Please note that this event has passed. Please visit our Stars at Night page for information about this year’s event.
Join us on Thursday, October 11th, for The Stars at Night 2018, a bright Texas evening of songwriting, honky-tonk, and literary splendor. Come for the live country music and readings, and stay for the open bar, delicious food, silent auction, and the historic charm of Mercury Hall, complete with beautiful gardens and rambling live oaks on a bright starry lawn. The evening will feature a very special performance by Texas country music legend Butch Hancock, spinning his famous, lyrical stories on his guitar. Mark the date on your calendar and shine those cowboy boots—it’s an evening you don’t want to miss!
The Stars at Night will kick off at 6.30 p.m. with a VIP party featuring our honorees and other writerly luminaries. All VIP guests will receive a gift bag with a limited edition poster, signed editions of some of our honorees’ books, as well a other swag! General admission begins at 7:30 p.m.
We are thrilled to honor four stars at this year’s event: the award-winning author Laura van den Berg will receive the Literary Star award for her spellbinding and exquisite new novel The Third Hotel; Elizabeth McCracken, a masterful writer in her own right, will receive the Gold Star award for outstanding teaching and mentorship; Fernando A. Flores, an up-and-coming writer with two books on the way, will receive the Emerging Star award for writers in Texas; and S. Kirk Walsh, the founder of Austin Bat Cave and leader of the 9-month workshop, will receive the Community Star award for her generous service to Austin’s literary legions.
The Literary Star for Excellence in Fiction: Laura van den Berg
Laura van den Berg new novel, The Third Hotel, has been hailed as the most exquisite and fantastic (in all senses of the word) novel of the year—a future cult classic. Her other works include the novel Find Me, and the story collections What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us and The Isle of Youth, both finalists for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her honors include the Bard Fiction Prize, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. Born and raised in Florida, Laura currently lives in Cambridge, MA, where she is a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard University. She also teaches in the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
The Emerging Star for a Texas Writer: Fernando A. Flores
Fernando A. Flores was born in the border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, and raised in South Texas. His story collection Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas will be released this October by Host Publications, and his debut novel Tears of the Trufflepig will be published in Spring 2019 by FSG Originals. His story “The First Ever Punk Band in the World (Out of Raymondville)” is included in the Summer 2018 issue of American Short Fiction. (Photo by Eric Morales)
The Gold Star for Excellence in Teaching: Elizabeth McCracken
Elizabeth McCracken is the author of five books: Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry, The Giant’s House, Niagara Falls All Over Again, the memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, and Thunderstruck & Other Stories, for which she was awarded the 2015 Story Prize. A novel, Bowlaway, is coming out in February 2019. She’s received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Liguria Study Center, the American Academy in Berlin, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has taught creative writing at Western Michigan University, the University of Oregon, the University of Houston, and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She holds the James A. Michener Chair in Fiction at the University of Texas, Austin.
The Community Star for Extraordinary Service: S. Kirk Walsh
S. Kirk Walsh’s writing has been published in Electric Literature, the New York Times Book Review, Guernica, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. Since 2014, she has led a nine-month writing workshop for fiction writers in Austin. In 2007, she founded Austin Bat Cave, a writing & tutoring center for kids. With the support of a network of volunteers, Austin Bat Cave has published ten anthologies of student writing and currently provides free writing workshops for 1,500 students and 41 schools and other organizations throughout the greater Austin area.
Butch Hancock has been called “one of the finest songwriters of our time” and is acknowledged by his peers and critics alike as one of the premiere singer-songwriters Texas has ever produced. With his lifelong friends Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Hancock is also a member of renowned alternative country super-group, The Flatlanders. His profoundly imaginative lyrical style has often been compared to that of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. His songs have been covered by the likes of Emmylou Harris, Jerry Jeff Walker, and The Texas Tornadoes.
We look forward to seeing you and your boots there!
All proceeds from The Stars at Night will go toward supporting American Short Fiction, Inc., an award-winning 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to supporting and promoting the literary arts and writers and to offering readers in our community more opportunities to enjoy literature.
We would like to thank our sponsors: The Michener Center for Writers, FSG Originals, Sightlines, Yeti, Cirrus Logic, Forrest Preece and Linda Ball, Topo Chico, Killa Wasi, The LINE Hotel, Thirsty Planet Brewing Company, Tito’s Vodka, and Tequila 512. Higher level individual, corporate, and in-kind sponsorships are available and most welcome. For complete details and benefits of donating to American Short Fiction, contact us at editors@americanshortfiction.org.