After kicking around the local scene for a couple of years, Literature finally released a full-length last month, dropping it via bandcamp in the creative Chernobyl that extends roughly from December 26th to the middle of January. It's there now to download in any format at whatever price the buyer cares to pay, which is never not a good deal. more ›

Last night's news that the APD has identified the prime suspect in the New Year's Eve attacks - and, apparently, several earlier assaults - provides a bit of emotional respite in anticipation of perhaps the biggest benefit show yet staged for Esme Barrera. The Statesman reports James Loren Brown, 25, was found dead in his North Campus home on January 12th. He has subsequently been linked by DNA evidence to a string of attacks last summer and is the prime suspect in the New Year's attacks, including the murder of Barrera. The police describe him as a "serial predator." more ›

Continuing Thursday night's benefit show from the Scoot Inn, myriad bands have come together to help raise funds for Esme Barrera's family at Club 1808. Friday's showcase includes Quin Galavis, Literature, Les Rav, Crooked Bangs, Schmillion and more. See below for the full lineup and some set times. Two stages will have performances starting at 5pm, and minors are welcome until 6:30pm. Between the bands' performances, guests are welcome to speak and pay tribute to Esme. more ›

Free week rolls on tonight with our humble offering at the 29th Street Ballroom. Five local bands for the glorious price of free - should be the perfect capper to a hilarious day of reading about the fallout from the Iowa caucus. Grimy indie-poppers Literature will headline our showcase. The band just released their debut LP, Arab Spring, which you can grab for whatever you care to pay for it on their bandcamp. The ten songs are catchy, pop-punk nuggets, distorted and besmirched by low-fidelity that would be right at home on Slumberland Records circa 1995. The album got a Twitter recommendation from Kip Berman of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, who likened the sound to an amalgam of the Buzzcocks and Exploding Hearts. more ›

Hot dogs and cold beer aren’t necessarily synonymous with the holiday season, but why not start a new tradition? Recently, Frank has been making live music a weekly tradition of its own, and the dog/beer joint is quickly establishing itself as one of the best venues to grab dinner and a show. Tonight is no different: come dressed in your best red and white attire for an evening showcasing a trio of acts who are poised for a big splash in 2012. more ›

Tomorrow night the Paramount is hosting The Moth, a reading series from New York that is now on the road. Tomorrow's presentation will feature readers on the following topic - "Made to Be Broken: Stories About Disobedience." Contributors to this reading include Lt. Dan Choi, Elna Baker, Mike Daisey and George Dawes. Former Austinist columnist Spike Gillespie submitted a piece but will not be performing with the program after all, a choice she discusses on her blog. more ›

Austin's newest literary journal, "Unstuck," is launching today with a reading at the Hyde Park Theater. The mag's focus is to "emphasize literary fiction with elements of the fantastic, the futuristic, the surreal, or the strange," and their first issue includes "work from authors whose fiction has previously appeared mostly in genre magazines, as well as work from writers who have published only in university-affiliated literary quarterlies." more ›

On Monday night poet Naomi Shihab Nye spoke and read from her latest book of ultra-short stories, There is no Long Distance Now. The Mabee Ballroom at St. Edward's University was filled with students and fans, young and old. more ›

After winning the Statesman’s Texas Social Media award last month, Qrank has now started rubbing elbows with a crowd whose brows are noticeably higher. more ›

Last year, Matador Records co-chief Gerard Cosloy curated the Austin rock and punk compilation Casual Victim Pile, bringing to vinyl and digital formats music that, for the most part, you could only experience on booze-filled nights on Red River (OK, at Beerland). Though he stated at the time that the document was "very arbitrary" and in no way a definitive portrait of any "scene," it did bring heightened local exposure to a strain of blistering, D.I.Y.-style rock. Some of the bands on the first comp (Follow That Bird, Harlem, Woven Bones) now seem like indispensable parts of the Austin music scene writ large; other bands have broken up, and still more are punching holes in the walls of Beerland to replace the patched-over ones they punched in last year. Most of all, the first CVP is just fun to listen to. It's good to know these bands. more ›

