Events and Exhibitions at The Wittliff Collections

Spring 2009 Events

All of the following events are free and open to the public.

February 5, Thursday
3:30 pm | Alkek Library Fifth Floor
LI-YOUNG LEE Reading & Book Signing
Currently serving as the Texas State University Chair in Creative Writing, critically acclaimed poet Li-Young Lee reads from his fourth collection, Behind My Eyes, and other work. Born in 1957 of Chinese parents in Jakarta, Indonesia, Lee learned early about loss and exile. His great grandfather was China's first republican President, and his father, a deeply religious Christian, was physician to Communist leader Mao Tse-Tung. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Lee's parents escaped to Indonesia. In 1959, his father, after spending a year as a political prisoner in President Sukarno's jails, fled Indonesia with his family to escape anti-Chinese sentiment. After a five-year trek through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964. Lee is the author of Behind My Eyes (Norton, 2008); Book of My Nights (2001), which won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award; The City in Which I Love You (1991), which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and Rose (1986), which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. His other work includes Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee (Edited by Earl G. Ingersoll, BOA Editions, 2006), a collection of twelve interviews with Lee at various stages of his artistic development; and The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon and Schuster, 1995), a memoir which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Lee lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, Donna, and their two sons. This event is co-sponsored by the English Department and the Wittliff Collections. Books for sale by the University Bookstore.

February 12, Thursday
5:00 pm | Alkek Library First Floor Rm 105/106
Texas State's MFA STUDENTS read from their poetry and fiction.

February 26, Thursday
3:30 pm | Alkek Library Fifth Floor
JAMES YOUNG Reading & Book Signing
Young is Professor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the author of At Memory's Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (Yale University Press, 2000), The Texture of Memory (Yale University Press, 1993), which won the National Jewish Book Award in 1994, and Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust (Indiana University Press, 1988), which won a Choice Outstanding Book Award for 1988. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of LBJ, Texas State alumnus, and to reflect on the need for civic responsibility, Dr. Young will discuss both via his work on the Holocaust and his involvement on the Findungskommission Holocaust memorial in Berlin, as well as the World Trade Center Memorial design competition. This Therese Kayser Lindsey / Katherine Anne Porter Series event is co-sponsored by the English Department and the Wittliff Collections. Books for sale by the University Bookstore.

March 5, Thursday
3:30 pm | Alkek Library Fifth Floor
ALEXANDER THEROUX Reading & Book Signing
Laura Warholic, or The Sexual Intellectual, published by Fantagraphics, is Theroux’s first novel in twenty years and it's with Theroux’s ferocious linguistic virtuosity and his unique perspective on the folly of humanity. Theroux's first book, Three Wogs (1972), is a triptych of novellas that examine the class and racial conflicts that occur between the archetypal Londoner and the inhabitants of the British Isles, the “wogs,” who are “not one of us.” This exceptional debut received a nomination for the National Book Award. Theroux’s second novel, Darconville’s Cat (1981), is widely considered his masterpiece. Anthony Burgess hailed it as one of the best 99 novels written in English since 1939. Darconville’s Cat is an exquisite novel of revenge and thwarted love. It too was nominated for a National Book Award. An Adultery (1987) is a detailed, fictional character study of the sin in question in a contemporary New England that still manages to evoke the echoes of its Puritanical past. Theroux has also published two widely regarded books of essays, The Primary Colors and The Secondary Colors (1994 and 1996), along with a collection of poems, The Lollipop Trollops & Other Poems (1992), as well as two monographs and several books of fables. This Therese Kayser Lindsey / Katherine Anne Porter Series event is co-sponsored by the English Department and the Wittliff Collections. Books for sale by the University Bookstore.

March 12, Thursday
5:00 pm | Alkek Library First Floor Rm 105/106
Texas State's MFA STUDENTS read from their poetry and fiction.

March 26, Thursday
3:30 pm | Alkek Library Fifth Floor
BRIGIT PEGEEN KELLY Reading & Book Signing
Kelly is the author of The Orchard (BOA Editions, 2004), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her collection, Song (1995), was the 1994 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets, and To The Place of Trumpets (1987) was selected by James Merrill for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and literary magazines, including The Nation, The Yale Review, New England Review, Poetry, The Antioch Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Southern Review, five Pushcart Prize volumes, and six volumes of The Best American Poetry. Her many honors include a "Discovery"/The Nation Award, the Cecil Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Theodore Roethke Prize from Poetry Northwest, and a Whiting Writers Award, as well as fellowships from the Illinois State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New Jersey Council on the Arts. She is a professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. This Therese Kayser Lindsey / Katherine Anne Porter Series event is co-sponsored by the English Department and the Wittliff Collections. Books for sale by the University Bookstore. Kelly will also read at the Katherine Anne Porter House on Friday, March 27, at 7:30 pm.

