Events

This is event is completely sold out. Greg Mortenson will appear at Jones Hall at 7 pm on February 8. Click here for details.

TIME: 11:00 am Check-in/Reception

Luncheon begins promptly at 11:45

TICKETS:  Single tickets: $100 and up

Sponsorships: $2,500/$5,000/$10,000 for a table of 10

We are proud to announce "Three Cups of Tea with Greg Mortenson" and invite you to join us in supporting this very important fundraising luncheon. Mortenson is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, national and international award-winning and bestselling author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools. All proceeds from the event will benefit Central Asia Institute, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with the mission to promote and support community-based education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the newly appointed Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, will introduce and engage in a brief dialogue session with Mortenson. Crocker is a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient and former Ambassador to Iraq and Pakistan.

A sponsorship of $2,500-$10,000 includes a copy of Mortenson's newest book, Stones into Schools, for each table guest and an invitation to a private VIP reception with Greg Mortenson and Ambassador Crocker prior to the luncheon.

To become an Underwriter, Sponsor, Table Host or to purchase a ticket, click here. For more information, call 713.599.1271 or email Meredith at PR Boutique.

With your help, Greg's mission for peace through education can continue. Please join us in supporting this extraordinary cause by attending "Three Cups of Tea with Greg Mortenson."

About Greg Mortenson:

Mortenson's remarkable story begins after an unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, the world's second tallest mountain. During the climb, Greg was injured and aided by poor local villagers in a nearby town. Learning that the children who helped him had never been to school yet desperately wanted an education, Mortenson has since dedicated his life to promoting education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. This experience is the basis of his bestselling novel, Three Cups of Tea. Mortenson is the co-founder of nonprofit Central Asia Institute and founder of Pennies for Peace, organizations which raise money for and awareness about the need to build foreign schools.

Called "a template for peace" by the Bloomsbury Review, Three Cups of Tea has revolutionized the way people think about improving the world and encourage peace through education. The book follows Mortenson's mission to fight terrorism and build nations one school at a time. Since its publication in 2006, Three Cups of Tea has sold more than 2.5 million copies in 29 languages. The book has become required reading for U.S. senior military commanders, U.S. Special Forces deploying to Afghanistan, Pentagon officers in counter-insurgency training, and Canadian Defense Ministry members.

Learn more:

- About Three Cups of Tea

- About Central Asia Institute

- About Stones Into Schools

Pre-purchase Mortenson's books below or buy them at the luncheon from your local Brazos Bookstore!

Texans for Pennies for Peace presents

Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson & the Houston Youth Leadership Awards

Enjoy an inspiring and entertaining evening as Nobel Prize Nominee Greg Mortenson, best known for his New York Times bestselling books Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools, recounts his remarkable journey from moutain climber to global humanitarian. Mortenson's non-profit Central Asia Institute promotes and supports community-based education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he has built over 130 schools.

From the beginning, Mortenson's efforts have been supported by school children and other organizations in the U.S. (and now around the world) through his Pennies for Peace program.

The Houston Youth Leadership Awards will feature Mortenson recognizing and interviewing selected young people from Houston to represent the many youths in the Houston area who have exhibited exceptional efforts as positive change agents in their communities and/or the world.

Tickets: $4.50-$55.00

BUY TICKETS HERE!

Call 866-468-7623 or visit www.texans4p4p.com for more information.

Brazos Bookstore will sell Mortenson's books during the event.

The Asia Society of Texas presents China specialist Minxin Pei to open the BP Lecture Series: Prospects for Democracy. Tickets are $30 for members, $40 for non-members, $300 for a table of 10. Call Asia Society Texas Center at 713-439-0051 for more information, or click here.

Over the past 30 years Communist Party leaders have transformed China
into an economic powerhouse. At the same time they have shown scant
interest in opening up the country's political system. Much hinges on
the question: Can this marriage of economic growth and authoritarian,
one-party rule work for the next three decades?

Minxin Pei, named one of the world's top 100 public intellectuals in a Foreign Policy magazine poll, will address this question in his February 11 lecture, Will China Democratize? His lecture kicks off the 2010 BP Lecture Series: "Prospects for Democracy: China, North Korea, and Afghanistan."

Pei is a professor and director of the Keck Center for
International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College and an
adjunct senior associate in the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace. His research focuses on democratization in
developing countries, economic reform and governance in China, and
U.S.-China relations.

