Books
July 14, 2022
Has Texas Finally Found Its William Faulkner?
With her stunning debut novel, ‘Perish,’ LaToya Watkins draws on her family’s deep roots in West Texas.
Books
Reviews, profiles, and interviews that capture the diverse voices adding to Texas’s rich literary tradition
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101-150 of 984 Articles
Books
July 14, 2022
Is Fernando A. Flores the Gabriel García Márquez of the Texas Borderlands? Or the Kurt Vonnegut?
In his new short story collection, the Austin writer offers a fantastical view of the Texas borderlands. Just don’t call it “magical realism.”
Books
July 13, 2022
Playing the Ghost
A short story.
Books
July 13, 2022
In Texas, Women Crime Authors Have Finally Escaped the Shadow of ‘Gone Girl’
In Texas, women crime authors are finally escaping the influence of Gillian Flynn’s best-selling thriller.
Business
June 13, 2022
Southwest Airlines Publishes Its Gospel of Herb
The Dallas carrier—whose success is often studied in business schools—offers up its own, self-promotional version of its management secrets.
Books
June 10, 2022
Texas Has Always Been a Great Setting for the Apocalypse
Robert Evans’s ‘After the Revolution’ is the latest entry in the rich canon of speculative fiction that draws on our real-life deadly climate, big money, sinister villains, and true believers.
Books
June 2, 2022
New Barbecue Books Add a Pinch of Inspiration for Aspiring Pitmasters
These seven books cover the basics of smoking and grilling while livening things up with recipes for smoked duck lasagna and key lime cake.
Style & Design
May 31, 2022
Art or Blasphemy? Whatever Your Take, Book Wheels Get Bibliophiles Talking
Lubbock-based artist Jon Whitfill is on a mission to transform discarded texts into eye-popping works of art.
Music
May 31, 2022
DJ Screw, in the Mesmerizing Words of Those Who Knew Him
Lance Scott Walker's ‘DJ Screw: A Life in Slow Revolution’ is a worthwhile biography and oral history, even for those who already know the story of Screw's short, impactful life.
Texas Country Reporter
May 26, 2022
Inside the Oldest, Largest Independent Comic Book Store in Texas
Third Planet Sci-Fi Superstore in Houston is home to hundreds of thousands of comic books and collectibles.
Style & Design
May 19, 2022
How a Fearless Austinite Wrote the Definitive Book on Anna Wintour
The compelling biography, by Amy Odell, tells the story of the ‘Vogue’ titan’s controversial decades at the helm of fashion.
Books
May 18, 2022
Guggenheim Fellow Tomás Morín’s Unlikely Father Figures
The Mathis native and 2022 Guggenheim fellow ruminates on masculinity in his debut memoir.
Texas Country Reporter
May 6, 2022
The Poison Lady in Gatesville Doles Out Deadly Advice
Luci Zahray is an expert on poison and is a consultant to mystery writers around the world.
Books
May 5, 2022
What Everyone Got Wrong About GameStop, Reddit, and Robinhood
A Wall Street Journal reporter’s book flips the script about the meme stock–trading frenzy that erupted around Grapevine-based retailer GameStop in 2021.
Books
April 26, 2022
Rolando Hinojosa-Smith Was a Literary Chronicler of Texas’s Borderlands
The award-winning writer and professor, who died April 19 at 93, was often compared to William Faulkner, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.
Books
April 13, 2022
Galveston Vice
Organized crime! Illicit booze! The beach! In this exclusive excerpt from her new novel ‘Last Dance on the Starlight Pier,’ Sarah Bird explores Galveston at the end of the twenties, a setting she calls “a gift to a novelist.”
Books
April 11, 2022
How a Texas Monthly Writer Wound Up Writing Billy Graham’s Biography
William Martin’s journey from Rice professor to Billy Graham expert began with a simple assignment, one that would alter his life for decades to come.
Books
April 1, 2022
Texas Schools Shouldn’t Ban ‘Maus,’ They Should Teach It
Katy ISD is considering a ban on the Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel about the Holocaust. Here’s what the book taught me.
Books
April 1, 2022
A Reformed “Model Immigrant” Shares What It Costs to Become American
In ‘You Sound Like a White Girl,’ Julissa Arce combines memoir and history to reclaim the Latino identity she pushed away as an undocumented immigrant.
Books
March 28, 2022
A Clever Comic Book Wants to Change the Way We Talk to Moms
Austin artist and doctor Grace Farris’s debut, ‘Mom Milestones,’ inverts the patronizing parenting-book formula.
Texas Country Reporter
March 23, 2022
Claire Mestepey Is a Prolific Puzzle Book Author With a Unique Approach
Claire Mestepey has built a steady publishing business around her unique approach to word search puzzles.
Books
March 15, 2022
‘The Great Nowitzki’ Does Justice to Dirk’s Greatness
German writer Thomas Pletzinger has written a definitive biography of the seven-footer who brought a title to Dallas and a new era to the NBA.
Sports
February 28, 2022
The One-Question Interview: Thomas Pletzinger
Texas Monthly talks with Pletzinger about his biography of Dallas Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki and how jazz helped make Nowitzki great.
Books
February 21, 2022
Lars Eighner’s Memoir of Homelessness Struck Gold. He Still Struggled to Keep a Roof Over His Head.
The Texas writer, who died in December, caught lightning in a bottle with his celebrated 1993 book ‘Travels With Lizbeth,’ but he still couldn’t escape life on the margins.