April 9, Thursday
3:30 pm | Alkek Library Fifth Floor
WILLIAM VOLLMANN Reading & Book Signing
Named by The New Yorker in 1999 as “one of the twenty best writers in America under 40,” Vollmann has achieved cult-status with legions of twenty-something readers for embracing taboo subject matter and/in highly dangerous situations. Running with the Afghan guerrilla muhajadin against Soviet invaders; smoking crack with street prostitutes; nearly freezing to death, alone for two weeks in the North Pole; losing two friends while escaping gunfire in a Bosnian war zone—all “with a disregard for personal danger that would shame Hunter S. Thompson, or Jack London, or Errol Flynn” (Madison Smartt Bell, The New York Times Magazine). Vollman's literary awards include, the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction for Europe Central (2005), the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction for the short story collection The Atlas (1996), and the 1988 Whiting Award for his cyberpunk debut You Bright and Risen Angels: A Cartoon (1987). Vollmann also won the 1989 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Award for an excerpt from Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award for Rising Up and Rising Down (2003). His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Spin, Gear, Granta, Grand Street and Outside Magazine. His most recent book, Riding Toward Everywhere, is about hopping box cars of freight trains. Born in Santa Monica, California in 1959, Vollmann attended Deep Springs College, Cornell University (summa cum laude), and did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Sacramento, California. This Therese Kayser Lindsey / Katherine Anne Porter Series event is co-sponsored by the English Department and the Wittliff Collections. Books for sale by the University Bookstore. Vollman will also read at the Katherine Anne Porter House on Friday, April 10, at 7:30 pm.

April 16, Thursday
5:00 pm | Alkek Library First Floor Rm 105/106
Texas State's MFA STUDENTS read from their poetry and fiction.