His books include From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 1994) and China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Harvard University Press, 2006). He also contributes regularly to such journals as Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs and to the op-ed pages of Financial Times, New York Times, and the Washington Post. His recent Foreign Policy
cover story, "Think Again: Asia's Rise," takes issue with the
conventional wisdom that we are entering a period of Western decline
and Asian ascendancy.

Dr. Pei was born in Shanghai and is a graduate of Shanghai
International Studies Institute. He has a doctorate from Harvard
University.

This event has been postponed due to inclement weather on the east coast. The new date and time for this program is Thursday, April 8 at 7 pm.

Poet, Playwright, and Civil Rights Activist

Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in 1934 in Newark,
NJ. After leaving Howard University and the Air Force, he moved to the
Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1957 and co-edited the avant-garde
literary magazine Yugen and founded Totem Press, which first
published works by Allen Ginsberg,
Jack Kerouac, and others.

He published his first volume of poetry, Preface to a
Twenty-Volume Suicide Note, in 1961. Blues People: Negro Music in
White
America,
still regarded as the seminal work on Afro-American music and culture. He
also edited The Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in
America
were published in 1963. His reputation as a playwright was established with
the production of Dutchman at the Cherry Lane Theatre
in New York on March 24, 1964. The controversial play subsequently won an
Obie Award (for "best off-Broadway play") and was made into a film. (The
play was revived by the Cherry Lane Theatre in January 2007 and has been
reproduced around the world).

In 1965, Jones moved to Harlem,
where he founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School. The BARTS lasted
only one year but had a lasting influence on the direction of Afro American
Arts. Sending five trucks a day into the Harlem community, art show on one,
poetry reading from the other, music, another, drama the other, where
performances would be given in a changed location each day. Vacant lots,
play grounds, housing projects pushing Art that would be Black as Bessie
Smith, mass-based and taken to the people and Revolutionary, reflecting the
intensity of the entire Black Liberation Movement

In 1966, when the BARTS was dissolved, Baraka returned to Newark,
his hometown and set up with his new bride, Amina Baraka, (who was a founder
of Newark’s “Loft” a local venue of contemporary art), Spirit House and the
Spirit House Movers, which brought drama, music and poetry from across the
country.

During this period, the Barakas founded the Committee for Unified
Newark and the Congress of Afrikan People which led the election of Ken
Gibson as the first Black Mayor of a major northeastern city spearheaded by
the 1972 Gary (IN) Convention. In 1968, he co-edited Black Fire: An
Anthology of Afro-American Writing with Larry Neal.

He and his wife, Amina Baraka, edited The Music (Meditations
of Jazz & Blues (Morrow) Confirmation: An Anthology of African-American
Women, which won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus
Foundation. The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka was
published in 1984. His recent publications are Y’s/Why’s/Wise (3rd
World 1992) Funk Lore (Littoral 1993), Eulogies, (Marsilio,
94,) Transbluesency, (Marsilio 1996), Somebody Blew Up America &
Other Poems (Nehesi 2002).

Amiri Baraka's numerous literary honors include fellowships from
the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the
PEN/Faulkner Award, the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, the Langston
Hughes Award from The City College of New York, and a lifetime achievement
award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He was inducted into the American
Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995. In 1994, he retired as Professor of
Africana Studies at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, and in
2002 was named Poet Laureate of New Jersey and Newark Public Schools. In
January 2007, his award-winning, one-act play, Dutchman, was revived
at the new Cherry Lane Theatre in New York and received critical acclaim and
international attention. His recent book of short stories, Tales of the
Out & The Gone (Akashic Books) was published in late 2007.  Home,
his book of social essays, will be re-released by Akashic Books in early
2009. Digging: The Afro American Soul of Music (Univ.
of California) is also due out this year.

"Connect: The Power of Networking" will be the theme of the ninth
annual Women in Leadership Conference at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate
School of Management.

Hosted
by the Rice chapter of the National Association of Women MBAs (NAWMBA),
the event will be held Feb.13 in McNair Hall to promote connections
between attendees and improve their lifelong networking skills. 

The half-day conference will feature a morning keynote speech by Jo
Miller, chief executive officer of Women’s Leadership Coaching, and a
closing keynote by Janet Clark, chief financial officer and executive
vice president of Marathon Oil. Breakout sessions will focus on
personal development and current business topics. Brazos Bookstore will sell Robyn O'Brien's book, The Unhealthy Truth. 

