2004 Texas Book Festival Preview [10-29-04]
The 2004 Texas Book Festival

Land of Confusion [07-30-04]
BY ROGER GATHMAN
Michael Simon's first detective novel finds a transplanted New Yorker struggling to solve a murder in a 'completely different' Austin

The Long View [04-30-04]
BY STEVE MOORE
John Graves' 'Myself and Strangers' finds the 83-year-old looking back at his past and into his future

Girls, Uninterrupted [01-23-04]
BY RACHEL PROCTOR MAY
An interview with Rachel Simmons

Get on the Ground! [01-16-04]
BY CINDY WIDNER
Bett Williams navigates contemporary culture with a wicked pen and a wrestling mat, and she'll be at BookPeople on Friday.

2003 Texas Book Festival Preview [11-07-03]

Doubt and Caution at All Times [10-31-03]
BY SHAWN BADGLEY
An interview DBC Pierre and Dan Rhodes on tour, together

The Rebirth of Venus [10-24-03]
BY ROGER GATHMAN
Greg Curtis' Disarmed gets the elusive skinny on the sculpture whose stomach is "immense like the sea."

150 Confessionalists Walk Into a Room [10-24-03]
BY SARAH HEPOLA
JournalCon comes to Austin.

Ourshelves [09-12-03]
BY KATE CANTRILL
Dao Strom and Elvia Padilla-Medal, front women for All Night Lincoln

Seeking the Recipe [08-15-03]
BY MICHAEL ERARD
Hermeticism has been marginalized academia since the Enlightenment. Can a UT professor and grad student editing a journal change that?

The Correspondence [08-01-03]
BY ROGER GATHMAN
Austin writer Jim Lewis on how things came together in his new novel and on his current assignment in the Congo. Roger Gathman relays.

Shelf Life Support [07-18-03]
BY MELANIE HAUPT
As libraries struggle with slashed budgets, communities are asked to take up the slack. Melanie Haupt reports.

Journalist George Crile on His 'Charlie Wilson's War' [06-27-03]
BY CLAY SMITH
Journalist George Crile believes that "something about Texas and its oil heritage seems to permit its citizens to reinvent their histories and to carry out their lives as if they were part of an ongoing theatrical experience." So, how does this relate to legendary Lufkin Congressman Charlie Wilson, the CIA, and Afghanistan?

Anthony Orum on Austin [05-23-03]
BY MICHAEL ERARD
"In Austin, a city of changes, a book like Anthony Orum's Power, Money & the People: The Making of Modern Austin, is always relevant," writes Michael Erard. "It's the only urban history of Austin, tracing the early decisions that fixed the city's economy, politics, and sense of itself. Unfortunately, the book's availability has been spotty -- until late 2002, when an Oregon press, Wipf and Stock, reissued it."

Rise and Shine [04-25-03]
BY SHAWN BADGLEY
The quiet and uncalculated approach of John McManus

Take Me, Instead [04-25-03]
BY MICHAEL ERARD
An interview with SWT's Arturo Mancha, whose novel in progress was a recent break-in casualty

Who's That Girl? [01-24-03]
BY SHAWN BADGLEY
The Bookslut -- aka Jessa Crispin -- is getting people excited.

On the Border's Edge [11-29-02]
BY ROGER GATHMAN
Drug war reporter Charles Bowden is telling El Paso-Juárez's secrets, one murder at a time.

Authors Who Need Authors [11-22-02]
BY SHAWN BADGLEY
Authors who need authors are the luckiest authors: We assess the harmonies and tumults at the 2002 Texas Book Festival.

• On the Way to Anywhere [11-15-02]
  BY SARAH HEPOLA
  Sarah Hepola talks to the three panelists of one of the Texas Book Festival's most eagerly anticipated panels, "At the Crossroads: Mexican-American Literature."

Beyond Himself [11-15-02]
BY ROGER GATHMAN
Roger Gathman talks to Jonathan Safran Foer about the author's unconscious grasp of the Jewish literary tradition.

Some Unspeakable Beauty [11-08-02]
BY BELINDA ACOSTA
Don't call it magic realism: Josephine Sacabo's photography and Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo make a powerful pair.