Sports
February 8, 2022
The Passion of Eric Dickerson
With his ex-team in the Super Bowl and a new memoir on bookshelves, the Hall of Fame running back from Sealy, Texas, is back in the limelight.
Books
January 21, 2022
Texas Monthly Recommends: A True-Crime Tale of Two Murders
‘Blood and Money’ has it all: new oil money, an equestrian heiress, a handsome plastic surgeon, River Oaks mansions, and gossip-worthy trials.
Books
December 13, 2021
Darcie Little Badger’s Engrossing New Novel Blends Lipan Apache Folklore and Oceanography
The San Marcos author draws on her scientific training and tribal storytelling to weave a spellbinding tale in ‘A Snake Falls to Earth.’
Film & TV
December 8, 2021
Skip ‘The Freak Brothers,’ and Read the Original Comics by Its Texan Creator Instead
The new show has a strong premise that’s derailed by cheap laughs. But cartoonist Gilbert Shelton’s counterculture strips are still great.
Books
November 19, 2021
How the Alamo Drafthouse Turned Trash Cinema into a Cultural Institution
A new book tells the sweeping tale of the Alamo’s Weird Wednesday series, the American Genre Film Archive, and Austin’s custodians of cult.
Libations
November 19, 2021
Escape to the Tropics at Austin’s Tiki Tatsu-Ya
Indulge in over-the-top cocktails like the Skeleton Cruise, which comes in a boat with dry ice and activates bar-wide light and sound effects.
Books
November 15, 2021
Five Gripping New Texas Thrillers to Keep You Up at Night
You won't be able to put these down.
Books
November 9, 2021
Announcing Our New Book, ‘Being Texan’
The book for anyone who has ever felt the lure of the Lone Star State, already loves it, or simply wants to make sense of the place.
Books
October 27, 2021
The Tall Tale of the Sabine River Goat Man and the Haunted Cemetery
Things unseen moved along the river bank, slithered or crawled or pranced between the thick growths of trees that ran for miles.
Books
October 21, 2021
Eight Great Texas Book Festival Reads
There’s something for every Texan on this list.
Books
October 21, 2021
What Texas Inherited From Larry McMurtry
A recent tribute in Archer City gave Texans an overdue opportunity to pay their respects to their state’s greatest writer.
Texas History
October 14, 2021
Why We Need Strong Texas Women
Ann Richards, Farrah Fawcett, Beyoncé. An excerpt from TM’s new book, ‘Being Texan,’ explores a strain of toughness in the iconography of the state’s females.
Books
September 15, 2021
Brutally Suppressed in Her Lifetime, Gertrude Beasley Is Finally on Our Bookshelves
A searingly feminist 1925 memoir of life in small-town Texas rises from the dustbin of patriarchy.
Books
September 15, 2021
How a Western Comic Series Made Me the Texan I Am Today
To me, Garth Ennis's ‘Preacher’ is about growing past juvenile, self-destructive notions of masculinity.
Books
September 14, 2021
Sandra Cisneros on Bad First Drafts, Staying Hopeful, and Her New Novella
The former San Antonian started writing the story that became ‘Martita, I Remember You’ thirty years ago.
Style & Design
September 14, 2021
These Texas Homes Designed by Lake Flato Blend Dreamily Into Their Surroundings
A new book explores the recent work and landscape-driven philosophy of the esteemed San Antonio architecture firm.
Books
August 27, 2021
Chef Jesse Griffiths Is Begging You to Eat Wild Hog
The owner of Austin’s Dai Due has crafted a thorough, beautifully photographed new guide to hunting, preparing, and cooking wild hog.
Books
August 26, 2021
An Incendiary History of Civil Rights in Dallas Gets a Timely Reissue
First published in 1987, ‘The Accommodation’ still resonates today.
Books
August 25, 2021
A Joyful New Read Celebrates Galveston’s Bygone Black-Owned Restaurants
Part historical text, part recipe book, ‘Lost Restaurants’ memorializes the self-made entrepreneurs who uplifted the island during its years of segregation.
Books
August 20, 2021
TM Recommends: Read a Dane’s Assessment of Texas Culture
Plus: Some yummy Mexican pastries in Austin and an early collection of Sandra Cisneros poetry.
Libations
August 13, 2021
‘Texas Whiskey’ Is a Fanatic’s Guide to the Good Stuff
Nico Martini's tome is part industry profile, part tasting notebook, and 100 percent—or 200-proof—Texas whiskey boosterism.
Books
August 12, 2021
The Flood That Changed San Antonio, for Better and Worse
One hundred years ago this month, a natural disaster devastated the city's poorest neighborhoods—and then transformed its politics.
Books
August 11, 2021
Are Some People Born Lucky? A UT Psychologist Argues Inequality’s Genetic Roots
Kathryn Paige Harden’s new book says social scientists must acknowledge how DNA shapes our lives. Critics call that dangerous.
Books
August 9, 2021
Reading Selena’s Father’s Memoir Is an Exercise in Empathy
Though uneven and at times lacking in self-awareness, Abraham Quintanilla’s book sheds light on the extreme approach he took to protect his daughter’s legacy.
Books
June 22, 2021
Debut Novelist Kelsey McKinney on Losing Her Religion and Leaving Texas
A conversation with the author of the moving and assured ‘God Spare the Girls.’
Books
June 22, 2021
Texas Monthly Recommends: An Engrossing East Texas Novel
Stacey Swann's ‘Olympus, Texas’ is the read of the summer. Plus: a so-bad-it's-good reality show and Megan Thee Stallion on ‘Legendary.’