Today@Sam Article

National Book Awards Festival To Feature Literary Legends

Aug. 30, 2023
SHSU Media Contact: Mikah Boyd

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is proud to announce this year’s author lineup for the National Book Awards Festival at Sam Houston State University. Authors Darcie Little Badger, Roger Reeves and Marytza K. Rubio will all be visiting campus for the special event that will feature readings, discussions and book signings.

On Sept. 19, Bearkats of all ages can come to the Lowman Student Center White Ballroom at 6 p.m. for the author discussion and stay for the following book signing at 7:30 p.m. Books can be purchased at Barnes & Noble prior to the event.

The National Book Award is among the highest and most prestigious honors that American writers can receive. Thanks to SHSU’s collaboration with the National Book Foundation, members of the Bearkat community have a unique opportunity to meet the people behind some of their favorite, award-winning novels.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Tomás Q. Morín, author of a poetry collection titled “Machete” and memoir “Let Me Count the Ways.” Morín has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and teaches at Rice University.

Darcie Little Badger is a Lipan Apache writer with a PhD in oceanography. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, “Elatsoe,” was featured in “TIME” magazine as one of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. “Elatsoe” also won the Locus Award for Best First Novel and is a Nebula, Ignyte, and Lodestar finalist. Her second fantasy novel, “A Snake Falls to Earth,” received a Nebula Award, an Ignyte Award and a Newbery Honor, and was longlisted for the National Book Awards. Darcie is an Earth scientist, writer and fan of the weird, beautiful and haunting.

Roger Reeves is the author of the poetry collections “King Me” and “Best Barbarian,” a National Book Award Finalist and winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize and Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; and the essay collection, “Dark Days: Fugitive Essays.” A 2021-2022 Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow, Reeves is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and a 2015 Whiting Award, among other honors. His work has appeared in “Poetry,” “The New Yorker,” “The Paris Review,” and elsewhere. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Marytza K. Rubio is a writer from Santa Ana, California. She has an MFA in Creative Writing: Latin America from Queens University of Charlotte and is the founder of Makara Center for the Arts, a nonprofit library and art center in her hometown. Her debut collection, “Maria, Maria: And Other Stories,” was Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction.

The National Book Awards Festival is sponsored by the MFA Program in Creative Writing, Editing and Publishing, The College of Humanities and Social Sciences, The English Department and The National Book Foundation.

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