MINING THE PAST: “You learn more from reading than from reading books on writing.” That’s the strategy that Southlake author Suzanne Crowley says guided her to a successful career as a young-adult author. Her second book in the genre, The Stolen One, is set in Tudor England and was inspired by the many books she [...]

THE BEST IN BOOKS: A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Big Horn, the Last Great Battle of the American West, by Dallas author James Donovan, was named best non-fiction book by the Writers’ League of Texas. Mike Merschel of the DMN’s Texas Pages books blog has the complete list. He’ll be in Austin covering [...]

Dallas author/literary agent James Donovan has won the 2009 nonfiction award from the Writers’ League of Texas for his book, A Terrible Glory:  Custer and the Little Big Horn.
The award, which comes with a cash prize of $1,000, will be presented during the Texas Book Festival on Oct. 31 at the State Capitol in Austin. [...]

Unfair Park has a very interesting, hot-off-the-presses-kind of story about Robert Edsel — the author of Rescuing Da Vinci and The Monuments Men, both books about the Allied efforts to retrieve artworks that the Nazis looted. Edsel declares he’s found a pair of stolen paintings — at SMU’s Meadows Museum. They’re by Murillo, the Spanish [...]

NOT STRICTLY SPEAKING ABOUT THE ARTS – except insofar as it appears in a magazine about politics and culture, but the cover story of the November issue of The Atlantic concerns “27 Brave Thinkers,” including such obvious choices as Steve Jobs and Barrack Obama. There are three Texans listed: (Houstonian) Matt Stone of South Park [...]

Guest blogger Lydia Regalado is an arts educator, crafter and blogger who writes about people who gather to make things.
If you’ve been listening to NPR the past couple of weeks, maybe you’ve noticed the increasing number of author interviews that have been on the air? Last Monday, author A.S. Byatt was interviewed on Diane Rehm, just the [...]

DANCE, DANCE, DANCE: Wil McKnights’ Texas Dance Theatre opens its inaugural season on Friday with considerable buzz. And in an era when dance companies come and go, he says he’s in it for the long run. “One day, I’m going to have my own building,” McKnight tells dallasnews.com. “I’m not playing around.” Part of the [...]

A month before the new double-barrelled AT&T Performing Arts Center officially opens, D Magazine has released its October issue online and on the newstands. Think of it as the starter’s gun going off for Big, Anticipatory and Celebratory Ruminations and Evaluations on All Things AT&T PAC-Related, Local Media Division.
Yes, we’re preparing our own gigantic parade [...]

We’re awaiting confirmation on this. THE magazine has not paid its writers for a couple months and has now lost both its editor and publisher. But we can’t get a message to the owner, Santa Fe Publishing Group, because the only voicemail listed for it is full.
A pity if THE does go under because it’s [...]

NEW JARGON FOR AN OLD TREND? Unfair Park has done a dogged job of tracking the city government’s treatment of historic landmarks (in particular, the fate of 508 Park Avenue, where bluesman Robert Johnson recorded his last great songs). Now the Observer blog has the latest on the city’s exploration of ways to get around [...]