Texas Music at the Library: Reading & Live Music (Tuesday, April 22)

TUESDAY, APRIL 22
The History of Texas Music by Gary Hartman
3:30 – 5:00 pm


The Southwestern Writers Collection presents Texas State professor Gary Hartman discussing The History of Texas Music, with a book signing to follow. The event also celebrates The John and Robin Dickson Series in Texas Music, which is co-sponsored by the Center for Texas Music History and Texas A&M University Press.

Don’t miss live music by the popular band Ponty Bone and the Squeezetones! Admission is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Books will be for sale courtesy of the University Bookstore.

Southwestern Writers Collection
The Wittliff Collections
Alkek Library, Seventh Floor
Texas State University-San Marcos
http://www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu/
(512) 245-2313



About The History of Texas Music

Texans aren’t the only ones passionate about the music of their home state. In fact, Texas music is popular throughout the world. Despite this, many fans don’t fully understand the history behind Texas music, or why the Lone Star State has such a rich and colorful musical heritage.

Looking to change that, Gary Hartman, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State, has just released a new book, The History of Texas Music, which explores in detail the many social, cultural, and historical factors that have helped define the music of the American Southwest. A musician himself, Hartman draws on both academic and non-academic sources to give a more complete understanding of the state's remarkable musical heritage. He looks at influential musical figures who have come from the region, and the list is long and impressive: Scott Joplin, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lead Belly, Sippie Wallace, Lightnin’ Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Bob Wills, Gene Autry, Dale Evans, Tex Ritter, Ernest Tubb, George Jones, Barbara Mandrell, Kris Kristofferson, Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Tanya Tucker, George Strait, the Dixie Chicks, Van Cliburn, Charlie Christian, Ornette Coleman, Lydia Mendoza, Flaco Jiménez, Selena Quintanilla, Emilio Navaira, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Janis Joplin, ZZ Top, Stephen Stills, and Don Henley.

The History of Texas Music incorporates a selection of well-chosen photographs of many of these prominent and lesser-known artists, and describes not only the ethnic origins of much of Texas music but also the cross-pollination among various genres that have mixed and mingled throughout the state, creating vibrant new hybrids that have reshaped the American musical landscape. Today, the music of Texas—which includes Native American music, gospel, blues, ragtime, swing, jazz, rhythm and blues, conjunto, Tejano, cajun, zydeco, western swing, honky tonk, polkas, schottisches, rock & roll, rap, hip hop, and more—reflects the unique cultural dynamics of the Southwest.

More from TAMU Press:
http://www.tamu.edu/upress/BOOKS/2008/hartman.htm

Dagoberto Gilb Reading at the Library (March 4, Tuesday)

DAGOBERTO GILB
Reading & book signing

TUESDAY, MARCH 4
3:30 pm
The Wittliff Collections
Southwestern Writers Collection
Alkek Library Seventh Floor

FREE and open to the public

The Wittliff Collections host acclaimed author Dagoberto Gilb reading from his new novel, The Flowers, published by Grove Press. The reading will be followed by a Q&A and book signing. Books will be for sale courtesy of the University Bookstore.

DAGOBERTO GILB received the Texas Book Festival Bookend Award for Ongoing Literary Achievement in 2007 and is editor of Hecho en Tejas, the Southwestern Writers Collection anthology of Texas Mexican literature. A tenured professor in the Creative Writing Program at Texas State and member of The Wittliff Collections Advisory Board, Gilb has seen his work translated into French, Italian, Japanese, German, Spanish, and Dutch. Other books by Gilb include The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña, Woodcuts of Women, and Gritos: Essays. His first published collection of short stories, The Magic of Blood, won the PEN/Hemingway Award.

For more information, contact The Wittliff Collections at 512.245.2313.

Mystery Writers & Live Music at the Library (February 23, Saturday)

LONE STAR SLEUTHS DAY
Meet & Greet with Fifteen Texas Mystery Writers
plus Acoustic Noir Songs Performed Live

FEBRUARY 23, Saturday
2:00 to 5:00 pm

THE PUBLIC IS INVITED to LONE STAR SLEUTHS DAY celebrating the new Texas crime fiction anthology in the Southwestern Writers Collection Book Series with UT Press. Fifteen of the contributing mystery writers and the three editors, Bill Cunningham, Steven L. Davis, and Rollo K. Newsom, will be on hand to talk with guests and sign books.

