2010 Season at a Glance
A celebration of the literary and performing arts featuring acclaimed authors, actors, illustrators, musicians, and more.
MARCH
11 Lisa See, 7:30 p.m.
Lisa See has become one of the most significant Asian-American voices in contemporary literature. She is the author of the critically acclaimed international bestsellers Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love. At this event, See will discuss her latest novel Shanghai Girls about two sisters who leave Shanghai in 1937 and go to Los Angeles for arranged marriages. Shanghai Girls is a story of immigration, identity, war, and love, but at its heart, it is a story of sisters.
See was recognized as National Woman of the Year in 2001 by the Organization of Chinese American Women and received the 2003 History Makers Award presented by the Chinese American Museum.
Community Partner: 
19 Melanie Benjamin, 7:00 p.m.
Melanie Benjamin’s spellbinding historical novel, Alice I Have Been, is an imaginative rendering of Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves, the real-life girl who inspired Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece Alice in Wonderland. Come discover this beloved heroine and her life that existed beyond the looking glass.
19 John Grandits, 8:30 p.m.
Poet and award-winning book and magazine designer John Grandits will share insights into his creative process, discuss the history of concrete poetry and help you create your own concrete poems inspired by works of art in the collection.
20 Young Writers Workshop with John Grandits, 1:00—4:00 p.m.
Teens 13-18 years old who love to write can explore the Museum’s collections and create concrete poems in which words, ideas, type and art combine to create pictures and patterns.
23 Tracy Kidder, 7:30 p.m.
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winner for his book Soul of A New Machine, Tracy Kidder is a master of the non-fiction narrative. His enormously influential book Mountains Beyond Mountains captures two global health crises through the eyes of Dr. Paul Farmer. His latest novel Strength in What Remains, is an inspiring account of one man’s remarkable American journey.
28 Jan Brett, 3:00 p.m.
With over thirty four million books in print, including The Mitten (1989), The Owl and the Pussycat (1991), and The Hat (1997), Jan Brett is one of the nation's foremost author illustrators of children's books. Her titles are instantly recognizable to children and adults alike, and her exquisitely detailed illustrations bring stories to life for readers of all ages. She will read from her newest book The Easter Egg.
APRIL
13 Sarah Dunant, 7:30 p.m.
British novelist Sarah Dunant is best known for The Birth of Venus, In the Company of the Courtesan, and her most recent book, Sacred Hearts, a rich, multi-faceted love story set in a sixteenth century Italian convent at the time of the Counter-Reformation.
Before the event: Join Dr. Heather MacDonald, the Lillian and James H. Clark Curator of European Art, for a tour of artworks in the collection that resonate with themes in Sacred Hearts.
16 Elizabeth Kostova, 7:00 p.m.
Elizabeth Kostova is the bestselling author of The Historian, which brought to life the story of Vlad the Impaler, the real-life Dracula. The book was the first debut novel ever to enter the New York Times Best Seller List at #1. Her highly anticipated second novel, The Swan Thieves, is the story of obsession, history’s losses and the power of art to preserve human hope. It resonates with the setting and time period of the exhibition Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874.
18 Jeff Kinney, 2:00 p.m.
First United Methodist Church of Dallas, 1928 Ross Avenue, Dallas, Texas 75201
The author of the wildly popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, written like pencil-to-paper diary entries by protagonist Greg Heffley, will discuss the series and his inspiration for the books.
19 Texas Bound: Texas Stories II, 7:30 p.m.
Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre; AT&T Performing Arts Center, 2400 Flora Street, Dallas, Texas 75201
Stories by Sarah Bird, Will Dunlap, Tim O’Brien and Cristina Henríquez read by Julie White, John Benjamin Hickey, and James Crawford
Community Partner: 
26 David Sedaris, 7:30 p.m.
McFarlin Memorial Auditorium, Southern Methodist University, 6405 Boaz Lane, Dallas, TX 75275
David Sedaris is a master of satire and is the closest thing the literary world has to a rock star—his readings are consistently standing-room only. At this event, Sedaris will read from new and unpublished material.
Promotional Partner: 
28 Peter Carey and Colm Tóibín, 7:30 p.m.
Hailed by The Evening Standard as “one of the greatest storytellers of our time,” two-time Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey is the author of Oscar and Lucinda andThe True History of the Kelly Gang. His forthcoming novel Parrot and Olivier in America,
is a reimagining of Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous journey to America.
Internationally renowned Irish author Colm Tóibín has established himself as a major and distinctive voice in contemporary literature. He has been short-listed for the Booker Prize twice and The Master, his celebrated fictional portrait of Henry James, was the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year. His latest novel Brooklyn is set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s, when one young woman crossed the ocean to make a new life for herself.
