Mary Karr discusses The Art of Memoir

September 24, 2015, by

IMG_4270On Thursday evening, September 17th, an audience assembled in a downtown Houston church to celebrate the Word—that is, we gathered to venerate the literary words of Mary Karr, memoirist, poet, and author of the newly released craft book, The Art of Memoir.

It was a rare treat to be in Christ Church Cathedral, with its calming gardens, majestic stained glass, well-worn, worshipped-upon wooden pews, aroma of aged books, and the idea of “ministering” in mind. Through her memoirs Lit, The Liar’s Club, and Cherry, as well as poetry collections Abacus, The Devil’s Tour, Sinners Welcome, and Viper Rum, Karr has concocted spiritual balms for readers, who appreciate her signature wit and honesty.

The event was doubly jubilant, serving as a homecoming of sorts for the Texas-born author and as a launch for Inprint’s new season.

As a Southern storytelling worth her salt, Karr began by drolly reflecting on her genesis as a reader, writer, and social person. “I was a biter,” she joked, of her youth, and “my career goal in high school was to stay out of the penitentiary.” Later, she expounded on her struggle to find her voice: “I wanted to be fancier and go to school at the Sorbonne…not a red-neck from Port Arthur. TX.” Continue reading

If you want to read the latest Atwood, can you wait a while? Say, 100 years?

September 20, 2015, by

As we launch the 35th season of the Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series tomorrow with National Book Award winner Jonathan Franzen, reading from his latest novel Purity, this story reminds us how fortunate Houston is to have the world’s great literary figures make a stop in our city. Both Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell have appeared in front of sell out audiences as part of the Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series. Lucky for us, some of their work won’t be read for a 100 years!

Future Library, Katie Paterson  Photo (c) Kristin Von Hirsch 2016

Future Library, Katie Paterson
Photo (c) Kristin Von Hirsch 2016

If you want to read Margaret Atwood’s latest piece of writing, Scribbler Moon, you will have to wait a while, say, for another century.

Atwood is the first contributing author to the Future Library project, an artwork created by Scottish artist Katie Paterson for The City of Oslo. Paterson has planted a thousand trees in a forest just outside the city where they will be looked after for one hundred years, until 2114.  In each of those hundred years, one author will be commissioned to write a manuscript of some sort and that piece of writing will be placed, unpublished, in a secure and specially designed room in the new public library being built in Oslo. They will all remain unread until the collection of one hundred manuscripts is complete. Then in 2114, the trees will be cut down and the wood will be used to supply paper for a special anthology of books in which one hundred years of writing will be published. Continue reading