For eight years, NAWMBA has used the conference to motivate Greater
Houston women as well as educate them on business and workplace
issues. 

The conference is expected to attract more than 200 attendees, a mix
of Houston professionals and students from Rice and other local
universities. 

For more information or to register, visit www.jonesgsm.rice.edu/conf2009.

Join us earlier in the day, at 4pm at Inprint House, 1520 West Main for a poetics talk by Maureen McLane ("Poetry is Dead, Long
Live Poetry"). Then kick off your weekend with her reading at Brazos Bookstore, presented by the Rice Department of English and Fondren Library's Cherry Reading Series, and co-sponsored by the HRC Poetry and Poetics workshop.

Maureen N. McLane grew up in upstate New York and was educated at
Harvard, Oxford, and the University of Chicago. She is the author of
two books of poems, World Enough (2010) and Same Life (2008), and a poetry chapbook, This Carrying Life (2005). She has also published two books of literary criticism: Balladeering, Minstrelsy, and the Making of British Romantic Poetry (2008) and Romanticism and the Human Sciences (2000, 2006); she co-edited The Cambridge Companion to British Romantic Poetry (2008). A contributing editor at Boston Review, she was for years the chief poetry critic of the Chicago Tribune; her articles on poetry, contemporary fiction, and sexuality have appeared widely, including the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Boston Review, the Washington Post, American Poet, and on the Poetry Foundation website.

In
2003 McLane won the National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Award
for Excellence in Book Reviewing; she was elected in 2007 for a
three-year term on the Board of Directors of the NBCC.  Currently an
Associate Professor in the English Department at NYU, she has taught at
Harvard, the University of Chicago, MIT, and the East Harlem Poetry
Project.

Houston's own Classical Theatre Company's 2009-2010 season of the Douglas Earle Johnston Reading Series, a series of live readings of classical theatre performed in the comfort of your neighborhood bookstore, concludes with the final installment: a raucous and scandalous comedy about love, just in time for Valentine's Day.

In Clizia, Niccolo Machiavelli manages to use humor and simultaneously convey a serious message about managing passions and relationships. This performance will be directed by Kalob Martinez. For details, vist www.classicaltheatre.org or call 713-963-9665.

Brazos welcomes back David Dow, author of Executed on a Technicality, for a reading from his new book, published February 3, The Autobiography of an Execution. 

"For a lot of good reasons, and some that are not so good, executions
in the U.S. are carried out in private. The voters, the vast majority
of whom support executions, are not allowed to see them. The
Autobiography of an Execution is a riveting and compelling account of a
Texas execution written and narrated by a lawyer in the thick of the
last minute chaos. It should be read by all those who support state
sponsored killing." -- John Grisham, author of The Innocent Man

"Defending the innocent is easy. David Dow fights for the questionable.
He is tormented, but relentless, and takes us inside his struggle with
candor and insight, shudders and all." -- Dave Cullen, author of Columbine

"David Dow's extraordinary memoir lifts the veil on the real
world of representing defendants on death row. It will stay with me a
long time." -- Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine

David R. Dow is professor of law at the University of Houston Law
Center and an internationally recognized figure in the fight against
the death penalty. He is the founder and director of the Texas
Innocence. He lives in Houston, Texas.

Molly Ivins was a groomed for a gilded life, having been born
into a moneyed family prominent in Houston society. But Molly Ivins
left the country club behind to become one of the most provocative, courageous, and influential journalists in American history. Presidents and senators called her for advice; her column ran in 400
newspapers; her books were bestsellers. But despite her fame, few
people really knew her: what her background was, who influenced her,
how her political views developed, or how many painful struggles she
fought.

Join us on February 17 for a
discussion of Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life with co-author Bill
Minutaglio, a professor of journalism at the

University of Texas and author of several critically acclaimed books.

This is event is co-sponsored by the Columbia University Club of South Texas, The Texas Observer, ACLU of Texas, and ROADWomen. The reading is free, but we will accept donations to support Houston breast cancer research, treatment and care in honor of Molly Ivins. For further information or to RSVP, call 713.523.0701 or email brazos@brazosbookstore.com.

Read an excerpt of Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life in the Texas Observer online.

Visit Bill Minutaglio's website.

Read the review of Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life the NYTimes Book Review.

