Meet Our Authors

 
Larry Thomas

Larry D. Thomas has authored five collections of poetry: The Lighthouse Keeper (Timberline Press, 2001), Amazing Grace (Texas Review Press, 2001), The Woodlanders (Pecan Grove Press, 2002), Where Skulls Speak Wind (Texas Review Press, 2004) and Stark Beauty (Timberline Press, 2005). He has two additional collections in press, The Fraternity of Oblivion (Timberline Press) and New and Selected Poems (TCU Press). Among the numerous prizes and awards he has received for his poetry are two Texas Review Poetry Prizes (2004 and 2001), the 2004 Violet Crown Book Award (Writers’ League of Texas), the 2003 Western Heritage Award (National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum), and a $2,000.00 grant from The Ron Stone Foundation for the Enhancement & Study of Texas History (2007). Thomas’ poetry has also been nominated for the 2007 Poet’s Prize (Nicholas Roerich Museum) and two Pushcart Prizes.
In 1998, Thomas retired from a thirty-one year career in social service and adult criminal justice, the last fifteen years of which he served as a branch director for the Harris County Adult Probation Department (in Houston). For over twenty years, until his retirement in 1998, he wrote poetry consistently on weekends and placed his poems in a number of prestigious national literary journals including The Southwest Review, descant: Fort Worth’s Journal of Poetry and Fiction, The Texas Review, Writers’ Forum, Small Pond Magazine of Literature and The Cape Rock. Since 1998, he has written poetry on a full-time basis, working thirty-five to forty hours per week in a small garage apartment located behind his home in Houston. Although much of the poetry in his five published collections is set in Texas, his “Texas poetry” comprises less than ten percent of his written work. For many years a strong admirer of the visual arts, Larry Thomas has composed and published in journals a number of ekphrastic poems (poems inspired by works of art in other genres), and has recently completed a book-length manuscript of ekphrastic poems and poems concerning the properties of color. And here's the link to his own Web site,which features an audio clip of him reading some of his poetry: http://www.larrydthomas.com.

 

 


Judy Alter

A novelist and author of books for both adults and young readers, Judy Alter writes most often about women and girls of the American West. Her most recent nonfiction titles are the nonfiction Extraordinary Explorers and Adventurers and Great Women of the American West. Her novel about Etta Place entitled Sundance, Butch, and Me was published in 2002. Sam Houston is My Hero, a young-adult novel about the Runaway Scrape during the Texas Revolution, was published in 2003. Her collection Fool Girl and Other Stories is forthcoming from Panther Creek Press. Judy's newest book, Sue Ellen Learns to Dance, is also published by Panther Creek Press: Sue Ellen Learns to Dance.

Alter's novels include Libbie, a fictional life of Elizabeth Bacon Custer; Jessie, a fictional life of Jessie Benton Fremont; Cherokee Rose, a fictional account of America's first Wild West show cowgirl; Mattie, about a woman physician; and A Ballad for Sallie, a novel about an orphan in nineteenth-century Fort Worth. Her young-adult fiction includes Callie Shaw-Stableboy, Maggie and a Horse Named Devildust, Maggie and the Search for Devildust, Maggie and Devildust-Ridin' High, Katie and the Recluse, Luke and the Van Zandt County War, and After Pa Was Shot.

See a list of Judy's publications.

Read Judy's blog at http://judys-stew.blogspot.com



James Lee

A former president of the Texas Folklore Society, James Lee is well known as a folklore scholar and as a specialist in Texas literature. He is author or editor of a dozen books, scores of scholarly articles, and hundreds of reviews and presentations. Among his books are Classics of Texas Fiction; Texas, My Texas; The Texas Literary Tradition; John Braine; William Humphrey; 1941: Texas Goes to War; and Literary Fort Worth. Lee's newest book, Adventures with a Texas Humanist, was published by TCU Press in 2004.

Read Lee's blog at http://jimleestexas.blogspot.com.



Elmer Kelton

Elmer Kelton is the author of over forty novels, published over the last fifty years, all dealing with Texas and the West. His best-known books include The Time It Never Rained, about the drought of the 1950s, The Day the Cowboys Quit, about the 1883 cowboy strike at Tascosa, Texas, The Man Who Rode Midnight, about an old rancher fighting creeping development around his ranch and remembering the time he rode the famous bucking bronc, Midnight, and The Wolf and the Buffalo, which contrasts a comanche chief, whose world is falling apart, and a "buffalo" or African-American soldier, a former slave who sees opportunity ahead for the first time. Kelton has written about the span of Texas history from the Alamo to the late twentieth century, always with a firm hand on historical accuracy, character development, and the inevitability of change.

Kelton has won the Western Writers of America Spur Award six times and the Western Heritage (Wrangler) Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame fourtimes. Western Writers of America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Western Literature Association have honored him for lifetime achievement.

Click on the links below to listen to a 3-part interview with Elmer Kelton:

Elmer Kelton Intveriew Part One

Elmer Kelton Intveriew Part Two

Elmer Kelton Intveriew Part Three

 

Barbara Mathews Whitehead

Barbara Whitehead is perhaps the only artist in Texas who regularly works in woodcuts and linoleum prints. Her book, From Wood to Linoleum: The Cuts and Prints of Barbara Mathews Whitehead, showcases the best of her work.

Click on the link to listen to an interview with Barbara Whitehead:

Barbara Whitehead Interview

 

Ward S. Albro

Author of Day of the Dead Ward S. Albro is professor emeritus at Texas A&M University--Kingsville and founder of Tierra del Sol: Mexico Programs and Services, which organizes historical-cultural tours of Mexico. He lives in Castroville, Texas, and teaches at the University of Texas at San Antonio and the Texas A&M University--Kingsville System Center in San Antonio.

Click on the link to listen to an interview with Ward Albro:

Ward Albro Interview

 

 

 

 
    Copyright ©2007, the TCU Press