Artist Misha Maynerick Blaise’s latest publication traverses the universe from microbes to galaxies with a winning mix of scientific curiosity and joyous sparkle. Her volume, This Phenomenal Life: The Amazing Ways We Are Connected with Our Universe, lauds the majesty of starry skies and dense forests, but directs our attention to the wilderness within—the ever-cycling world of growth, death and rebirth invisible to the naked eye. Through whimsical illustrations and hand lettering, . . .
St. David’s Foundation Toast of the Town 2017
It's Toast Time in Austin, the wonderful season when exceptional parties bloom around town in support of the St. David's Foundation Neal Kocurek Scholarship Fund. I had the distinct pleasure of participating in the first two parties this year. I moderated a discussion with Karan Mahajan, author of The Association Small Bombs, at Saturday afternoon's event, then appeared on Tuesday night with Shaka at a party where he was the featured speaker. Both were great opportunities to show support for . . .
Austin Way’s Renaissance Women
I'm so excited to be included in Austin Way's listing of Renaissance Women—creative players behind Austin's arts scene. . . .
Stephanie Powell Watts Discusses No One Is Coming to Save Us
Ominous and timely, No One Is Coming to Save Us explores the sense of displacement and dispossession that burrows within communities—and individuals—when work vanishes. The novel follows residents of Pinewood, a declining North Carolina factory town, as they ponder the twin perils of staying stuck in the stubborn red clay beneath them or moving earth to cut their own new roads. Author Stephanie Powell Watts’ story could take place in countless small towns around the country—she points out . . .
Ruthless Good: The Great Austin Scavenger Hunt
On April 8, Ruthless Good: The Great Austin Scavenger Hunt will dispatch dozens of teams from the Long Center to crack clues, solve trivia challenges, and discover photo-worthy landmarks and locales. But the rolicking hunt’s true aim is problem solving on a much grander scale–bolstering equitable community-wide access to health, education and work. . . .
Ready to Amplify Austin? Here’s How.
As a relatively new Austinite, I was honored to join Kendra Scott, Mayor Steve Adler, Andy Roddick, Brooklyn Decker, Aaron Franklin, Celeste Flores and Earl Maxwell in a special video for Amplify Austin Day. . . .
Angie Thomas Discusses The Hate U Give
It’s tempting to think of Angie Thomas’ YA novel The Hate U Give as being ripped straight from the latest headlines about an unarmed black person shot by the police. But that would miss the point that for many people, Thomas included, the news is not only news: it is lived experience—raw and achingly intimate. And the lives stolen are individual, particular to specific families, neighborhoods, and communities, not generic fodder for hashtags and sound bites. Thomas says she sometimes has to . . .
Today’s Hidden Figures
A particularly moving scene in the film Hidden Figures takes place not at NASA but in the public library of Hampton, Virginia. Mathematician Dorothy Vaughn steers clear of vocal civil rights protests on her way into the library. Yet her visit is cut short when a white librarian warns her: “We don’t want any trouble in here,” as she considers a computer programming text on a shelf. Vaughn’s only seeking knowledge — a book that can’t be found in the colored section — yet she and her . . .
Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching
Necessary and audacious, Mychal Denzel Smith’s assured debut, Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, fuses memoir and cultural criticism to ponder an often-neglected question: How did you learn to be a black man? The way he scrutinizes the origin of his beliefs about black identity and masculinity is revelatory--and instructive. He mines his personal history as an Obama-era black millennial in the service of a larger vision: social transformation through personal awakening. As he . . .
Mychal Denzel Smith On Social Transformation Through Personal Awakening
Necessary and audacious, Mychal Denzel Smith’s assured debut, Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, fuses memoir and cultural criticism to ponder an often-neglected question: How did you learn to be a black man? His answers are compelling. Even more, the way he scrutinizes the origin of his beliefs about black identity and masculinity is revelatory--and instructive. He mines his personal history as an Obama-era black millennial in the service of a larger vision: social transformation . . .