Big Mischief [11-01-02]
BY CLAY SMITH
Like the protagonist in his latest novel, Miss Spellbinder's Point of View, novelist Edward Swift is still battling the "disease of the literal minded."

• Short Third-Degree Sessions [10-18-02]
  BY JESSE SUBLETT
  Jesse Sublett gets personal with four of Bouchercon 2002's featured authors.

The World as He Knows It [09-13-02]
BY TIM WALKER
H.W. Brands? The Age of Gold is just the latest in a long line of well-crafted history.

On Paper [08-30-02]
BY SHAWN BADGLEY

Watch Your Language [07-26-02]
BY SHAWN BADGLEY
UCLA Professor Otto Santa Ana brings Brown Tide Rising to Resistencia.

An Artificial Wilderness [06-21-02]
BY ROGER GATHMAN
Philip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles is getting a serious and heartening push from its publisher, Knopf, writes Roger Gathman. Does he seriously think there's an audience for a book that, among other things, explains the strategic deliberations of Napoleon III? "I always conceived a large audience for this book," Bobbitt claims. "I'd be crushed if scholars didn't attend to this book, but I meant it for anybody who wants to keep seriously informed about world affairs."

Christopher Middleton: Translating a German Genius [05-31-02]
BY ROGER GATHMAN
Translator and former UT professor Christopher Middleton has shed some literary light on 20th-century German writer Robert Walser, a favorite of few and forgotten by most.

Paula Kamen's New 'Strain' of Female [03-22-02]
BY LAURA DONNELLY

Honor Among Thieves [03-08-02]
BY JESSE SUBLETT
James Carlos Blake demystifies A World of Thieves and the world of writing.

True Crime and Punishment [02-22-02]
BY SUZY SPENCER
True crime writer Suzy Spencer interviews fellow true crime writer Vanessa Leggett about how she snatched the record for the longest contempt of court imprisonment of a journalist in United States history.

Friend of the Family [01-25-02]
BY CLAY SMITH
In Thomas Mallon's new nonfiction book, the strangest figure in the JFK assassination is the most honest one.

The Great American Drug Book [01-18-02]
BY CLAY SMITH
How Robert Sabbag set out to write the Great American Novel but ended up becoming the nation's best chronicler of the drug trade.

New Fest [11-16-01]
BY CLAY SMITH
Why the Texas Book Festival decided to loosen its criteria this year.

You Can't Go Home Again [10-26-01]
BY JESSE SUBLETT
Chronicle writer Jesse Sublett on why James Crumley, whose mystery The Final Country has recently been published, is the best writer from Texas to disown the state.

Susanna Kaysen Lays It on the Line [10-19-01]
BY MARION WINIK
The Camera My Mother Gave Me, by Girl, Interrupted author Susanna Kaysen, is a memoir that has nothing to do with either the author's camera or her mother, Marion Winik writes. It is about her vagina. It is the chronicle of a mysterious and intractable medical problem she had with this little-discussed part of the body, and of the interesting experiences she endured in what I think of as Patient-World, the alternate reality inhabited by those of us who have something wrong with our bodies.

Life After Death [08-31-01]
BY CLAY SMITH
A new life for almost-forgotten author Mary Gavell

Diving for Pearls [08-17-01]
BY ROGER GATHMAN

The Joys of Meanness [08-10-01]
BY ROBIN BRADFORD
Scott Blackwood's initiation into the writing life

Burning Down the Sixties [06-29-01]
BY JESSE SUBLETT
They don't normally let dogs in the LBJ Library and Museum, but after Chronicle writer Jesse Sublett explained that he was talking about James Ellroy, the demon dog of American literature, they graciously made an exception.

Pills, Thrills, and Bellyaches [06-15-01]
BY MARC SAVLOV
Irvine Welsh's first novel 'Trainspotting' is one of the most successful first novels in recent history, but in this interview with Chronicle writer Marc Savlov, Welsh, whose new novel 'Glue' brings him to BookPeople on Monday, June 18, at 7pm, admits to thinking that "you had to be a bit strange to be a writer, to sit in your room, spending all this time with people that don't actually exist, you know?"

Ms. Unruly [05-04-01]
BY CLAY SMITH
Marion Winik gives advice?