Haslett's in last Sunday's NYT Book Review.

Union Atlantic on Feb Indie Next List!

Wikipedia Adam Haslett.

Read an interview with Haslett on the Wall Street Journal website.

Read his short story, The Beginnings of Grief, and another interview on The Barcelona Review.

Buzz all around! Check out the feature in New York Magazine.

We are genuinely thrilled to be a stop on Adam Haslett's tour for his much-anticipated debut novel, Union Atlantic.  His collection of stories, You Are Not a Stranger Here, was a finalist for both the National Book Award (2002) and the Pulitzer Prize (2003) and was named one of the five best books of 2002 by TIME Magazine. Now, Union Atlantic is becoming a publishing sensation with accolades like these:

"The first great novel of the new century. It's big and ambitious, like novels used to be. It's about us, now. All of us."
—Esquire

"Adam
Haslett's page-turner of a debut novel ranges brilliantly from the
Strait of Hormuz to the outskirts of Boston to the belly of the
financial beast—New York's Federal Reserve. It explains to me, with
humor and style and generosity, how we became America in the year 2009.
A must read."
—Gary Shteyngart

“Adam Haslett has the rarest
of talents: the ability to combine a powerful intelligence with
storytelling that is both elegant and suspenseful, and to break your
heart in the process. Union Atlantic is a masterful portrait of our age.”
—Malcolm Gladwell

At the heart of Union Atlantic lies a test of wills between a
young banker, Doug Fanning, and a retired schoolteacher, Charlotte
Graves, whose two dogs have begun to speak to her. When Doug builds an
ostentatious mansion on land that Charlotte's grandfather donated to
the town of Finden, Massachusetts, she determines to oust him in court.
As a senior manager of Union Atlantic bank, a major financial
conglomerate, Doug is embroiled in the company's struggle to remain
afloat. It is Charlotte's brother, Henry Graves, the president of the
New York Federal Reserve, who must keep a watchful eye on Union
Atlantic and the entire financial system. Drawn into Doug and
Charlotte's intensifying conflict is Nate Fuller, a troubled
high-school senior who unwittingly stirs powerful emotions in each of
them. Irresistibly complex, imaginative, and witty, Union Atlantic is a singular work of fiction that is sure to be read and reread. Please join us in welcoming Adam Haslett to Houston.

Arthur Japin is one of the Netherlands' best loved and best selling authors. On publication his historical novels The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi and In Lucia’s Eyes shot to the European bestseller lists and haven’t left them since. The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi was made into an opera by
the British composer Jonathan Dove in 2007. Japin has won many major
literary prizes, including the 2004 Libris Literary Prize for In Lucia’s Eyes. Both
of these titles have been adapted as stage plays and are set to become
major motion pictures. His work has been translated into more than
twenty languages.

"Set in Cinecittà of the seventies, Japin's new novel, Director's Cut (Knopf) captures the affair between a beautiful young Dutch actress and a famous Italian director (a thinly fictionalized Federico Fellini), whose fading spotlight still has the power to enchant -- and ensnare. A former actor, Japin has brought a cinematic vibrancy to historical fiction....here, he draws from his own colorful past, conjuring the twilight of Hollywood on the Tiber to explore art's treacherous illusion: how a world projected on-screen can come to seem more real than anything held secretly in the heart."

From a review in Vogue, full review here.

Check out Arthur Japin's website (in English or Dutch).

Read author Ron Slate's review on his website, On the Seawall.

Barry Lynn on the Amazon v Macmillan battle

Regular Harpers and Financial Times contributor Barry C.
Lynn paints a genuinely alarming picture: most of our public debates
about globalization, competitiveness, creative destruction, and risky
finance are nothing more than a cover for the widespread consolidation
of power in nearly every imaginable sector of the American economy.

Cornered
strips the camouflage from the secret world of twenty-first-century
monopolies—neofeudalist empires whose sheer size, vast resources, and
immense political power enable them to control virtually every major
industry in America in an increasingly authoritarian manner. He reveals
how these massive juggernauts, which would have been illegal just
thirty years ago, came into being, how they have destroyed or devoured
their competition, and how they collude with one another to maintain
their power and create the illusion of open, competitive markets.

Lynn is one of the vital new voices of his generation, and his work has
been compared already to John Kenneth Galbraith and Peter Drucker. The Washington Post called Lynn's last book—on globalization—Tom Friedman for grownups. Cornered is essential reading for anyone who cares about America and its future. 