MAY
3 Texas Bound: Texas Stories III
Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre; AT&T Performing Arts Center, 2400 Flora Street, Dallas, Texas 75201
Stories by David Eagleman, K.L. Cook and Steven Gullion read by Raphael Parry, Sally Nystuen Vahle, and Matthew Gray
Community Partner:
6 Robert Kurson, 7:30 p.m.
Sponsored by the Boshell Family Lecture Series on Art and Archaeology
Don’t miss Robert Kurson, author of the New York Times-bestselling book Shadow Divers, discuss the riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve one of the last mysteries of World War II and make history themselves.
Before the Event: 6:30 p.m. Join Dr. Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art, for a tour of Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea. The exhibition is drawn from the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art and from local collections and explores how visual artists of the modern period (1850 – present) have represented coastal landscapes. 
7 Laura W. Bush, 7: 30 p.m.
McFarlin Memorial Auditorium, Southern Methodist University, 6405 Boaz Lane, Dallas TX 75275
The Former First Lady and an Honorary Ambassador for the U.N. Decade of Literacy, Mrs. Bush hosted the first-ever White House Conference on Global Literacy in 2006. She partnered with the Library of Congress in 2001 to launch the first ever National Book Festival and was a founder of the Texas Book Festival in 1995; both events are free, open to the public, and feature some of the best names in contemporary literature. At this event, Mrs. Bush will share insights from her forthcoming memoir.
13 Isabel Allende, 7:30 p.m.
First United Methodist Church of Dallas, 1928 Ross Avenue, Dallas, Texas 75201
Isabel Allende’s books have been translated into more than twenty-seven languages and have been bestsellers across four continents. Her debut novel The House of Spirits was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is the author of Daughter of Fortune, Portrait in Sepia, and The Sum of our Days. She will discuss her new book Island Beneath the Sea (April 2010), which follows an 18th Century Haitian slave who is determined to take control of her own destiny in a society where
that would seem impossible.
25 Yann Martel Yann Martel is one of today's most interesting and surprising writers. He rocketed onto the literary scene with his whimsical, imaginative novel Life of Pi, for which he received the 2002 Man Booker Prize. At this event, Martel will discuss his forthcoming novel Beatrice and Virgil, a mesmerizing and brilliant exploration of the limits of language in describing and understanding the horrors of the Holocaust. Publisher Cindy Spiegel said after reading the manuscript, "It has the feel of a classic. I felt as if I were discovering a Beckett or a Nabokov today. It's a book that addresses a topic that has been written about many, many times but feels profoundly original."
JUNE
1 Annette Gordon-Reed, 7:30 p.m.
Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize and the 2008 National Book Award for nonfiction for The Hemingses of Monticello, a multigenerational epic about an American slave family with ties to the third President. She has been lauded as one of our country’s most distinguished
presidential scholars and authorities on race. She currently serves as a professor of law and history at both New York University and Rutgers University.
12 Ira Glass, 7:30 p.m.
Charles W. Eisemann Center, 2351 Performance Drive, Richardson, Texas 75082
Named by Time Magazine “Best Radio Show Host in America,” Ira Glass is leading a journalistic revolution and bridging the generation gap as host of This American Life, an award-winning program that can be heard on more than five hundred public radio stations each week by 1.7 million listeners. This American Life is the recipient of a Peabody award as well as the Edward R. Murrow Award. The radio series made the jump to television in 2007, running for two seasons on Showtime, and receiving three Emmy Awards.
Promotional Partner:
28 Texas Bound: Heroes and Antiheroes, 7:30 p.m.
Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre; AT&T Performing Arts Center, 2400 Flora Street, Dallas, Texas 75201
A special evening of stories celebrating the Dallas Theater Center’s world premiere of the musical It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman! Stories by Michael Chabon, George Saunders, Robert Olen Butler and T.C. Boyle read by Matthew Gray, Matthew Stephen Tompkins,
Harriet Harris, Raphael Parry and Lee Trull
Community Partner:
Arts & Letters Live is supported by the Kay Cattarulla Endowment for the Literary and Performing Arts, TACA, The George and Fay Young Foundation, The Hoglund Foundation, The Eugene McDermott Foundation, and Annual Series Supporters. Additional support provided by Friends of the Dallas Public Library. Air transportation provided in part by American Airlines. Hotel accommodations provided in part by The Adolphus.
Promotional partners include The Dallas Morning News, Einstein Printing, and
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