From its coastlines and forests to its deserts and rolling hills, the great state of Texas is just as diverse as its population. While so many experience the grandeur of this landscape, few try to put it into words. But when they do, their work sparkles with a little bit of that same Texas magic that we see when the sunset paints the sky violet or when those first wildflowers burst through the underbrush in March.
In the same way that these authors use their works to shape the image of Texas, the Texas landscape can leave a lasting impression on their work. By exploring not only how they portray their Texas roots, but how the winding back roads and endless blue skies helped cultivate their artistry, TBF is proud to showcase a few key voices within Texas’ diverse, impactful, and engaging canon.
Ruth Simmons
Ruth Simmons’ life is easy to categorize by ‘firsts’. After all, she founded the first accredited engineering program at an all-women’s college during her presidency at Smith College. She was the first African American president of an Ivy League school, serving as president of Brown University from 2001-2012, under which she completed the largest program enhancement initiative in Brown’s history. After that, she was the first woman to serve as president of Texas A&M Prairie View.
But perhaps this author’s most important ‘first’ is her first home – Grapeland, Texas. In an interview with Smith College, Simmons reflected that, “if you really want to know about me, you need to start there, at the beginning, because that is what made me the person I am.”
Ruth J. Simmons was born in rural East Texas in 1945. The youngest of 12 children and the daughter of a sharecropper, Simmons faced what so many Americans of color faced in Texas during the late forties – a land steeped racial prejudice and violence. But Ruth found strength in the environment around her; the endless red oaks and winding rivers of her home provided her with the landscape to dream of far away worlds. In a memoir that Texas Monthly described as “endearingly candid”, Simmons’ explores how her adolescence shaped her into the woman she is today. Up Home: One Girl’s Journey is a critical recollection that, in Simmon’s own words,“speaks to how important it is for us to be fully open to learning about our history and to why it is so critical for young people to have access to stories like mine”.
William Wittliff
William ‘Bill’ Wittliff’s childhood was shaped by the power of storytelling. Born in Taft, Texas in 1940, Wittliff found that legends were woven into his daily life: legends of those who came before him, and legends of the magic that sparkled on the Texas horizon. As a child, Wittliff would sneak away to a nearby hardware store to hear the proprietor tell him stories. He was finally able to see these spoken legends translated into print when his aunt gave him a copy of Frank Dobie’s Tales of Old-Time Texas. The Texas State Historical Association recorded Wittliff as saying that, “until that moment, it never occurred to me that books and writing could come out of your own experience, your own soil.”
The raw and real inclusion of this so-called Texas soil throughout his work came to categorize the rest of Wittliff’s dynamic career as a screenwriter, novelist, and owner of Encino Press. One of his most celebrated works, the 1981 film Raggedy Man, centers around a character based on his own mother. His films Honeysuckle Rose and Barbarosa captured the hearts of American viewers while dazzling atop a familiar backdrop of rural Texas. His miniseries adaptation of Larry McMurty’s Lonesome Dove, in addition to winning him seven Emmy awards, was a love letter to west Texas.
Witliff’s love of the state of Texas was not one sided. Including the national accreditations he received, in 2001, he was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame, and in 2002 he won our very own Texas Writer Award – then known as the Bookend Award. Perhaps most importantly, Wittliff’s works serve as a time capsule for the iconic portrayals of Texas in the media.
Stacey Swann
In an interview with Porter House Review, Stacey Swann asserted that “Texas is a state with its own mythology”. The idea of the Lone Ranger, the untamable west, and the fact that everything is bigger in Texas is something that every child grows up dreaming about. Swann was no different.
Her upbringing in Sealy, Texas, helped cultivate her love of reading. The daughter of a Santa Gertrudis cattle rancher, Swann remembers falling asleep to the soft murmur of the Brazos River. In that same interview, Swann stated, “I don’t think of myself as a rah-rah, super patriotic person, but even I have that knee-jerk love of Texas that I don’t understand.” This deep love sowed the seeds of her debut novel, Olympus, Texas. The book explores Texan soil as much as it explores the central family’s layered and nuanced dynamics. Rooted in traditional Greek mythology, Swann felt that our own, seemingly mythic state was the perfect stage for these archaic themes to play out upon. In addition to being longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Olympus, Texas was celebrated as an Indie Next Pick and was a Good Morning America Book Club selection.
