Throughout the month of October, we will feature a series of videos to celebrate the El Paso authors featured in Literary El Paso . The first author in the series will be Bobby Byrd, who reads an excerpt from his book at the bottom of the page. Here is Marcia Hatfield Daudistel talking about the book.
TCU Press started it’s Literary Cities series with Literary Fort Worth published in 2002. It has since created series for Dallas and Austin. Now, El Paso is joining the ranks of cities with their own anthology, which will released Oct. 15.
“The crierion is that the writers have been born here or have lived here, but most importantly, have written about El Paso,” says Marcia Hatfield Daudistel, the editor of Literary El Paso. “The difficultly was not in finding 60 writers, which turned out to be 62 writers for Literary El Paso; it was to limit it to that number.”
Daudistel said that the book is a sample of a range of genres, including journalistic pieces, biography, autobiography, poetry, historical essays, fiction and nonfiction, so it’s a sampling of all of those genres of writing. Although it is called “literary”, the name should not intimidate any readers.
“The term ‘literary’ is one that can tend to be exclusionary,” she said. “That what is popular, that appeals to everyone, can somehow not be literature. Well, all the writing that comes from a region is, in fact, the literature of that region.”
Daudistel said that the authors who contributed to this edition are all storytellers who contribute to Texas literature. “We have an incredible amount of talent, and writers who have come through here are truly part of the literary legacy of Texas.”
Bobby Byrd reads "Gabachos in the Photograph", which will appear in Literary El Paso.
Lee Byrd reads a passage from her short story "When He Is 37".
Sergio Troncoso reads from his story "The Abuelita".
Robert Selzer reads from his story "The Old Man".
The book is available to pre-order from Amazon and other major booksellers.
