Events

Rich Levy is a poet and (since 1995) executive director of Inprint,
a nonprofit literary arts organization in Houston. He earned his MFA at
the Iowa Writers Workshop, and his poems have appeared in Boulevard, Gulf Coast, Pool, The Texas Observer, and elsewhere. A jazz obsessive, he and his wife have three children, two dogs, and one sleepy cat.

Why Me?, Levy's debut collection, published in Fall 2009 by Mutabilis Press,
reveals an original, and often humorous voice, that of husband, father,
artist and executive, the voice of the aging modern man confronting the
often absurd and hilarious dichotomies in our society. Brazos is
thrilled to present Rich Levy, an invaluable resource to Houston's
literary life and a beloved friend to many.

Texas singer/songwriter Vince Bell's story begins in the 1970s.
Following the likes of Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, Bell and his
contemporaries Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, and Lucinda Williams were
on the rise. In December of 1982, Bell was on his way home from the
studio (where he and hired guns Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson had just recorded three of Bell's songs) when a drunk driver broadsided him at 65 mph. Thrown over sixty feet from his car, Bell suffered multiple
lacerations to his liver, embedded glass, broken ribs, a mangled right
forearm, and a severe traumatic brain injury. Not only was his debut
album waylaid for a dozen years, life as he'd known it would never be
the same. In detailing his recovery from the accident and his
round-about climb back on stage, Bell shines a light in those dark
corners of the music business that, for the lone musician whose success
is measured not by the Top 40 but by nightly victories, usually fall
outside of the spotlight. In One Man's Music, Bell's prose is not unlike his lyrics: spare, beautiful, evocative, and often sneak-up-on-you funny. His chronicle of his own life and near death on the road reveals what it means to live for one's art.

Join us at Brazos for a talk and a few songs by Vince Bell, then take the half-a-block walk for an after-party at Under the Volcano. Don't miss Bell at the Texas Book Festival and at Houston's Anderson Fair the night of November 6.

E.L. Doctorow, whose work has been translated into more than
thirty languages, is one of America’s most celebrated writers, with a
career spanning half a century. The Book of Daniel, published
in 1971 and based on the espionage case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,
placed Doctorow in the literary limelight and was hailed by Joyce Carol
Oates as “a nearly perfect work of art.” His next book, Ragtime, “as exhilarating as a deep breath of pure oxygen....[and] enormous fun to read” (Walter Clemons, Newsweek),
became an international bestseller and was made into a film and a
Broadway musical nominated for eight Academy Awards and twelve Tony
Awards, respectively. His other major works include the bestselling
novels Billy Bathgate, World’s Fair, The March, City of God, Loon Lake, and Welcome to the Hard Times, as well as several volumes of essays and stories. He is the recipient
of numerous awards, including the National Book Award, three National
Book Critics Circle Awards, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, and the
President’s National Humanities Medal. He will be reading from his new
novel, Homer & Langley, which is inspired by the Collyer brothers, famous for their compulsive hoarding.

General admission tickets: $5, on sale October 1, 2009

Buy season tickets to the Brown Reading Series online.
See the 2009/2010 Brown Reading Series schedule.