The storm hit the Capitol last night, breaking windows and throwing down trees on the grounds. Was your property damaged by the storms last night? Kerouac's scroll manuscript of On the Road on display the the Ransom Center until June 1. Another Austin-area teacher in trouble for having improper relations with a student. California's supreme court says a state gay marriage ban is unconstitutional; Sen. Cornyn now set to work on a national ban. ...

The Harry Ransom Center at UT Austin today announced two impressive acquisitions to its already massive collection: letters from cherished American playwright Tennessee Williams and equally cherished American novelist John Steinbeck....

UT's Ransom Center has acquired the archives of Jim Crace, author of such award-winning novels as Being Dead (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award) and Quarantine (Booker Prize shortlist)....

Tonight, before award-winning author Kevin Brockmeier's scheduled 7pm reading from his latest effort, The View from the Seventh Layer, BookPeople will host its first-ever Literary Cocktail Hour on their third floor. Fancy wines, fine cheeses and an unforgettably brilliant author will be available to all those savvy enough to show up....

Tomorrow evening, the 2008 Mayor's Book Club will have a finale celebration at City Hall. Ishmael Beah, the author of this year's selection A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, will be in attendance for a Q&A session led by UT Dean of Undergraduate Studies Paul Woodruff. ...

This is not a hoax. The Utter Reading Series, a monthly event featuring local and emerging writers, usually takes place on the first Tuesday of the month. It's just a coincidence that this month, it falls on April Fool's Day. This month's readers are not to be missed-- poet Miriam Bird Greenberg and fiction writer Matthew D. Stuart. Both are young, gifted, and Austinites. ...

This week's news in art, books, music, and film....

The Harry Ransom Center is not exactly known for its parties. No beverages, pens, or even white paper are allowed in their reading room. We have to give them credit for this event, however, It's unorthodox, it's ambitious, it has just the right alchemy between '50's-era jazzbo "hipsters" and the modern-day sort, and it might end up being the most amazing literary event in Austin this year....

14-year-old girl assaulted in the wee hours of Tuesday morning in Southeast Austin; police are looking for the suspect (who may be wounded from when the girl fought back). Federal jury will decide if police used excessive force on Ramon Hernandez in 2005. UT system raising tuition fees. Tejano star Emilio in medically-induced coma, but showing some improvement....

The week's news in the world of art, books, film and music....

Amy Hempel is a sort of hero for short story writers. While everyone else seems to eventually leave the form to take a crack at the Great American Novel, Hempel has spent thirty years moving in the opposite direction, into shorter and shorter stories. Possibly more than any other American writer, she can claim to be the creator of the "short short" form. It's still hard to argue that anyone does it better. She walks the line between fanciful irony and soft-hearted sentimentalism with a natural balance that would make David Berman jealous....

The week's news on arts, books, film and music....

Crane is at peak form when crafting worlds that her readers can easily relate to and recognize, even once they've taken an odd (if not outright bizarre) turn. Still, they're ultimately anchored in the honesty of the most basic of human emotions and needs, as in the near-realism of "Donovan's Closet": in a town not unlike Austin—where "you could weave a tapestry from the mutton chops alone"—we witness a relationship fall apart as the story's protagonist becomes obsessed with her boyfriend's lemon-scented closet....

The week's news on arts, books, film and music....

The week's news on arts, books, film and music....

ImageAfter Art Article discusses the possibility that museums have begun to exceed their usefulness for appreciating art, due to overcrowding. Kind of a snobby article, but it raises interesting points. /// A museum in Cologne, Germany, discovers that one of its Monet paintings is a forgery. /// This Saturday, the Austin Museum of Art will host its "Artists Boot Camp" series for the city's emerging artists. Books Border's bookstore goes digital - and how! ///......

Haven't had enough of Valentine's Day yet? Ever secretly wanted to take a date to the Harry Ransom Center, but went for $2 Tecates at some hipster dive instead? This Friday, for one night only, the HRC is heading to the Eastside, celebrating love, the birth of hip, and the "starving, hysterical, naked" visions of the Beat Generation. Sounds hot....

Two months ago, we let you know about the Austin Chronicle's annual Short Story contest, open to aspiring writers from Texas and the world. This Wednesday, the winners will be unveiled at a BookPeople gala, catered by Austin Java. ...

Hillary Clinton says we really matter! Texan self-esteem at an all-time high (and that's saying something). GM wants to buy out every single one of its United States hourly workers. Texas beats No. 3 Kansas in basketball, 72-69, in front of a sold-out Erwin Center. By 2050, one in five Americans will be foreign-born, survey saith. ...

ImageAfter Art Last Wednesday, a Francis Bacon triptych sold at a Christie's auction for about $51 million. This is the highest price ever paid at a European auction for a post-war work. The sale, according to Christie's, demonstrates "the underlying, continued strength of the market" for art across the world. /// Actor Randy Quaid has been "banned for life" from the Actors' Equity Association, the labor union for American stage actors, for "physically and verbally"......

The Utter Reading Series is back tomorrow, with more pathos than Hillary, more transcendance than Barack, more grit than McCain, and more exposure (for local writers) than a bead-strewn balcony on Bourbon Street. As always, the reading is free and open to the public, and the audience is invited to join the readers afterwards for drinks and conversation at Opal Divine's on 6th....

The week's news on arts, books, film and music....

The story begins in New York in the year 2011. This is John McCain's recession-riddled America, where gas has edged above 8 dollars a gallon, the best-selling video game is Infidel Massacre: Los Angeles, and, with 10,000 troops still in Iraq, the war is still going strong....

Playwright and filmmaker David Mamet will appear at UT's Hogg Auditorium on Monday, February 4th for a discussion of his work with the Austin Chronicle's Robert Faires. The event is the first of several appearances by Mamet at UT in conjunction with the acquisition of his archives by the Harry Ransom Center....

Artists, take note: When in doubt about how to price your work, go high. ...

The week's news on arts, books, film and music....

J. M. Coetzee is probably the only Nobel Prize winner for Literature with a degree from UT. He spent several years in Austin in the 1960’s, playing intramural cricket, protesting the Vietnam War in the pages of the Daily Texan, and writing a dissertation on Sam Beckett’s novels. A few years later, he returned to South Africa, the country of his birth, and started writing one amazing book after another. (He hasn’t really stopped since then.) He’s visited Austin a few times since then, including a stint in 1995 as a visiting professor at UT....

From ImageAfterArt The Teresa Long Center for the Performing Arts (formerly the Palmer Auditorium) will be opening with a bang in early March 2008. Enter: "The Earth Harp," a gargantuan outdoor stringed instrument created by these guys. /// Art thieves strike in Brazil! They robbed the Sao Paolo Museum of Art (MASP), making off with two paintings worth a total of approximately $100 million dollars. The paintings: Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (Picasso) and The Coffee......

Navdo is a record label that also promotes and books artists, and this Thursday they’re hosting their first “Hangin’ with Navdo” in Austin at The Parish, featuring Peel, The Boxing Lesson, and AM Syndicate. AM Syndicate will be celebrating the release of their second album, Liberation, recorded by Erik Wofford at Cacophony Records. This will be the first release put out by fledgling label Novastar Records....