"Cornered has changed my view of what's gone wrong with American capitalism. Brilliantly argued and meticulously reported, it confronts with the age-old enemy of both progressives and libertarian conservatives -- the power of monopoly." -- Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed

"If economic institutions are too big to fail, then they are too big. That's a lesson we learned from the recent economic crisis. Or did we? In Cornered, Barry Lynn shows how Washington has doubled down on the same failed policies. Cornered is not only a history, it is a guide to the next meltdown. A great argument, greatly needed." -- James P. Pinkerton, contributor, Fox News Channel, former advisor to presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush

Join us for a chapbook reading by three Houston poets.

Rebecca Spears, a poet and instructor, has an MFA from Bennington College. Her writing appears in If These Walls Could Speak: The Blanton Museum Poetry Project (University of Texas), The Weight of Addition (Mutabilis Press), Texas in Poetry 2 (TCU Press), Calyx, Minnesota Review, Natural Bridge, Nimrod, Texas Review, and other journals and anthologies. Spears has received scholarships from the Taos Writers Workshop (University of New Mexico) and Vermont Studio Center; she was a finalist for the 2008 Iowa Review Poetry Award. Her chapbooki is The Bright Obvious, called "elemental, conversational, spiritual" by poet Laurie Kutchins.

R.T. Castleberry is a widely published poet and social critic. An active participant in Houston poetry since the mid-70s, he was a co-founder of the Flying Dutchman Writers Troupe and co-editor/publisher of the monthly magazine Curbside Review. His work has appeared most recently in Comstock Review, The Alembic, Paterson Literary Review, Caveat Lector, Perigree, Silk Road and Argestes. He was a finalist for the 2008 Arts & Letters/Rumi Prize for Poetry. His chapbook, Arriving at the Riverside, is coming from Finishing Line Press on January 15, 2010.

Stella Brice is the author of two chapbooks, the most recent of which is a collection of dark fairytale poems called Outgrow. She is a Pushcart nominee, the winner of the John Z. Bennett Prize, and her work has been featured in numerous journals and anthologies.

The poets will be introduced by poet and editor of Mutabilis Press, the lovely Carolyn Florek.

The Boniuk Center for Religious Tolerance at Rice University and co-sponsors Coalition for Mutual Respect of the ADL and Interfaith Ministries of Greater Houston present the Interfaith Amigos. Frequent speakers at churches and civic groups in the Northwest, Pastor
Don Mackenzie, Rabbi Ted Falcon, and Sheikh Jamal Rahman bring a message of deep hope and
profound possibilities for healing both person and planet. Their work
comprises a dialogue of the head, the heart, and the hands, encouraging
greater understanding, compassion and social action in the world. There
will be a book signing following the lecture of the Amigos' book Getting to the Heart of Interfaith.

This event is free and open to the public. The series has been
made possible through a generous grant from the Albert and Ethel
Herzstein Charitable Foundation. More details here.

Please join us for a reception, reading and signing with Houston teacher Sally Horrigan, who will regale us with hilarious anecdotes, actual test answers, and quotes from her seventh grade science classroom. In Chapter 1, "Birds and the Bees... and Genes," random comments from students include, "I still can't get over the fact that I can make a baby by just having sex," and "Abstaining from sex is a good idea because boys have big mouths." In Chapter 2, "Creative Answers to Questions on Tests and Quizzes," students define their vocabulary words thus: "Metabolism is just like the worker. It goes through a process to get to what it needs to get to. DNA is just like a batter. It makes the cookie into something better." This charming collection features illustrations by Sally Horrigan. 

Please join Brazos Bookstore for an afternoon with Houston's own Cele Keeper, who will read and sign her memoir, It's Never Too Late to Grow Up. Celebrate the book's release with a glass of wine and toast to the remarkable life of Cele Keeper.

Her mental marbles still rolling briskly in her ninth decade, Cele felt compelled to write this memoir right now.  As a self-appointed General Manager of the Universe, she thought the
benefit of her 80+ years of accrued wisdom, accompanied by the poor
(and yes, often dumb) choices made along the way, might suggest to
others what she grudgingly came to believe: It really is never too late to grow up.

Armed with a Masters Degree in
Social Work earned at age 51, a late start in the mental health field
and a slight twinge of regret, that of wishing she had known herself
better as a younger woman, Cele began a private practice to help others and a decade or so of group psychotherapy to help herself. This book is Cele’s telling of her journey.

