FREE Author Talk with Novelist Kimberly Garza, Wednesday, January 15th, 2025
A Free Monthly Online Lecture Series from WritingWorkshops.com & Gemini Ink
Wednesday, January 15th, 2025, via Google Meet @ 7PM CST (Add to Cart to RSVP for Free)
Up Next: a conversation with novelist Kimberly Garza, author of The Last Krankawas.
“Beautiful, complex, and subversive, The Last Karankawas is an important book about Texas from a powerful new voice in American fiction. I loved it. These characters and their stories will stay with me.” — Elizabeth Wetmore, New York Times–bestselling author of Valentine
“Garza debuts with an accomplished account of the ties between members of a Filipino and Mexican community… This is a worthy love letter to Galveston.” — Publishers Weekly
“Devastating in its own clarity and nuance. The Last Karankawas has the power to change the way we see where we’ve been and what we may have left behind. A stunning debut from a talented writer.” — Oscar Cásares, author of Where We Come From
Welcome to Galveston, Texas, a popular tourist destination and major shipping port with a population of 50,241. While millions visit each year, few venture beyond the boulevards to Fish Village, home to generations of island residents. Carly Castillo has only known Fish Village, her grandmother claiming their family descended from the Karankawas, an indigenous Texas people. As she grows older, she dreams of a life undefined by her family’s history. Her boyfriend, Jess, a former all-star shortstop turned seaman, cherishes the salty, familiar air of Galveston and has turned down opportunities to leave. When news of Hurricane Ike spreads, residents face a tough choice: stay and protect their homes or flee inland. The Last Karankawas weaves together the lives of these characters, creating a powerful portrait of survival, familial ties, and the histories we create, reminding us that true bonds are forged, not by blood, but by fire.
Author Kimberly Garza (she/her) is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, Puerto del Sol, Creative Nonfiction, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She holds degrees in English, Spanish, and creative writing from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of North Texas, where she earned a PhD in 2019. A native Texan—born in Galveston, raised in Uvalde—she is the daughter of a Filipina immigrant mother and a Mexican-American father from the Rio Grande Valley. She lives in San Antonio, where she is an associate professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio. The Last Karankawas is her first novel.
RSVP BY ADDING TO CART
Previously: We featured Ramona Reeves:
The Big Texas Author Talk is a *free* lecture series devoted to showcasing Texas authors from across our big state. Each month we feature one Texas author in conversation with another—from New York Times bestsellers living in Dallas, Houston, and Austin to our rich Texas Latinx border authors living in Laredo and McAllen, not to mention from other deep pockets and corners of our culturally diverse state.
Our lecture series is as entertaining as it is informative—and like Texas itself, we offer a vast array of storytellers who represent the spirit of our extremely distinct Lone Star State and continue to keep us on the literary map.
In the past, we’ve featured novelists such as Kathleen Kent, Marisol Cortez, Joe Lansdale, and Antonio Ruiz-Camacho and Texas poet laureates such as Carmen Tafolla, Laurie Ann Guerrero, Jenny Brown, and Emmy Perez.
If you’ve visited with us over the last three years, you know who we are and what we do, and we thank you for your ongoing support. We value your presence and love seeing your faces!
If you’re new to the Big Texas Author Talk and are just discovering who we are and what we do, we welcome you to join us virtually on the third Wednesday of every month at 7 pm CST.
PREVIOUS AUTHORS/TITLES INCLUDE
- Debut Novelist Fowzia Karimi: Above Us the Milky Way
- Edgar-winning novelist Joe R. Lansdale: Edge of Dark Water
- Winner of the Iowa Prize for Nonfiction Kendra Allen: When You Learn the Alphabet
- 2020 Texas Poet Laureate Emmy Perez: With The River on Our Face
- New York Times Bestselling Author Kathleen Kent: The Dime & The Burn
- Critically Acclaimed Novelist David Samuel Levinson: Tell Me How This Ends Well
- Award-Winning writer Antonio Ruiz-Camacho's Barefoot Dogs
- San Antonio Poet Andrea "Vocab" Sanderson's She Lives in Music
- Debut Novelist Heather Harper Ellett: Ain't Nobody Nobody
- Amanda Eyre Ward's New York Times bestselling novel The Jetsetters
- Jenny Browne's New and Selected Poems
- Rebekah Manley's Alexandra and the Awful, Awkward, No Fun, Truly Bad Dates
- Cliff Hudder, Pretty Enough for You
- Nan Cuba, Body and Bread
- Sherry Kafka Wagner, Hannah Jackson
- Edward Vidaurre, Pandemia & Other Poems
- Sergio Troncoso's, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son
- Octavio Quintanilla, If I Go Missing
- Marisol Cortez, Luz at Midnight
- Deb Olin Unferth, Barn 8
- Mike Soto, A Grave is Given Supper
- Barbara Ras, The Blues of Heaven
- Johnnie Bernhard, Sisters of the Undertow
- Wondra Chang, Sonju
- Alexandra van de Kamp, Ricochet Script
- Laurie Ann Guerrero, I Have Eaten The Rattlesnake
- Carmen Tafolla, The Last Butterfly/La Ultima Mariposa, illustrated by Regina Moya
- Jill Alexander Essbaum, Hausfrau: A Novel.
- Daniel Peña, Bang
- Tomás Q. Morín, Let Me Count the Ways
- Allison Hedge Coke, Look at this Blue
- Vincent Cooper, Zarzamora
- Leticia Urieta, Las Criaturas
- Steve Adams, Remember This
- Andrew Porter, The Disappeared
- Novelist Rubén Degollado's The Family Izquierdo (W.W. Norton, 2022).
- Thomas H. McNeely's story collection, Pictures of the Shark.
- Katie Gutierrez's novel, More Than You'll Ever Know
- Carmen Tafolla's novel, Warrior Girl
- Rudy Ruiz's novel, Valley of Shadows
- Mag Gabbert, SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS
- Alex Temblador, Writing an Identity Not Your Own: A Guide for Creative Writers