Arts & Letters Live Archives

Series Summary

Widely acknowledged as a major contribution to Dallas’s cultural life, Arts & Letters Live has been a sellout at the Dallas Museum of Art since its inception in 1992.

• Audiences estimated at over 100,000 have attended more than 250 series programs, offered locally or on tour.
• Five broadcasts on public radio, three on the Internet, three books, and four audio publications have greatly extended the series’ reach.
• To date, Arts & Letters Live has showcased over 300 regional, national, and international writers, often in combination with performing or visual arts.
• Texas Bound® features readings by Texas actors of short fiction by Texas writers.
• Well-known actors participating in Texas Bound have included Tommy Lee Jones, Kathy Bates, Thomas Gibson, Larry Hagman, Marcia Gay Harden, Judith Ivey, G. W. Bailey, Barry Corbin and Doris Roberts. The series has been the subject of articles in the New York Times, Southern Living, and other national publications.
• Programs featuring distinguished writers have included Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning novelists Carol Shields, Michael Cunningham, John Updike, Michael Chabon, Art Spiegelman, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Richard Ford, to name a few.

Other major authors participating in the series have included Ernest Gaines, Grace Paley, Anne Lamott, Margaret Atwood, Sherman Alexie, Edwidge Danticat, Sandra Cisneros, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Ann Patchett, A. S. Byatt, and Ha Jin, Salman Rushdie, Augusten Burroughs, Sue Monk Kidd, Anchee Min, Frances Mayes, Alexander McCall Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer, Arthur Golden, Myla Goldberg, Azar Nafisi , Barbara Kingsolver, David Sedaris, Ian McEwan, Wally Lamb, Tony Horwitz and David Grann. In addition, the series has celebrated poets including Billy Collins, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass, Rita Dove, W. S. Merwin and Seamus Heaney.

Arts & Letters Live is recognized for its creative programming, including a program featuring the writings of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald read by Natasha Richardson and John Benjamin Hickey; an unconventional night of humor with Dave Eggers (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and Neal Pollack; tributes to Texas literary giants Katherine Anne Porter, Cormac McCarthy, and Larry McMurtry; as well as other interdisciplinary programs combining music, film, and literature.

BooksmART (formerly arts & letters live, jr.), an offshoot of the adult series, is targeted for ages nine and up and offers youth and families the unique opportunity to hear authors discuss their works and interact with them. The series has featured award-winning authors and illustrators including: E. L. Konigsburg, Christopher Paul Curtis, John Erickson and Hank the Cowdog, Avi, Chris Van Allsburg, Blue Balliett and Brett Helquist, T. A. Barron, Will Hobbs, and Katherine Paterson, Kate DiCamillo, Rick Riordan, Richard Peck, Lois Lowry, Markus Zusak, Laurence Yep, Diane Stanley, and Wendy Mass. E. L. Konigsburg’s presentation was held in conjunction with a Late Night event at the Museum inspired by her writings. Families took behind-the-scenes tours, flashlight tours, and “Choose Your Own Adventure” tours, and high school theater students presented readings from The View from Saturday in front of thematically appropriate works of art. In 2008 the series hosted Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl), Patricia MacLachlan (Sarah, Plain and Tall), Mo Willems (Knuffle Bunny, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus), Gary D. Schmidt (Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy), and Brian Selznick (The Invention of Hugo Cabret).

Arts & Letters Live History 1992–2008

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners

Carol Shields (The Stone Diaries), Michael Cunningham (The Hours), John Updike (The Centaur, Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit at Rest); Jane Smiley (A Thousand Acres), Robert Olen Butler (A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain), Oscar Hijuelos (The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love), Tim O’Brien (Going After Cacciato), Ellen Gilchrist (Victory Over Japan), Frank McCourt (Angela’s Ashes), Alice McDermott (Charming Billy), Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay), Art Spiegelman (Maus: A Survivor’s Tale), Robert Caro (Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson), Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex), Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel), Richard Ford (Independence Day), Lawrence Wright (The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11), Tony Kushner (Angels in America), and Geraldine Brooks (March).

PEN/Faulkner Award finalists and winners

Tobias Wolff (The Barracks Thief), Ann Patchett (Bel Canto)

Major Female Authors

Grace Paley, Anne Lamott, Margaret Atwood, Anita Shreve, Mary Gordon, Kaye Gibbons, Lee Smith, Melissa Bank, Sue Miller, Jeanne Ray, A. S. Byatt, Ann Patchett, Azar Nafisi, Liza Dalby, Myla Goldberg, Debra Dean, Barbara Kingsolver, Joanne Harris, Tracy Chevalier, Louise Erdrich, Elaine Pagels, Elizabeth Gilbert,.

