What's happening. . .

We loved summer in Italy, but, truly, fall in Austin is beyond beautiful. Finally, there's rain! Everything with a little green has popped into cool.

We hope you got a chance to visit San Antonio for the Latino Music Festival on November 7 and heard Tish Hinojosa (Turo on percussion). She's so beautiful.

Please come out to hear Beto and the Fairlanes Friday, November 20, and every third Friday of the month at the Elephant Room, 9:30p downbeat. On November 8, Beto played a special benefit for our dear Tony Campise, who suffered a head injury after a fall in Corpus Christi. There'll be another benefit in December. 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 (November) 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. It will indeed be available in November. How beautiful is that?

Texas Book Festival 2009 happened on the Capitol grounds October 31-November 1. Guess what? Kat moderated the panel, "Imagination Sin Fronteras: Four Novelists Wrestle with Mexico" in the SENATE chamber. Jimmy Santiago Baca, Luis Alberto Urrea, Barbara Renaud Gonzalez and C.M. Mayo talked about their latest work. The novels are really beautiful - and maybe it's time for something really beautiful in the Capitol? Please check them out!


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.

Okay--Dr. Kat's MFA defense is successfully past!!! . . . and this is still big poetry news at our casa: 6 weeks in Europe. Please look for "La Esquina," dedicated to our friend, the late musician Willy Santiago, in the fall issue of The Normal School, whose editors judged the 2009 UNO Creative Writing Study Abroad Contest. Katherine 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 with their new rain barrel.

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 last 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?

We're still thinking about -

The call for submissions to the May/June issue of qarrtsiluni (edited by Kat and the remarkable Lucy Kempton) featured Turo's photo of water at Encinitas, CA. Look in the current edition for Kat's poem "2012" and Turo's photograph, "Dressing for the Storm." Scroll through previous issues of qarrtsiluni online for Kat's photographs, "Maya Cycle," "Our Roots," and "Beyond the Gate," and poems, "Cyclamen" and "Between Season," her new media poem-without-words, "Diabutsu," and the photograph, "Nymph Prowl," and poems, "Poesis in Plato's Garden" and "Blue Morphos."

Katherine moderated "Removing the Veil: Women Writers of the Middle East" at Texas Book Festival, November 1, featuring writers Bapsi Sidhwa, Randa Jarrell, and Zara Houshmand. They drew a beyond capacity crowd! Their books--all beautifull--are Sidhwa's The Pakistani Bride, Jarrell's A Map of Home, and Houshmand's The Mirror Garden. Please take a look at their phenomenal books.

We're just not ready to take down our memories of the Dia de los muertos ofrendas, including the one curated by Turo's sister Mary Jane and mother Maria at the Mexican American Cultural Center in Austin, through November. This ofrenda, or altar, is dedicated to Texas artists who've passed, including Luis Jimenez and Raul Salinas.

The 2009 Texas Poetry Calendar include Kat's poem "4th of July" -- guess where the editors put that one?

The new TPC has a gorgeous cover of a Texas quilt, but we still like to show off "Flores Tejanas" on the cover of the 2008 Texas Poetry Calendar (And Kat's poem, El arbol milagroso," alongside Easter week.) Look for "El arbol" now in Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair: The Best of Texas Poetry Calendar.

The 2008 di-verse-city anthology, released April 11 at the Austin International Poetry Festival, includes Katherine's poem "Spanish Plums" on page 21. . .


Celebrating Texas Poet Laureates at the Texas Book Festival: Kat with laureates Steve Fromholz, Alan Birkelbach and Red Steagall.

A National Folk Treasure at the Texas Folklife tribute, una Tardeada con Santiago Jimenez, Jr. See the video on Channel 16 in Austin.

On the Texas/Mexico border, a new generation of immensely talented mariachis, ballet folklorico dancers, and conjunto musicians are training and producing professional productions while they are still in high school.

Looking out on the world