Downtown Arts Series to feature authors, poets, museum librarian
The University of Houston-Victoria Fall 2017 Downtown Arts Series will present a lineup of writers, poets and a museum librarian who has documented Texas art.
Three of the presenters are Texas natives, and another hails from the United Kingdom but teaches in the Austin area. The fifth is a resident of New York.
“We’re excited to offer this collection of Texas talent,” said Charles Alexander, UHV poet and designer in residence and co-curator of the series. “The presentation on Texas artists should be particularly interesting because it will inform the community about art being created across the state.”
Each of the events will begin at 7 p.m. at the UHV Center for the Arts, 204 N. Main St. The artists will give a presentation about their work and answer questions. The events are free and open to the public, and refreshments are available.
“This is a rich grouping of poets and writers,” Alexander said. “Our attitude since the beginning of the series is to embrace artists of all backgrounds and identities. That seems especially important given recent events. There is no place for hate in literature, art or poetry, or in Victoria.”
This program is made possible in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In addition to support from the UHV School of Arts & Sciences, one of the events also will be co-sponsored by the Victoria Film Society.
“The Downtown Arts Series is a valuable part of the arts community at UHV and in Victoria,” said Jeffrey Di Leo, dean of the UHV School of Arts & Sciences. “The creative people we bring to Victoria have a lasting impact and illustrate how endlessly diverse literature and the arts can be. I look forward to seeing the next group of presentations.”
The schedule of visiting performers is:
- Christine Granados and Lupe Mendez, Sept. 9 – Granados has been a journalist with the El Paso Times and the Austin American-Statesman and now is a reporter at the Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post. Granados previously taught English and creative writing at UHV. Her second book of fiction, “Fight Like a Man and Other Stories We Tell Our Children,” recently was published by the University of New Mexico Press. Mendez is a CantoMundo, Macondo and Poetry Incubator fellow and co-founder of the Librotraficante Movement. His publishing credits include prose work in Houston Free Press, the Kenyon Review and Norton’s “Sudden Fiction Latino: Short Short Stories from the United States and Latin America,” as well as poetry that appears in Huizache, the Texas Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal and Voluble.
- Robert Craig Bunch, Oct. 14 – Bunch has been assistant librarian since 2011 at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio. “The Art of Found Objects: Interviews with Texas Artists” is his first book and is the only book published of interviews with visual artists from across Texas.
- James Sherry and Rob Stanton, Nov. 11 – Sherry is the author of 11 books of poetry and prose, most recently “Oops! Environmental Poetics.” He is publisher of Roof Books and in 1977 started the Segue Foundation Inc., a multi-arts producer based in New York City. Stanton was born and raised in the United Kingdom but has been living and teaching in Austin for the past several years. He is the author of “The Method” and “Trip.” His poems and articles frequently are found online at Jacket2.
For more information about the Downtown Arts Series, contact Alexander at 361-703-5147 or alexanderch@uhv.edu.
The University of Houston-Victoria, located in the heart of the Coastal Bend region since 1973 in Victoria, Texas, offers courses leading to more than 80 academic programs in the schools of Arts & Sciences; Business Administration; and Education, Health Professions & Human Development. UHV provides face-to-face classes at its Victoria campus, as well as an instructional site in Katy, Texas, and online classes that students can take from anywhere. UHV supports the American Association of State Colleges and Universities Opportunities for All initiative to increase awareness about state colleges and universities and the important role they have in providing a high-quality and accessible education to an increasingly diverse student population, as well as contributing to regional and state economic development.