Top Texas Women Writers

Lee Cullum, Prudence Mackintosh, Rena Pederson, Maryln Schwartz (Laugh Your Lunch Off fundraiser, 2002), Paulette Jiles

Firebrands

David Sedaris, Mary Karr, Sapphire, Junot Diaz, Edwidge Danticat, Sandra Cisneros, T. C. Boyle, Terry Southern, Sherman Alexie, Dave Eggers, Neal Pollack, Sarah Vowell, Ruth Reichl, Jane and Michael Stern, and Robb Walsh and Paula Disbrowe.

Notable Poets

Robert Hass, Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove, Billy Collins, Seamus Heaney, and W. S. Merwin.

Children’s Authors & Illustrators

Diane Stanley, David Diaz, Angela Shelf Medearis, John Erickson and Hank the Cowdog, William Joyce, David Small and Sarah Stewart, Michael Hoeye, Kimberly Willis Holt, Christopher Paul Curtis, E. L. Konigsburg, Avi, Kate DiCamillo, Rick Riordan, Richard Peck, Lois Lowry, Wendy Mass, Barry Lyga, Markus Zusak, Laurence Yep, Gary D. Schmidt, Eoin Colfer, Patricia MacLachlan, Brian Selznick, Mo Willems, David Macaulay, Jonathan Stroud,M. T. Anderson, Linda Sue Park and Robert Sabuda.

Latino/Latina Literature

Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Denise Chavez, Dagoberto Gilb, Lionel Garcia, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Pat Mora, Elena Poniatowska, Rudolfo Anaya, John Phillip Santos

African American Novelists

Terry MacMillan, Gloria Naylor, J. California Cooper, Ernest Gaines, Colson Whitehead

Asian Authors

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Manil Suri, Ha Jin and Li-Young Lee

Major Biographers

Nancy Milford (Zelda Fitzgerald and Edna St. Vincent Millay)

Other Noteables

Jim Lehrer, Molly Ivins, novelists Tony Hillerman and Russell Banks, Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha), New York Times crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz, Southern humorists Roy Blount and Bailey White, nonfiction writer Simon Winchester, Alice Sebol, Bruce Feiler, Gregory Maguire (Wicked), and Thomas Cahill (author of How the Irish Saved Civilization and Mysteries of the Middle Ages).

Programs Combining Literature with Theater and Other Arts

Stage

Texas Bound

Texas short fiction read by Texas-connected actors, among them Tommy Lee Jones, Kathy Bates, Larry Hagman, Judith Ivey, Marcia Gay Harden, Peri Gilpin, Julie White, Harriet Harris, Doris Roberts, Barry Corbin, John Benjamin Hickey, John Feltch, Tess Harper, Brent Spiner, G. W. Bailey. Plus a host of local performers, including Daryl Johnston, Max Hartman, and Alex Burton. Authors from Katherine Anne Porter and Larry McMurtry to Sam Shepard.

Selected Shorts

Broadway actors (including James Naughton, Fritz Weaver, Joe Spano, Malachy McCourt, Kathleen Chalfant, Patricia Kalember, Ted Marcoux, Christina Pickles, and Estelle Parsons) in the NPR short-fiction reading series with Isaiah Sheffer

Playwrights

Athol Fugard, Edward Albee, Terrence McNally, Wendy Wasserstein, Horton Foote, Larry L. King, Anna Deavere Smith, and Tony Kushner

Two evenings honoring the Texas theater pioneer Margo Jones, with cabaret star Bobby Short and others. Willa Cather program with Eva Marie Saint and Jeffrey Hayden.

Tennessee Williams: A Distant Country Called Youth, a staged reading of Williams’ extraordinary and often hilarious letters, starring Richard Thomas

Film

Texas Film: The Awful Truth with John Bloom (a.k.a. Joe Bob Briggs and Don Graham), Running Shorts (short films based on short fiction). Making a Scene with screenwriters Stephen Harrigan, Anne Rapp, and Lawrence Wright.

Fiction into Film with award-winning director Mira Nair, who discussed her creative process in adapting Jhumpa Lahiri’s acclaimed novel The Namesake to film. The event also included a private film screening of The Namesake before it was released to the general public.

Fiction into Film event with Philippa Gregory, author of The Other Boleyn Girl. The event included her lecture and a private advance screening of the film.

Award-winning author, illustrator, and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi. She adapted her graphic novel Persepolis into an animated film, which received the 2007 Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Music

New Seed, protest poetry of the 1960s with Ramona Austin and jazz saxophonist Marchel Ivory; An Evening with the Blues with blues legends live and on film; Tribute to the Harlem Renaissance with singer Liz Mikel and others.

