Photo by Judy Hogan, administrative assistant in the Department of History.

Legend has it Benjamin Franklin ventured out on a stormy day to fly a kite with a lightning rod and a key dangling on the end of the string. When the lightning struck the kite, the powerful bolt charged the metal key. Franklin then touched the key and got zapped, thus proving the electrical nature of lightning.

It is a captivating story. Yet just as Pecos Bill never
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On Friday, April 8, poets from across the country will read at Austin Museum of Art downtown in a benefit honoring The University of Texas at Austin’s  Livingston Endowed Chair in Poetry Dean Young, beloved poet and teacher who faces a heart transplant.

Nationally acclaimed poets Tony Hoagland, Thomas Lux, Dobby Gibson, Barbara Ras, Stuart Dischell, David Rivard and Joe Di Prisco are volunteering their time to fly in for the free event and will read along with a raft of local poets,
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The 2011 Lozano Long Conference “From Natural Events to Social Disasters in the Circum-Caribbean,” will include keynote addresses from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey, distinguished chair in poetry at Emory University, and novelist Evelyne Trouillot, a native of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, who has written about human rights issues.

Hurricane Katrina’s hit to New Orleans and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti revealed historical and ongoing social inequality, environmental hazards and political crisis that plague the circum-Caribbean region. Both sites will serve as focal points for
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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
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Constitutional law scholar Lucas A. “Scot” Powe Jr., of The University of Texas School of Law will sign copies of his book “The Supreme Court and the American Elite” at the Humanities Texas Holiday Book Fair from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday, December 11 at the office for Humanities Texas, located in the newly restored Byrne-Reed House on the southwest corner of 15th and Rio Grande Street in Austin.

This festive event, features 25 authors, including university faculty H.W. Brands, Don Carleton, Elizabeth Engelhardt, Tiffany
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