Lyric's Top Ten Books by Bayou City Writers, 2019
Houston's Literary Year
I've heard people ask, "Why hasn't Houston produced any writers?” I’m always baffled by the idea that H-town isn’t as literary as other cities. So, in answer to the absurd question, I give you A List Of Ten Books (Plus One Honorary Mention) that Bayou City writers have released in 2019.
Jia Tolentino probes the depths of American experience with this observant collection of essays.
Bryan Washington’s short stories are a love letter to Houston’s widespread neighborhoods and its vital diversity.
Cameron Dezen Hammon is a New Yorker who has made Houston her home, and this year debuted a moving memoir about spirituality, feminism, failure and acceptance.
Attica Locke’s new novel, #2 in her Highway 59 series, is set in a vivid East Texas landscape, and populated by strong characters.
The poems in Guez’s collection are quiet, thoughtful, and open to misery and the joy of the world.
Adleman’s poetic memoir is more than a memoir, it is a meditation on time, forgiveness, mourning, and remembrance.
The late poet Paul Otremba left us with one more beautiful, thoughtful collection of poems that reflect on Houston’s floods, the city’s practices of oil extraction, and suburb expansion, as well as the nature of time, vulnerability, and change.
Conor Bracken, a former resident of Houston and a UH alumnus, has produced a rigorous translation of Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s poetry born of the colonial conflict of French North Africa, bringing this important collection of language as political resistance to English readers.
This collection of mystery, murder, and thriller short stories, edited by Houston’s first poet laureate Gwendolyn Zepeda, features the work of a variety of authors, many of whom are Houstonians, including Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton and Reyes Ramirez.
Called “an innovative piece of fiction” by the Houston Chronicle, REINHARDT’S GARDEN-- irreverent, absurd, and funny-- was penned by Brazos Bookstore’s own Mark Haber.
Mike Freedman’s debut novel has the name of another Southern state in the title, but the story is firmly set in Texas, and he is most definitely a Houston writer.