ShelfLife@Texas

Belinda Acosta, alumna of The University of Texas at Austin’s Michener Center for Writers and longtime columnist for the Austin Chronicle, debuts as a published novelist this month with the release of “Damas, Dramas and Ana Ruiz,” the first of two books she has written for Grand Central Publishing’s “A Quinceañera Club,” a new series which will explore Mexican American life and culture.

What is a quinceañera?  In the Hispanic culture, it’s a girl’s 15th birthday party, a coming-of-age celebration much like a sweet sixteen, but with
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Lucas A. (Scot) Powe Jr., a professor of law and government at The University of Texas at Austin, will be at BookPeople this Monday, May 4, at 7:30 p.m. to discuss and sign his lastest book, “The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789-2008″ (Harvard University Press, 2009).

Powe, who clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas in 1970-71, is a leading historian of the Supreme Court and a First Amendment scholar.

In his new book released this month, Powe provides a
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Three Michener Center alumni—whose ties date back to birth and their undergraduate days— have debut poetry collections out and will read from their work at BookPeople at 7 p.m., Wednesday, March 25. The poets are: Matthew and Michael Dickman, and Michael McGriff.

Twin poets Matthew and Michael Dickman beat long odds to both earn admission to the Michener Center’s graduate program in 2002, and they have gone on to curiously parallel successes.

Both landed first book deals at Copper Canyon Press. Matthew’s “All
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University of Texas law professor Tom McGarity will be at BookPeople this Saturday, Feb. 7, at 3 p.m. to discuss and sign his latest book, “The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Juries” (Yale University Press, 2008).

McGarity, a regulatory law expert, says most consumers would be surprised to learn that the doors to the local courthouses are in jeopardy of being closed to them if they have been injured by a defective product, sickened by contaminated food, or disabled
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Texas Monthly’s new editor Jake Silverstein, a 2006 graduate of UT’s Michener Center for Writers, will read at BookPeople at 7 p.m., Jan. 20 from “Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person from Harper’s Magazine” (New Press, 2008).

The collection features 15 pieces of inside-out reportage by Silverstein and other cutting-edge journalists such as Barbara Ehrenreich, William T. Vollmann, Charles Bowden, Jay Kirk and Wells Trevor.  

“A piece I wrote on high-stakes poetry gambling is in the book,” Silverstein says.
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After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini’s secret police executed and imprisoned tens of thousands of dissidents in a sweeping attempt to destroy all opposition to the regime.

UT doctoral student Nastaran Kherad was one of many who were imprisoned after the revolution.

More than 20 years after her brutal incarceration and flight from Iran, she has decided to share her story in the memoir “In the House of My Bibi: Growing Up in Revolutionary Iran” (Academy Chicago Publishers,
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Michener Center graduate Brendan Short (MFA ‘05) will be at BookPeople this Tuesday, Nov. 25 at 7 p.m. to read from his debut novel, “Dream City” (MacAdam/Cage, 2008).

Set in Depression-era Chicago, “Dream City” tells the story of a young boy’s obsession with comic book heroes, and his life-long attempt to recapture the innocence of his childhood.

Library Journal called the novel “an impressively mature first effort..complex and compelling…Highly recommended” in its Aug. 15 review. Check out more reviews of “Dream City” at
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