Texas Singer-Songwriter Evening featuring Joe Ely (The Flatlanders) and Beth Wood with moderator Billy Crockett. The musicians explored the art and craft of songwriting and wove in acoustic performances of their songs as part of the Fresh Ink program on Late Nights at the Dallas Museum of Art. Following the discussion, the musicians performed as the Main Stage act at the Late Night.

Art-Related Events

The Painter and the Story, celebrating one of the Dallas Museum of Art’s recent acquisitions, Clouds, a painting by contemporary German artist Sigmar Polke. Broadway actor Maria Tucci read Marguerite Yourcenar’s How Wang Fo Was Saved, the story that inspired the painting.

ARTsong: A Voyage with the Muses, a literary, visual, and musical journey around the world using the Museum’s collections as inspiration. Four acclaimed musicians presented an evening of poetry and song ranging from Dante to Hemingway, Hayden to Sondheim, Degas to O’Keeffe.

generation m: modern masters from the mid-century to the moment, an evening presented by the Southeastern Festival of Song that wove together song, poetry, and visual art inspired by the exhibition Fast Forward: Contemporary Collections for the Dallas Museum of Art. As a way of honoring those collectors who have made generous gifts to the Museum in recent years, Arts & Letters commissioned a new song by renowned composer Robert Beaser and poet Daniel Mark Epstein entitled Vision at Dawn, which premiered at this event. Arts & Letters also commissioned poets Susan Briante, Farid Matuk, Jack Myers, Shin Yu Pai, and Judith Garrett Segura to write poems inspired by works of art in the exhibition.

Blithe Spirits: Song, Art, Poetry, and Letters Celebrating the Legacy of Sara and Gerald Murphy. The Southeastern Festival of Song and acclaimed local Dallas actors brought to life the story of Sara and Gerald Murphy, the iconic golden couple of the 20s and 30s, and their famous circle of friends, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Man Ray, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, and Cole Porter. The evening was inspired by the exhibition Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy.

Dance

Matisse in Motion was a collaboration between Arts & Letters Live, the Museum’s School Partnership programs, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and New York choreographer Jessica Lang. This event featured the world premiere of a short suite of original dances inspired by Henri Matisse’s sculptures, drawings, and collages from the exhibition Matisse: Painter as Sculptor.

Tributes

Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer (with actors Isaiah Sheffer, Leonard Nimoy, and Marian Seldes); John Graves, author of Goodbye to a River (offered by twenty-five fellow Texas writers); and Texas greats Katherine Anne Porter, Cormac McCarthy, and Larry McMurtry

Poets W. B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, and Wallace Stevens, offered by contemporary poets Edward Hirsch, Paul Muldoon, Sharon Olds, Richard Howard, and others

Writers abroad: Canaday! Eh? with novelists Mordecai Richler, Robert MacNeil, Jane Urquhart, and others. Bloomsbury in Sussex, about the famous English artists and writers. The Drover’s Wife: An Australian Icon.

Texas history: Dibs on the Alamo with novelists Stephen Harrigan, Elizabeth Crook, Jeff Long; and Lawrence Wright

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald: The Riviera, the Twenties, and the words of the two legendary Fitzgeralds, interpreted by actors Natasha Richardson and John Benjamin Hickey

Plus

Literary Cafe: Fourteen seasons of free readings, originally held at Club Dada in Deep Ellum, featuring writers, poets, and musicians including Kinky Friedman, Marian Winik, Joe Coomer, Naomi Shihab Nye, Amanda Eyre Ward, and Dean King. Beginning in 2004, Literary Cafe became part of the Museum’s Late Nights program and has featured Mông-Lan, Jonathan Saffron Foer, Carrie Fountain, Dominic Smith, Susan Vreeland, Candance Wolf, Elizabeth Gilbert, Helen Oyeyemi, Nicole Krauss, Ross King, Ron Hall and Denver Moore, A. M. Homes, Keith Donohue, Brock Clarke, and Nancy Horan.

Young Writers Workshops: Thirteen years of free Saturday workshops in conjunction with the Dallas Public Library. Beginning in 2004, two workshops are held annually, one at the Museum using works of art as inspiration for writing and one at the J. Eric Jonsson Library.

Texas Bound for Kids: Saturday morning readings at area bookstores.

Texas Bound on Tour: Presented regularly in Fort Worth and Houston. One-time appearances in New York City and Tyler, Texas.

Texas Bound radio series: Broadcast by KERA as How Texas Tells It

Texas Bound publications: Three anthologies and four audiocassette editions

Texas-Connected Authors Represented in Person or Through Their Work, 1992–2008

Texas-Connected Actors Featured at Arts & Letters Live

The Dallas Museum of Art is supported in part by the generosity of Museum members and donors and by the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas/Office of Cultural Affairs and the Texas Commission on the Arts.

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