Laura Bush unveils Texas Book Festival lineup

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VERNON BRYANT/Staff Photographer
Laura Bush announces the lineup of the Texas Book Festival at a media event at her Dallas home on Sept. 12, 2012.

Dallasites heading to Austin for the Texas Book Festival should feel right at home this year.

Among the 250 authors on the schedule, unveiled Wednesday at the Dallas home of festival founder Laura Bush, is the usual number of nationally notable figures: Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz (This Is How You Lose Her), Oprah’s Book Club pick Cheryl Strayed (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail) and actor Tony Danza (also the author of I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had).

Dallas will be particularly well-represented at the Oct. 27-28 event, which is expected to draw 40,000 people over its two days. Why? “This year, Dallas is reflected in national publishing much more than I have seen before,” literary director Clay Smith says.

The Dallas authors include Matt Bondurant (The Night Swimmer), James Donovan (The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo — and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation), Michael Ennis (Malice of Fortune), Ben Fountain (Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk) and Ray Villareal (Body Slammed!)

In addition, there’s a trio of books about Dallas football: John Eisenberg’s Ten-Gallon War: The NFL’s Cowboys, the AFL’s Texans, and the Feud for Dallas’ Pro Football Future, Michael MacCambridge’s Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports and Joe Nick Patoski’s The Dallas Cowboys: The Outrageous History of the Biggest, Loudest, Most Hated, Best Loved Football Team in America.

“I look at these as football books, but if you look deeper into them, they’re really looking at the culture of Dallas,” Smith says.

At her event Wednesday, Bush pointed out that the festival has raised $2.5 million for libraries over its 17 years. “George is reading one of our authors right now,” she noted, “and that’s Robert Caro’s fourth book about Lyndon Johnson — The Passage of Power.”

(The former first lady, who attended the festival as an author in 2010 to discuss her memoir, Spoken From the Heart, said that neither she nor her husband had started work on any new books. “We might be interested in that,” she allowed. “I think George has one in mind. Jenna and I keep thinking we’ll do a follow-up to Read All About It, our children’s book. But so far, we haven’t started yet.” )

Although most of the action at the festival takes place on the grounds of the state Capitol, the festival will be bringing back last year’s LitCrawl, a series of sometimes-rowdy evening events around Austin, including an after-dark excursion to the Texas State Cemetery that drew more than 400 people last year.

Highlights on the authors list include novelists such as Jami Attenberg (The Middlesteins) and Maria Semple (Where’d You Go, Bernadette) and critics Carlin Romano (America the Philosophical) and Leonard S. Marcus (Listening for Madeleine: A Portrait of Madeleine L’Engle in Many Voices.)

Dan Rather will discuss Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News, and Douglas Brinkley will talk about Cronkite, his biography of Rather’s predecessor.

Children’s literature will be well-represented, with Newbery winner Rebecca Stead (Liar & Spy) and grade-school superstar Dav Pilkey (Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers). For the first time, perhaps not surprisingly in this year of 50 Shades of Grey, erotica made the list — with authors from the Zane collection Z-Rated: Chocolate Flava 3.

“We had a long talk about that in the selection committee,” Smith says. “It is part of the festival’s philosophy that all of the books need to be by really engaging, accomplished writers, and we always want to meet writers where they are, and we want to reflect trends, and we want to have books people are reading.”

Highlights

You can see a list of all 250 authors at Texas Book Festival site. But you can read our coverage of many of the authors right here. Among them:

David Abrams (Fobbit)

Andrew Blackwell (Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World’s Most Polluted Places)

An interview with Matt Bondurant (The Night Swimmer)

A profile of H.W. Brands (The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace) We also were on hand when he spoke in Dallas this spring.

Douglas Brinkley (Cronkite)

Robert Caro (The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson)

William J. Cobb (The Bird Saviors)

Kambri Crews (Burn Down the Ground: A Memoir)

A profile of Justin Cronin (The Twelve)

James Donovan (The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo – and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation) — we reviewed his book here and published an essay of his here.

A profile of Michael Ennis (The Malice of Fortune)

Michael Erard (Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners)

Ben Fountain (Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk) — we profiled Ben in addition to reviewing his book.

An interview with Ian Frazier (The Cursing Mommy’s Book of Days)

Anthony Giardina (Norumbega Park)

Reyna Grande (The Distance Between Us: A Memoir)

An interview with Jewel (That’s What I’d Do)

Stephen Graham Jones (Growing Up Dead in Texas)

Joe Lansdale (Edge of Dark Water)

D.T. Max (Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace)

Simon Sebag Montefiore (Jerusalem: The Biography)

Julie Otsuka (The Buddha in the Attic)

Keija Parssinen (The Ruins of Us)

Amy Reading (The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con)

Carlin Romano (America the Philosophical)

Maria Semple (Where’d You Go, Bernadette)

Reavis Z. Wortham (Burrows: A Red River Mystery)

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