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Independent Publishers Make their Presence Felt at the 2014 Texas Book Festival
When the estimated mob of 40,000 descends on the Texas statehouse this weekend for the Texas Book Festival, Bryce Milligan of San Antonio’s Wings Press hopes at least a few of them will be there to...
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The Observer Review: The Long Voyage: Selected Letters of Malcolm Cowley,...
In November 1960, a displaced Easterner and visiting professor at Stanford University named Malcolm Cowley wrote a letter urging British intellectual C.P. Snow to acquaint himself with several of...
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New Dallas Publisher Aims to Elevate the Status of International Fiction in...
Dallas, you had better get to know Will Evans. That is, if you can catch up with him, and if he’s calm enough to engage in conversation. He doesn’t move or speak at the speed to which you’re...
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Storytime: Calling for Short Story Contest Entries
This year’s guest judge is Stephen Graham Jones, author of 15 novels and six story collections. Although all four runners-up in the 2014 Texas Observer short story contest wrote about, or from, Texas,...
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In ‘My Unsentimental Education,’ a Professor Finds a New Path
MY UNSENTIMENTAL EDUCATIONBy Debra Monroe UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS256 PAGES; $24.95 University of Georgia Press Debra Monroe claims not to be a trailblazer, but I’m willing to bet this paycheck...
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The Afghanistan Addiction
OLD SILK ROADBrandon CaroPOST HILL PRESS250 PAGES; $25 Post Hill Press Years after it’s taken, Brandon Caro will include this photo on the jacket of his novel, Old Silk Road. He’s squatting in a poppy...
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Send Us Your Stories, Writers
Amelia Gray Amelia Gray/Official UPDATE: THE SUBMISSION PERIOD FOR THE 2016 SHORT STORY CONTEST HAS ENDED. *** Amelia Gray was once described in the Observer as “the fairy godmother of Austin...
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Announcing the Seventh Annual Observer Short Story Contest
Deb Olin Unferth will judge the seventh annual contest. “A situation under pressure” is an apt way to describe the United States in 2017. Blue or red, we’re all feeling the pressure these days. Writing...
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Announcing the Eighth Annual Observer Short Story Contest
In “Muriel,” Wendy Lerner Lym’s 2017 Texas Observer Short Story Contest prize-winning story, the narrator spends full days watching YouTube videos and then, after ordering something called an edible...
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Company Men
It’s every American’s God-given right to self-mythologize, even to the point of absurdity. Take the current president (please): Donald Trump has somehow managed to package and sell himself as a...
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