The Big Texas Author Talk is a *free* lecture series devoted to showcasing Texas authors from across our big state. Each month we feature one Texas author in conversation with another—from New York Times bestsellers living in Dallas, Houston, and Austin to our rich Texas Latinx border authors living in Laredo and McAllen, not to mention from other deep pockets and corners of our culturally diverse state. Our lecture series is as entertaining as it is informative—and like Texas itself, we offer a vast array of storytellers who represent the spirit of our extremely distinct Lone Star State and continue to keep us on the literary map. In the past, we’ve featured novelists such as Kathleen Kent, Marisol Cortez, Joe Lansdale, and Antonio Ruiz-Camacho and Texas poet laureates such as Carmen Tafolla, Laurie Ann Guerrero, Jenny Brown, and Emmy Pérez.
If you’ve visited with us over the last three years, you know who we are and what we do, and we thank you for your ongoing support. We value your presence and love seeing your faces! If you’re new to the Big Texas Author Talk and are just discovering who we are and what we do, we welcome you to join us virtually on the third Wednesday of every month at 7 pm CST.
See some of our past Big Texas Author Talks (formerly The Big Texas Read) at our YouTube Channel.
Wednesday, April 24th, 2024 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: Poet Cyrus Cassells and his collection, Is There Room for Another Horse on Your Horse Ranch?
ABOUT IS THERE ROOM FOR ANOTHER HORSE ON YOUR HORSE RANCH?
Cyrus Cassells has perfected a poetics of merciful vitality and tenderness, celebrating eros — in his daring and prolific representation of lust, yes, but more broadly in his understanding of the erotic as an affirmation and preservation of life — through time and space. Beginning his latest collection with the piece “You Be the Dancer,” he bids us return to sacred sites of nostalgia, insisting on it “whether we’re feeling frisky, / Empty-handed, / Or still beguiled by inchoate dreams–.” Is There Room for Another Horse on Your Horse Ranch? is the apotheosis of Cassells’s work to elevate the mundane and the bodily to the exalted, his vigorous lyrics a routine ecstasy. Though our senses lay us bare to suffering, they also create the possibilities for pleasure and connection, the basis of — and rewards for — humanity. “My Only Bible,” Cassells pledges, “is this blood-red joy / Of breathing beside you,” “The gospel of bougainvillea / At your boyhood gate” which perfumes “the soul’s endless, luxuriant / Coming and becoming…” Gorgeous and wry in its portrayal of transformational romance and queer selfhood, Cassells’s ninth book of poetry reads as an anthology of love letters to people and places across the world. Cassells revises an old premise: is it better to have loved than lost, or is that love, once bestowed, is never lost? A champion of the flight real intimacy requires of us, Cassells addresses a beloved, “You’ve just died in my arms / But suddenly it seems we’re eternal,” the joie de vivre and bravery of his perseverance made immortal through the poem’s titular declaration — “I Believe Icarus Was not Failing as He Fell.” If in these pages you see the crash, the poet seems to say, remember the flying, too, “the giddy Argonauts we were.”
ABOUT CYRUS CASSELLS
Cyrus Cassells was the 2021 Poet Laureate of Texas. Among his honors: a 2023 Civitella-Ranieri Foundation fellowship; a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate fellowship to administer his statewide Juneteenth poetry project; a 2019 Guggenheim fellowship; the National Poetry Series; a Lambda Literary Award; two NEA grants; a Pushcart Prize; and the William Carlos Williams Award. His 2018 volume, The Gospel according to Wild Indigo, was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award, and the Balcones Poetry Prize. Still Life with Children: Selected Poems of Francesc Parcerisas, translated from the Catalan, was awarded the Texas Institute of Letters’ Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translated Book of 2018 and 2019. To The Cypress Again and Again: Tribute to Salvador Espriu, combining translations, poetry, and memoir in homage to Catalan Spain’s most revered 20th century writer, was published in 2023. Cassells was nominated for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism for his film and television reviews in The Washington Spectator. He teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University, where he received a 2021 Presidential Award for Scholarly/Creative Activities and was named a 2023 University Distinguished Professor.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Info coming
UPCOMING 2024 AUTHORS AND TITLES
May, Glenn Blake, Title TBA
June, Alex Temblador
July, Ramona Reeves
Aug, Sasha West
Sep, Elizabeth McCracken
Oct, Joshua Robbins
Nov, Anel Flores
Dec, TBA
PREVIOUS AUTHORS AND TITLES
Jason Stone, The Beauty of the Days Gone By
Mag Gabbert, Sex Depression Animals
Rudy Ruiz, Valley of Shadows
Carmen Tafolla, Warrior Girl
Katie Gutierrez, More Than You’ll Ever Know
Thomas H. McNeely, Pictures of the Shark
Rubén Degollado, The Family Izquierdo
Jehanne Dubrow, Taste: A Book of Small Bites
Richard Z. Santos, Trust Me
Andrew Porter, The Disappeared
Steve Adams, Remember This
Leticia Urieta, Las Criaturas
Vincent Cooper, Zarzamora
Allison Hedge Coke, Look At This Blue
Tomás Q. Morín, Let Me Count the Ways
Daniel Peña, Bang
Alexander Essbaum’s Hausfrau: A Novel
Carmen Tafolla and illustrator Regina Moya, The Last Butterfly
Laurie Ann Guerrero, I Have Eaten the Rattlesnake
Alexandra van de Kamp, Ricochet Script
Wondra Chang, Sonju
Johnnie Bernhard, Sisters of the Undertow
Barbara Ras,The Blues of Heaven
Mike Soto, A Grave is Given Supper
Deb Olin Unferth, Barn 8
Marisol Cortez, Luz At Midnight
Sergio Troncoso, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son
Edward Vidaurre, Pandemia & Other Poems
Octavio Quintanilla, If I Go Missing
Sherry Kafka Wagner, Hannah Jackson
Nan Cuba, Body and Bread
Cliff Hudder, Pretty Enough for You
Rebekah Manley, Alexandra and the Awful, Awkward, No Fun, Truly Bad Dates A Picture Book Parody for Adults
Jenny Browne, Fellow Travelers: New and Selected Poems (TCU Poet Laureate Series)
Amanda Eyre Ward, The Jetsetters
Heather Harper Ellett, Ain’t Nobody Nobody.
Andrea Vocab Sanderson, She Lives in Music
Antonio Ruiz-Camacho: Barefoot Dogs
Wendy Barker: Gloss
Fowzia Karimi: Above Us the Milky Way
Joe R. Lansdale: Edge of Dark Water
Kendra Allen: When You Learn the Alphabet
Emmy Pérez: With The River on Our Face
Kathleen Kent: The Dime & The Burn
David Samuel Levinson: Tell Me How This Ends Well
PARTNER BOOKSTORES
We’re grateful to partner with independent bookstore The Twig Book Shop in San Antonio for The Big Texas Author Talk. Order your book directly and have it delivered to your front door!