Modern Taste [04-13-01]
BY CLAY SMITH
"There are these conundrums," Steven Watson said at lunch the day before he headed off to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at UT to try and unravel some of them. Clarifying the enigmas of modernism and avant-garde artists is something that Watson has become quite proficient at.

The Dreamer [04-13-01]
BY BELINDA ACOSTA
The Protagonist of Denise Chávez's New Novel Is in Love With a Long-Dead Movie Star

Still Life [02-09-01]
BY ROGER GATHMAN
Whether it is the coterie around the world's most famous photographer or a group of cowboys on a West Texas ranch, Laura Wilson, who peeked inside a reclusive Christian sect for her new photography book Hutterites of Montana, has an instinct for penetrating insular, tightly knit societies.

Making a Living, Making a Life [02-02-01]
BY CLAY SMITH
Judging from the coverage he has been receiving, the most popular story trailing Robert Reich as he travels around the nation talking about his new book The Future of Success is an entirely personal one. Books Editor Clay Smith interviews the former Clinton administration secretary of labor and finds out a few other stories about the popularizing public intellectual.

The High Life [02-02-01]
BY AMANDA EYRE WARD
Too-often regarded as dull compilations of dusty facts, biographies are rarely bestsellers, Amanda Eyre Ward writes. But Amanda Foreman's Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire reads like a racy novel, complete with enough rocky relationships, torrid trysts, and illegitimate childbirths to keep Jerry Springer in business for weeks.

In Search of Marcel Proust [12-22-00]
BY SIDNEY MOODY
Once UT's Dr. Seth Wolitz discovered Proust, he didn't turn back, but it took a real beating for him to get to that point.

The Full Franklin [12-01-00]
BY CLAY SMITH
It's been 60 years since a biograpy of Benjamin Franklin has been written; Austin author H.W. Brands' The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin makes up for lost time.

The Years With Carlos Fuentes [11-24-00]
BY DAVID GARZA
Carlos Fuentes says he can not imagine a world without Shakespeare and Cervantes, but it is impossible to imagine a Mexico without Fuentes.

World of Books [11-10-00]
BY CLAY SMITH
The Fifth Annual Texas Book Festival takes place this weekend, and, once again, it should prove to be the best use of the State Capitol all year long.

The Queen of Truth [11-03-00]
BY ROBIN BRADFORD

With two beautifully crafted memoirs under her belt, a third book of poetry out, tenure at Syracuse University, a teenage son, and a blissful romance, Mary Karr is definitely hardworking and real. And if her soul isn't entirely pure, well, readers of Cherry will be grateful it isn't.

The Man Who Knew Too Much [10-13-00]
BY ROGER GATHMAN
Although some critics have assumed, from Jacques Barzun's criticisms of modern culture, that he is a conservative ideologue, in reality he has always followed his own, pragmatic vision of things.

Dangerous Liaisons [08-25-00]
BY MARION WINIK

Dirty Words [08-11-00]
BY ROGER GATHMAN
Roger Gathman delves into local bookstores' shelves of smut to investigate the collective Gestalt of erotica.

• Recommended Erotica [08-11-00]
  Chronicle writer Roger Gathman queries local booksellers and various writers on erotica they recommend.

Him Write Funny [06-16-00]
BY SARAH HEPOLA
"If somebody hates me," David Sedaris confesses in an interview with Sarah Hepola, "I just go to pieces. I mean, it doesn't really seem fair that I've made my career making fun of people, and if someone makes fun of me, I fall apart. But that's the way it is."

Boy Raises Man [03-03-00]
BY STUART WADE
Yes, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" often sidesteps grief and even undermines its critics by slyly layering the self-deprecation. Chronicle contributor Stuart Wade explains why, In Eggers' hands, it works.

Lone Star Sweden [02-25-00]
BY ROGER GATHMAN
"Lars Gustafsson has the air, somehow, of a sailor," Roger Gathman writes about this Austin author transplanted from Sweden. "It is as though he were some Swedish Sinbad come to rest here after a dozen ports. And in a way, that is true."

A Portrait of the Artist as a Grad Student [10-22-99]
BY DAVID GARZA
Chronicle reviewer David Garza uses Tom Grimes' new history of the Iowa Writers' Workshop to question whether creative writing can be taught.