			Construction of new exhibition and public spaces is now in progress. Exhibit and event dates updated as the renovation progresses. Please check back often. Current Exhibitions Reopening December 15, 2008 THE LONESOME DOVE COLLECTION First Floor Exhibition open regular library hours. From hats to boots, the full outfits of Woodrow F. Call and Augustus “Gus” McCrae (played by Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall) are just a few of the many “making of” materials on display from the popular miniseries based on Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. This interim exhibition from the Wittliff’s major Lonesome Dove production archives includes numerous props and principal costumes, set designs, costume sketches and production notes, Bill Wittliff's screenplay drafts, script pages, and photographs, plus Gus’s muslin-wrapped “remains” that Call carried all the way back to Clara’s Orchard. Tour the Lonesome Dove Collection online. Purchase A Book of Photographs of Lonesome Dove by Bill Wittliff , signed copies are available! The Lonesome Dove permanent exhibition room will reopen after construction is complete. Spring 2009 Events All of the following events are free and open to the public. February 5, Thursday 3:30 pm \| Alkek Library Fifth Floor LI-YOUNG LEE Reading & Book Signing Currently serving as the Texas State University Chair in Creative Writing, critically acclaimed poet Li-Young Lee reads from his fourth collection, Behind My Eyes, and other work. Born in 1957 of Chinese parents in Jakarta, Indonesia, Lee learned early about loss and exile. His great grandfather was China's first republican President, and his father, a deeply religious Christian, was physician to Communist leader Mao Tse-Tung. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Lee's parents escaped to Indonesia. In 1959, his father, after spending a year as a political prisoner in President Sukarno's jails, fled Indonesia with his family to escape anti-Chinese sentiment. After a five-year trek through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964. Lee is the author of Behind My Eyes (Norton, 2008); Book of My Nights (2001), which won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award; The City in Which I Love You (1991), which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and Rose (1986), which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. His other work includes Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee (Edited by Earl G. Ingersoll, BOA Editions, 2006), a collection of twelve interviews with Lee at various stages of his artistic development; and The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon and Schuster, 1995), a memoir which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Lee lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, Donna, and their two sons. This event is co-sponsored by the English Department and the Wittliff Collections. Books for sale by the University Bookstore. February 12, Thursday 5:00 pm \| Alkek Library First Floor Rm 105/106 Texas State's MFA STUDENTS read from their poetry and fiction. February 26, Thursday 3:30 pm \| Alkek Library Fifth Floor JAMES YOUNG Reading & Book Signing Young is Professor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the author of At Memory's Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (Yale University Press, 2000), The Texture of Memory (Yale University Press, 1993), which won the National Jewish Book Award in 1994, and Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust (Indiana University Press, 1988), which won a Choice Outstanding Book Award for 1988. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of LBJ, Texas State alumnus, and to reflect on the need for civic responsibility, Dr. Young will discuss both via his work on the Holocaust and his involvement on the Findungskommission Holocaust memorial in Berlin, as well as the World Trade Center Memorial design competition. This Therese Kayser Lindsey / Katherine Anne Porter Series event is co-sponsored by the English Department and the Wittliff Collections. Books for sale by the University Bookstore. March 5, Thursday 3:30 pm \| Alkek Library Fifth Floor ALEXANDER THEROUX Reading & Book Signing Laura Warholic, or The Sexual Intellectual, published by Fantagraphics, is Theroux’s first novel in twenty years and it's with Theroux’s ferocious linguistic virtuosity and his unique perspective on the folly of humanity. Theroux's first book, Three Wogs (1972), is a triptych of novellas that examine the class and racial conflicts that occur between the archetypal Londoner and the inhabitants of the British Isles, the “wogs,” who are “not one of us.” This exceptional debut received a nomination for the National Book Award. Theroux’s second novel, Darconville’s Cat (1981), is widely considered his masterpiece. Anthony Burgess hailed it as one of the best 99 novels written in English since 1939. Darconville’s Cat is an exquisite novel of revenge and thwarted love. It too was nominated for a National Book Award. An Adultery (1987) is a detailed, fictional character study of the sin in question in a contemporary New England that still manages to evoke the echoes of its Puritanical past. Theroux has also published two widely regarded books of essays, The Primary Colors and The Secondary Colors (1994 and 1996), along with a collection of poems, The Lollipop Trollops & Other Poems (1992), as well as two monographs and several books of fables. This Therese Kayser Lindsey / Katherine Anne Porter Series event is co-sponsored by the English Department and the Wittliff Collections. Books for sale by the University Bookstore. March 12, Thursday 5:00 pm \| Alkek Library First Floor Rm 105/106 Texas State's MFA STUDENTS read from their poetry and fiction. March 26, Thursday 3:30 pm \| Alkek Library Fifth Floor BRIGIT PEGEEN KELLY Reading & Book Signing Kelly is the author of The Orchard (BOA Editions, 2004), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her collection, Song (1995), was the 1994 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets, and To The Place of Trumpets (1987) was selected by James Merrill for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and literary magazines, including The Nation, The Yale Review, New England Review, Poetry, The Antioch Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Southern Review, five Pushcart Prize volumes, and six volumes of The Best American Poetry. Her many honors include a "Discovery"/The Nation Award, the Cecil Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Theodore Roethke Prize from Poetry Northwest, and a Whiting Writers Award, as well as fellowships from the Illinois State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New Jersey Council on the Arts. She is a professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. This Therese Kayser Lindsey / Katherine Anne Porter Series event is co-sponsored by the English Department and the Wittliff Collections. Books for sale by the University Bookstore. Kelly will also read at the Katherine Anne Porter House on Friday, March 27, at 7:30 pm. April 9, Thursday 3:30 pm \| Alkek Library Fifth Floor WILLIAM VOLLMANN Reading & Book Signing Named by The New Yorker in 1999 as “one of the twenty best writers in America under 40,” Vollmann has achieved cult-status with legions of twenty-something readers for embracing taboo subject matter and/in highly dangerous situations. Running with the Afghan guerrilla muhajadin against Soviet invaders; smoking crack with street prostitutes; nearly freezing to death, alone for two weeks in the North Pole; losing two friends while escaping gunfire in a Bosnian war zone—all “with a disregard for personal danger that would shame Hunter S. Thompson, or Jack London, or Errol Flynn” (Madison Smartt Bell, The New York Times Magazine). Vollman's literary awards include, the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction for Europe Central (2005), the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction for the short story collection The Atlas (1996), and the 1988 Whiting Award for his cyberpunk debut You Bright and Risen Angels: A Cartoon (1987). Vollmann also won the 1989 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Award for an excerpt from Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award for Rising Up and Rising Down (2003). His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Spin, Gear, Granta, Grand Street and Outside Magazine. His most recent book, Riding Toward Everywhere, is about hopping box cars of freight trains. Born in Santa Monica, California in 1959, Vollmann attended Deep Springs College, Cornell University (summa cum laude), and did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Sacramento, California. This Therese Kayser Lindsey / Katherine Anne Porter Series event is co-sponsored by the English Department and the Wittliff Collections. Books for sale by the University Bookstore. Vollman will also read at the Katherine Anne Porter House on Friday, April 10, at 7:30 pm. April 16, Thursday 5:00 pm \| Alkek Library First Floor Rm 105/106 Texas State's MFA STUDENTS read from their poetry and fiction. INSTRUCTING \| ILLUMINATING \| INSPIRING THE WITTLIFF COLLECTIONS offer a dynamic archival, exhibition, programming, and research environment designed to further the cultural legacy of the region’s literary and photographic arts, and foster “the spirit of place” in the wider world. THE SOUTHWESTERN WRITERS COLLECTION preserves and exhibits the literary papers and artifacts of principal writers, filmmakers, and musicians, including the major archives of Cormac McCarthy, Sam Shepard, and John Graves, as well as the production archives of Texas Monthly magazine, Fox’s animated series King of the Hill, and the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove. THE SOUTHWESTERN & MEXICAN PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION includes the major holdings of work by such renowned artists as Kate Breakey, Keith Carter, and Graciela Iturbide, and houses the largest archive of modern and contemporary Mexican photography in the United States. The Wittliff Collections are located on the seventh floor of the Alkek Library at Texas State University-San Marcos. Connie Todd, Curator.