We loved Italy, but, truly, fall in Austin is beyond beautiful. Finally, there's rain! Everything with a little green has popped into cool.
So you should come to San Antonio for the Latino Music Festival on November 7 and hear Tish Hinojosa (Turo on percussion). It will be beautiful, promise.
Please come out to hear Beto and the Fairlanes Sunday, November 8 (and every third Friday of the month) at the Elephant Room, 9:30p downbeat. On November 8, Beto is playing a special benefit for our dear Tony Campise, who suffered a head injury after a fall in Corpus Christi. Let's do something beautiful for the one who has made beautiful music for us for so many years. Be there, beautiful.
Austin Poetry Society is in full season. Mike Guinn, Judy Jensen, Tom Cable and Alan Birkelbach are headlining the APS monthly programs! Reflections: An Anthology in Celebration of Austin Poetry Society's 60th Anniversary is forthcoming this fall. Katherine edited the anthology, in collaboration with Samantha Adams, Nancy Fierstien, Mary Ellen Branan, Nona Blanchard, Wynd Faulk, and APS members who submitted poems for inclusion. How beautiful is that?
Texas Book Festival 2009 happens on the Capitol grounds October 31-November 1. Guess what? Kat's moderating the panel, "Imagination Sin Fronteras: Four Novelists Wrestle with Mexico" in the SENATE chamber. Come hear Jimmy Santiago Baca, Luis Alberto Urrea, Barbara Renaud Gonzalez and C.M. Mayo talk about their latest work. The novels are really beautiful - and maybe it's time for something really beautiful in the Capitol?
If you're in Austin for TBF c'mon over for a Meet, Greet, Eat reception at TF (Texas Folklife on south Congress.) These are the coolest books ever, and everything Texas Folklife does is about the beautiful.
The beautiful Spring/Summer 09 issue of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review is still hot--so hot, we hear, it's selling out in some venues. Devoted to ekphrastic poetry, the issue, which Katherine guest-edited, features a special insert on the Blanton Poetry Project co-curated by Kurt Heinzelman and D'Arcy
Randall. Kat traveled to Taos on Sept. 19 for a special issue reading by poets from the southwestern area at the RANE Gallery. Let us tell you: Taos is an enchanting place; the people are beautiful.And this is still big poetry news at our casa: 6 weeks in Europe. Kat's poems, "La Esqina," "Lengua Tejana," and "Historias en Hilo," won the UNO Creative Writing Study Abroad Award in Poetry, and "La Esquina," dedicated to our friend, the late musician Willy Santiago, is forthcoming in the fall issue of The Normal School, whose editors judged the contest. She spent the month of July in Brunnenburg, Italy, at the Ezra Pound Center for Literature. After the summer program ended, Turo joined her for travels in Italy, France and Spain. They're home now, trying to keep the garden watered in Austin's record heat.
CIRRUS ROCKS! Logic 55 - Cirrus Logic's corporate band that features Turo on congas - won best over-all band in the corporate battle of the bands benefit for Health Alliance for Austin Musicians at Antone's on Tuesday, April 20, and they've been playing around town several times since.
Please do check out Water Signs available from BookWoman in Austin, or online from Finishing Line Press or amazon.com
Katherine's poem, "Self-Portrait in a Bus Window," which won the Vassar Miller Award at UNO this past fall, is in the summer issue of Ellipsis and her poem, "Cancion para los muertos," appears in the 2010 Texas Poetry Calendar.
Katherine also has poems in the anthology, Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair! Best of Texas Poetry Calendar. (Did we say how much we love dos gatos?)
See Turo's lights and camera work every week on Infynit Hour, a program of live music, photo essays and shorts airing on ChannelAustin 10 in Austin, Tuesdays 10:00p. Infynit Media Group is filming Texas Rollergirls (*yeah Hell Marys!") in action every first Sunday of the month at Playland Skate Center. The girls are going to nationals in Philly! Isn't that beautiful?