"Cele Keeper’s memoir, It’s Never Too Late to Grow Up, an unflinchingly honest and irreverent history of a life well lived, is an enthralling
read. Ms. Keeper never extinguishes the bright light of her candor.
From the death of a beloved child to the vicissitudes of aging, she is
never an object of pity. Rather, to borrow from the hilariously
unforgettable quote of Meg Ryan’s eavesdropping neighbor in When Harry Met Sally, “I’d like to have what she’s having!” -- Elizabeth B. Knight, LCSW, CGP, Immediate Past President, American Group Psychotherapy Association

"Take a very intimate journey with Cele, through a landscape of
relationships and a lifetime of personal development. Her observations tickle and touch, her frank and playful words evoke discoveries made in moments small and large, and love in its many guises is always close at hand. She dares to convey important lessons learned over time in psychotherapy, the ones that open us to the other side of our stories about self and others and that ultimately free us to experience life with greater clarity and tolerance. This is an inspiring, thought-provoking and certainly
entertaining memoir." -- David Hawkins, MD, Psychiatrist in Private Practice

"It’s Never Too Late To Grow Up is a wonderful journey into the human experience through the eyes and wit of an extraordinary person. Short stories
ranging from an orangutan at the zoo hurling a 'large wad of tobacco
spittle' on her mother’s fur coat to wonderful verses (my favorite:
'This is It', an ode about Cele’s power struggle with her two cats!)
create honest moments for self-introspection. You will close this book
with a smile and I fully suspect you will learn something about
yourself and your own life’s journey." -- Ira C. Colby, Professor and Dean, Graduate College of Social Work, University of Houston

"In this exceptional account, growing up is a fluid and unending process. Keeper’s tale of her journey from being tied to Mother’s Message Board to becoming
an elderly butterfly is vividly and briskly told. In poetry and prose,
she recounts a lifetime of love, loss, and renewal. Her’s is a wise,
sad, funny, outspoken, bluntly honest memoir. From personal stories,
she draws general truths about human development over a lifetime.
Keeper proves beyond any reasonable doubt that it is never too late to
grow up."  -- Gary A. Lloyd Ph.D, Professor Emeritus, Tulane University (Social Work)

Cele S. Keeper, a Texan by birth and inclination, came to writing in her seventh decade when she began attending creative writing classes. A product of Houston Public Schools and graduate of the then Rice Institute, Cele never got very far from home. That all changed when she married Sam, her partner of sixty years, and they resolved to take in and on the world and its treasures. Both are active locally in community affairs and in the Democratic Party. At the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston, they have endowed a Professorship in Peace and Social Justice which is currently held by Jody Williams, winner of the Nobel Peace prize in 1997 for her work in ridding the world of land mines. Cele has also made possible a Lectureship in Human Sexuality at the college, an elective which she taught many years earlier.

Cele describes herself as a theatre nut, an avid reader, a C-Span junkie, a sports lover (professional football, basketball, baseball and tennis) and a woman who into her eighties is attempting to learn to pace herself, maybe even slow down a bit, but there is so much to do and see and partake of, she admits this may not come to pass.

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John Banville, hailed by The Economist as “Ireland’s
finest contemporary novelist,” won the 2005 Man Booker Prize for his novel, The
Sea. A prodigious author, Banville has written more than twenty books,
including mysteries under the pen name Benjamin Black. The Sunday Telegraph
says, “With his fastidious wit and exquisite style, John Banville is the heir
to Nabokov.” His other works include The Book of Evidence, which The
New York Times Book Review calls “a disturbing little novel that might have
been coughed up from hell,” Eclipse, Shroud, The Untouchable,
and many others; his Benjamin Black titles include Christine Falls
and The Silver Swan. Banville will read from his eagerly anticipated new
novel, The Infinities, a wholly unexpected lively, comical, and
irreverent multi-generational family saga.

