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SAR Summer Hiatus Update 2021 🌞

On the Texas Book Festival and taking a break.

Published onJul 26, 2021
SAR Summer Hiatus Update 2021 🌞

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Friends,

Having spent somewhere around twenty years working and living in various ways intended to positively impact my local community and neighbors, I think my feelings of disappointment by the failure of Mel Bay's Book of the Dead to be included in this year's Texas Book Festival are justified. In an email, Festival staff wrote to us: 

Unfortunately, the author selection committee was unable to place your book for this year’s Festival. In any year, the author selection committee considers not only the literary merit of a book, but how that book's subject would fit into the context and balance of the Festival's overall programming topics.

The disappointment is lessened greatly, however, when I receive another email from them promoting:

Ethan Hawke and Greg Ruth Present Meadowlark!

Image included in email from Texas Book Festival for Ethan Hawke-Greg Ruth event.

That the author committee of the Texas Book Festival was easily able to find a place for Ethan Hawke, whose latest book my wife tells me is about "the trials and tribulations of an actor in L.A.," but couldn't find a place for an Austin musician's debut short story collection issued by a fledging Austin-based press may be a reflection of the Festival's abandonment of any real intent to promote Texas writers for the perceived profit of a hoped-for virtual attendance. All I can say to them is, best of luck in that. 

I volunteered for the first Texas Book Festival and many after. I've donated cash. SAR has financially supported them. I'm certain Ethan Hawke can more than cover us, though. Count them among those who won't be sorry to see me leave Austin. 

With that, the SAR Editorial Collective enters its Summer 2021 Hiatus. We'll use this time to catch up on submissions (sorry for the wait, folks!), finish up Volume V and maybe, possibly recharge a little. 

By the way, those interested in a somewhat different opportunity for inclusion in the forthcoming print issue should check out the special call for "interruptors" we issued last week. Get your submissions in soon!

Thank you for reading and supporting San Antonio Review.

Yours, 

William O. Pate II
Founding Editor & Publisher
San Antonio Review
sareview.org

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