Texas Book Festival is in Town Saturday

The Texas Book Festival, normally held in Austin, is in San Antonio this year - not only in San Antonio, but in the Enchilada, i.e. the Central Library, so called because Holy Freakin' Cheese what else are you gonna call it? (I love this building.) It spills across the street in two directions, to the Southwest School of Art and Craft in its modern building in one direction and in its gorgeous former Ursuline convent buildings in the other. I love those buildings, too.

Damon minds that I didn't get invited to participate but hey, it's not like I did anything much to inform the committee that I had a new book out, or like that would have guaranteed me a spot, or like featuring an LBGT book from a small press in a major Texas festival when it's held anyplace but Austin wouldn't have been problematic even if someone in charge had realized I existed.

[Digression] I love Texas, but I'm also a realist and face it, the state is officially way behind the curve even of public opinion in its own population on this point. It's one thing to be the city with the most adoptions by gay couples in America (as of 2006; don't know if we've kept this title, but it's one of my favorite statistics) and quite another to, you know, treat the subject as an ordinary part of the program when your only incentive to do so is a midlist author who happens to live here. [/Digression]

I'm far from the only local author not on the program. This doesn't excuse me from doing a crap job of publicity, because that's not why I didn't do anything - I just zoned and it's too late now to do anything but show up and support the people who did get featured.

At that link, please note particularly the young people's authors, highlighted in green, like Carmen Tafolla, local SCBWI staple Lupe Ruiz Flores, and Guadalupe Garcia McCall, whose Summer of the Mariposas you'll recall seeing on the Andre Norton Award list. McCall will be presenting in a second floor Navarro classroom at from 3:00 to 3:45, so I'll be there; and the same location has a panel on "A Sense of Birthplace: Investigating the Past" at 12:30 which sounds right up my street, too. I might or might not go to the Copper Kitchen of the Ursuline campus at 2 for the panel on mysteries set in Texas, and of course there's a children's tent and readings and hey, it's the library, it's not as if I'll be bored whatever happens.

So if you're going, look for me. I'll be wearing a hat. And probably the dress with the astonishing orangey-metallicy skirt, which is a suitable outfit for public events at the Enchilada.