In preperation for our Summer of Walt Whitman Finale Party at the close of August, our events assistant Cassie went on a guided nature walk along the Bayou, led by Laura Conely of Urban Paths. Read about her nature walk here, and make plans to attend our upcoming nature walk!
The last days of summer are upon us! Probably a good time to take that roadtrip you've been talking about. Here are our Summer Staff Picks for BEST ROADTRIP READ! Happy adventuring!
LYRIC'S PICK:ELEANOR OR, THE REJECTION OF THE PROGRESS OF LOVE by Anna Moschovakis- Anna Moschovakis's protagonists are both restless in different ways, mirroring the constant movement of the car, bus, or plane you might find yourself in this summer!
Zahia Rahmani's "Muslim: A Novel" is at its core a warning of the danger and violence of distilling human life down to a single identity label: religion, gender, or nationality. It also warns against the violence of erasing any part of one's life that encompasses those identities and cultures: the colonized who are forced to stop speaking their language, or oppressed groups who are forced to assimilate into the dominant culture while their own cultural practices are demonized and marginalized. This is the tension of the novel, pulling between multivalent life and erasure.
National Book Award. Pulitzer Prize. The cover of Time. Colson Whitehead is undeniably one of our finest and most important contemporary authors. He is a consummate storyteller. A true American original able to illuminate our nation’s darkest aspects with his incredibly vivid imagination. Over the last twenty years, he’s addressed racism with a story of elevator inspectors, gentrification with a zombie apocalypse, and taken a tour through the history of slavery on a literal underground railroad.
The swampy summer continues! Escape the city with these Staff Summer Picks: BEST BEACH READS!
KEATON'S PICK:THE NICKEL BOYS by Colson Whitehead- This ripped-from-the-headlines potboiler follows up the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. A riveting and harrowing tale from one of our time's greatest writers. THE NICKEL BOYS is out July 16, and I can't wait.
Summer is in full swing here in the Bayou City, so we've put together a list of SUMMER STAFF PICKS to keep you well-read and your imagination well-fed for the summer season! With temperatures in the mid-90's that feel like the low 100's, we should all enjoy a little time with our home AC's and these STAYCATION READS!
This week Traci and Cassie sat down over lunch in Keaton's office for a Queer Staff Chat about Matty Layne Glasgow's new poetry collection DECIDUOS QWEEN. Matty's in-store reading on Friday, June 21 kicks off a weekend of PRIDE celebrations at Brazos Bookstore, followed by DRAG QUEEN STORY HOUR on Saturday, June 22.
Sometimes you pick up a picture book and you know immediately that this is a book you will be reading to your child over and over -- in fact, you’ll be reading it over and over, even when your kid isn’t in the room! Such is the case with TRUMAN, the sweet, funny, and very heartwarming story of a brave turtle, which releases July 9, written by Jean Reidy and illustrated by Lucy Ruth Cummins, who is not only a phenomenal author and illustrator of books for children, but also an art director at Simon and Schuster!
Brian Evenson is not only a master of horror, he is a master of the short story form. Each of the compact nightmares he concocts is an object lesson in suspense, subtlety, and manipulation of the most primal of human emotions--fear. However, it is a disservice to relegate his work to the realm of genre. While steeped in the tropes of horror, science fiction and fantasy, Evenson’s fiction is highly literary and elusive--leaving his readers with more questions than answers as he chaperones us further into the uncanny with each word.