SCHEDULED AUTHORS
Susan Wittig Albert, Neal Barrett, Jr., Paula Boyd, Susan Rogers Cooper, Bill Crider, A.W. Gray, Rolando Hinojosa, Joe R. Lansdale, David Lindsey, Ben Rehder, Rick Riordan, Jim Sanderson, Jesse Sublett, Doug J. Swanson, Mary Willis Walker

LIVE MUSIC
Author/musician Jesse Sublett and country singer Kasey Lansdale will perform acoustic noir songs.

Catered refreshments will be served.
Books by all attending authors will be for sale.

Free and open to the public.

ATTENDEES, PLEASE RSVP
to southwesternwriters@txstate.edu or (512) 245-2313.

THE WITTLIFF COLLECTIONS
Southwestern Writers Collection
Alkek Library Seventh Floor
Texas State University-San Marcos
(512) 245-2313
http://www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu/

Read more about Lone Star Sleuths: An Anthology of Texas Crime Fiction from UT Press
http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/cunlop.html

Library Collections Unite Under New Name: the Wittliff Collections

The Southwestern Writers Collection and Wittliff Gallery are now The Wittliff Collections at the Alkek Library.

When the Southwestern Writers Collection was founded at the university library in 1986, its collecting activities focused on the literature, film, and music of the region. It was only several years later that the collection of photographs of the Southwest and Mexico began to form, and in 1996 the Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern & Mexican Photography was formally christened.

Each collection, although operating as one organization within Texas State, continued to function separately for the most part in terms of archival activities, exhibitions, and public programming. However, it became increasingly complicated to explain how each repository was separate, but not separate.

In an effort to convey the composite nature of the collections, unite them under a common name, and acknowledge the great and generous contributions of the founding donors, the two counterparts will now be known officially as:

The Wittliff Collections

Where necessary, the terms “Southwestern Writers Collection” and “Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection” will be used to refer to the components of The Wittliff Collections.

Bookmark the new website address: www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu which can be accessed for exhibits and events info, author and artist inventories, and much more.

We are in the process of changing all pertinent materials and documents.
At this time, all location codes in the library catalog will remain as they are.

THE WITTLIFF COLLECTIONS offer a dynamic archival, exhibition, programming, and research environment designed to further the cultural legacy of the region’s literary and photographic arts, and foster “the spirit of place” in the wider world.

The Southwestern Writers Collection preserves and exhibits the literary papers and artifacts of principal writers, filmmakers, and musicians, including the major archives of Cormac McCarthy, Sam Shepard, and John Graves, Fox’s animated series King of the Hill, and the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove.

The Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection includes the major holdings of such renowned artists as Kate Breakey, Keith Carter, and Graciela Iturbide, and houses the largest archive of modern and contemporary Mexican photography in the United States.

Connie Todd, Curator
The Wittliff Collections, Alkek Library, 7th floor

Southwestern Writers Collection acquires Cormac McCarthy papers

The Southwestern Writers Collection (SWWC), a part of The Wittliff Collections at the Alkek Library, has acquired the papers of author Cormac McCarthy.

McCarthy’s body of work includes some of the finest novels of our times. Critic Harold Bloom declares Blood Meridian (1985) “the authentic American apocalyptic novel,” stating, “The fulfilled renown of Moby-Dick and of As I Lay Dying is augmented by Blood Meridian, since Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of Melville and of Faulkner. I venture that no other living American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and memorable….”

In 1992, McCarthy won the National Book Award for the New York Times bestseller All the Pretty Horses, and in 2006 he was given the Pulitzer Prize for his most recent novel, The Road. The recipient of numerous other awards, including a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Fellowship (the so-called “genius” grant), Cormac McCarthy has been highly praised from the very start of his career.

No Country for Old Men, on which the recent film by Joel and Ethan Coen is based, was touted by Sam Shepard as “a monster of a book. Cormac McCarthy achieves monumental results by a kind of drip-by-drip process of ruthless simplicity. It will leave you panting and awestruck.” In December, the movie was named best film of 2007 by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.

A room designated for the Cormac McCarthy Collection, will be located within the Southwestern Writers Collection on the Alkek Library’s seventh floor, and will be equipped for exhibits, study, and related activities.

Public events are being planned, and will be announced.

Read the full news release here.