Swann’s love for her home state extends well beyond her writing. She spent 20 years as an educator and is currently running Texas House District 68. TBF was proud to have Stacey Swann as featured author at the 2021 Texas Book Festival.
Dan Rather
There are few people who can say that they have played a role in numerous pivotal moments in American history – Dan Rather can say he’s broadcasted them into the living room of thousands of Americans. Throughout his extensive career as a journalist and news anchor, he has reported on the events such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf Wars, and countless more. But his first major story – 1961’s Hurricane Carla – reflects his Texan roots.
Born in Wharton, Texas in 1931, Rather claims that his interest in journalism was shaped by his father’s love of literature. A first generation college student, Rather earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Sam Houston State College in 1953.
This set the stage for his prolific reporting career, which culminated in his recent publication: What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism. Despite looking back at our country’s long and tumultuous history, this series of essays feels incredibly timely. Rather’s thoughtful, pragmatic, and informed analysis of our democracy earned him our very own Texas Writer Award in 2017. We are proud to pay homage to such an influential Texan and American.
Monica Muñoz Martinez
For author, professor, and activist Dr. Monica Muñoz Martinez, justice has been a lifelong pursuit. Born in Uvalde, Texas, Martinez grew up learning about her city’s protests against the discrimination of Mexican American students throughout the 1970s, which culminated in a famous six week walkout.
She earned her B.A. in Ethnic Studies from Brown University and her P.H.D. from Yale, both of which allowed her to continue her research on the American Southwest’s history of anti-Mexican violence. As a researcher, Martinez seeks to find how a ‘legacy of violence’ has lasting effects on our current socio-political landscape.
Currently a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Martinez is an active participant in the project Mapping Violence, which seeks to digitally record the history of racial violence in Texas between 1900-1930. She is a co-founder of Refusing to Forget, a nonprofit that works to bring past injustices to light. Built on tenets of research and education, they work to inform the Texas public of the true history that is so rarely taught in classrooms. These initiatives earned Martinez a 2017 Andrew Carnegie fellowship and a spot on USA Today’s 2023 list of Women of the Year.
Her debut book, The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas, focuses on the history of violence in the Texas Borderlands and the effect of that violence on these communities. In an interview with NBC news, Martinez describes this novel as “trying to recover history that’s been forgotten or disavowed and make it public.” Her unwavering dedication to social justice and educational pursuits, in Texas Monthly’s words, “bravely and convincingly urges us to think differently about Texas’s past.” We were delighted to have Martinez as a featured author at our 2023 Festival, where she was able to speak to her research and experience firsthand.
Larry McMurtry
How can one begin to summarize the accomplishments of Larry McMurtry? An influential novelist, screenwriter, bookstore owner, and antique book collector, the clearest aspect of McMurtry’s numerous endeavors is the lasting impact he had on Texas literature.
Born in Wichita Falls, Texas, McMurtry spent most of his adolescence on his family’s ranch just outside of Archer City. In his memoir, McMurtry attested that there were no books on this ranch. But this absence of books didn’t mean the absence of stories. The ranch’s Texas landscape simply became a backdrop for his family to gather around to tell stories on the back porch.
While McMurtry would eventually leave the ranch to earn his BA from North Texas and his Masters from Rice, the landscape left a lasting impression on him, transforming into inspiration for the setting of his bestselling series, Thalia: A Texas Trilogy. Shaped by his adolescent experiences, McMurtry went on to earn the Jesse H. Jones award for his novels Horseman, Pass By, The Last Picture Show, and Lonesome Dove. His novels spurred a frenzy of screen adaptations, and McMurtry’s portrayals of rural Texas earned him 34 Oscar nominations and 13 wins.
In addition to his influential works, McMurtry was an avid book collector, eventually opening Booked Up – one of the largest antiquarian bookstores in the US. He was also a fierce proponent of free speech, testifying on behalf of PEN America in US Congress to berate America’s attempt to deport foreign writers. His work and character left a lasting impression on an already extensive Texas canon.
From its inception in 1995, TBF has celebrated the work of Texas authors in the annual Festival, Reading Rock Stars and Real Reads programming, and with our year round programming. We are grateful to Humanities Texas, Rea Charitable Trust, Still Water Foundation, and Texas Commission on the Arts for their long-standing support and commitment to literary arts and humanities in the lone star state.