Abraham Verghese, an Ethopian-born South Asian physician, is the
author of two highly acclaimed memoirs, My Own Country, a finalist for
the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Tennis Partner, a New
York Times Notable Book, of which Kaye Gibbons says, “It supersedes any
memoir I’ve ever read...a wonderful examination of what it means to be alive.”
His newest work, Cutting for Stone, marks his transition from memoir to
the novel, in a sprawling family epic set mostly in Ethiopia. Verghese is “something of
a magician as a novelist,” writes USA Today, adding that “Cutting for
Stone is an underdog and a winner. Shades of Slumdog Millionaire.”
Simon Schama calls it “beautiful and deeply affecting.” Verghese is currently a
professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

General admission tickets: $5, on sale February 8,
2010
Free rush tickets for student and senior 65+ available at the door starting at
6:45 p.m.

Click here for tickets and details.

Due to a family emergency, author Peter Hessler has had to cut short his book tour and return home. His Houston appearance, set for Tuesday, March 2 at the United Way has been cancelled. Asia Society Texas Center will work with his publisher to try to reschedule his visit for a later date. We regret the inconvenience.

New
Yorker Beijing correspondent and travel writer Peter Hessler (Oracle Bones) discusses
his yet-to-be-released book, Country Driving: A Journey through China
from Farm to Factory. Join Asia Society Texas Center at United Way for a talk on Hessler’s diverse
experiences in modern China, from rural farming villages in northern
China where he lived for six years, to the bustle of urban China where he
witnessed the impact of urban development first-hand. Described as "one
of the Western world's most thoughtful writers on modern China," an
evening with Peter Hessler is sure to illuminate the complex realities
of development taking place in this rapidly modernizing nation. (Photo by Mark Leong.)

Free for Asia Society members, $5 for non-members.

Click here to register. 

Through a collaboration with Brazos Bookstore, Gulf Coast Magazine is
proud to present the next three readers from the University of Houston’s
nationally-acclaimed graduate program in creative writing.

All readings are free and open to the public and begin at 7 p.m.

Join us this Saturday afternoon for a signing with

A.P. Greenwood

Lakota
Dreams is a story about a young man, Nate Henderson, whose dreams evolve as he
experiences life in the Dakota Territory.  Clarion ForeWord Reviews called Lakota Dreams “well-researched,
it teems with details both of white settler life during the 1870s and the lives
of the Sioux during that time.”  They said, “the novel picks up steam once Nate
is among the Sioux and the alternate history adventure begins in earnest . . .
readers may enjoy an original take on this historical period....Greenwood writes about Native Americans without
exoticizing or infantilizing them.  The book’s modern sensitivity is noticeable
and welcome, but not intrusive.”  Native American authorities/professors
from the University of South Dakota and the University of Texas provided Greenwood with much of the factual information woven into the story. 

In a work of sweeping breadth and beauty, Houston photographer Geoff Winningham has created
a profusely illustrated, contemplative travel journal that showcases
his talent as both a photographer and a writer and reveals his
affection and respect for the two countries he calls home. In 2003, Winningham saw for the first time both the southern
coast of Veracruz, with its volcanoes, rain forests, and steep
mountains, and the Texas coast near High Island, where the land seems
to stretch endlessly, covered by a sea of salt grass. He decided that
these two visually striking areas could be the beginning and end points
of a photographic study that would also engage the two cultures in
which he had lived for twenty years, the U.S. and Mexico.

Now, seven years and more than a hundred trips later, Traveling the Shore of the Spanish Sea: The Gulf Coast of Texas and Mexico
is the result. In this beautifully illustrated and engagingly written
book, Winningham also considers the role that the Gulf of Mexico played
in the discovery and exploration of the New World.

Winningham's
journey begins east of High Island, in Port Arthur, where the images
suggest a cautionary tale relating to the oil industry and the land. It
ends twelve hundred miles down the coast at the end of an old, stone
road in tropical terrain of almost indescribable beauty, overlooking
the sea. In between, more than two hundred photographs include natural
landscapes (ranging from unspoiled to completely despoiled), roadside
architecture and signage, and images of people Winningham met. As he
attempts to come to terms with the disturbing changes he witnessed to
the coastal environment, the book also contains elements of a poignant,
personal lament for what is being lost.

Traveling the Shore of the Spanish Sea: The Gulf Coast of Texas and Mexico will delight and enchant readers with its deeply felt personal narrative and the power and beauty of its images.

1970. Photo by Geoff Winningham. 

Geoff Winningham is professor of visual arts at Rice University, where
he has taught photography since 1969. His work is included in major
anthologies of photographs and is in most major collections in the
U.S., including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the major art
museums of Texas. 

Visit Geoff Winningham's incredible website.