Julie Klausner's first book, I Don't Care About Your Band (What I Learned From Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, And Other Guys I've Dated), is a fearless, hilariously truthful memoir that chronicles her regrettable romantic encounters and the lessons she learned from bad boyfriends, emotionally unavailable artistes and the pursuit of the seemingly perfect man. While she's a pro at crafting stories that are both relatable and laugh-out-loud funny, writing isn't her only passion. You may have seen one of her appearances on shows like Saturday Night Live, Conan O'Brien, Strangers With Candy, Best Week Ever with Paul F. Tompkins and Delocated. Or maybe you're a comedy connoisseur who can't get enough of Julie's viral videos, like The Cat Whisperer. Perhaps you've seen her illustrations in McSweeney's Future Dictionary of America or The Stranger. Oh, and she's also a performer and former teacher at New York's landmark Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater. Talk about a Jackie-of-all-trades. more ›

One night a month, a rumbling freight train of rock'n'roll steams into Beerland, delivering unto willing listeners earfuls of rock, punk and pop goodness. That night is tonight. The Rumble is a monthly showcase of local bands brought to you by a bunch of cool participants, including Future Sounds and yrstruly, the Austinist. And it's FREE. Totally, gloriously free. more ›

It’s hard to know what type of response you’ll receive when you mention the name Dave Eggers in a room full of book people. Independent publishing guru/huckster, inspirational lit-man/hipster, all around do-gooder/ precious. The true essence of these arguments for and against every aspect of Eggers career begs the question: what about the children? The answer to how Dave Eggers became synonymous with one of the most pressing issues of our culture is many-sided thing. more ›

Free week continues this evening with a strong bill that features Austin's closest approximation to the Crystals and helpings of both Godzilla-sized and stripped-down rock and roll. more ›

Almost completely unadaptable for the silver screen, David Foster Wallace's work has been something that most screenwriters wouldn't dare touch, what with the monolithic footnotes and the complicated structure of his prose. This precedent, however, was not enough to deter a young John Krasinski (who you may know as Jim from The Office or from this spring's Away We Go), who began adapting the 336 page collection of unbridaled male-mind ruminations when he was in his early 20s. Over seven years later, Krasinski's passion project Brief Interviews with Hideous Men will be hitting the theaters this weekend, with several already-sold-out live appearances by Krasinski tonight and tomorrow at Austin's own Alamo Drafthouse Ritz. SInce not everyone will be able to attend those particular screenings (but there are still plenty screenings of the film without the writer/director/actor for you to check out), we decided to chat with Krasinski about his motivations behind this project, the value of truth and honesty, and what it feels like to step inside the mind of one of America's finest literary treasures. more ›

In Cheever, A Life, Blake Bailey combines a biography with some literary criticism. Weighing in at 679 pages, it is an even-handed and meticulously researched picture of this fiction writer best known for short stories. Bailey’s authority comes from his knowledge of John Cheever’s writing and access to his unpublished journals. Although it pains me to say this, in general writers make boring nonfiction characters.They are of deep interest only to biographers and close family. In this case, however, the troubled man-boy who never finished high school made both a mess and magic out of his personal life, creating enough controversy to carry a story. more ›

Don't want to stay in but not sure you want to go out? Split the difference tonight at the Cole Street House and see four talented bands from near and afar. more ›

Monofonus Press is doing it again. Their cup runneth over with creative juices, and they’re giving us another chance to sample the sap. They’ve got the market cornered in this town when it comes to the cross-media, artistic explosion. They began the auspicious endeavor of mixing three different art forms like music, writing and illustration into one release with IF 01 often bringing together three different artists who would normally not collaborate. more ›

Used to be the word “garage” was the template and the starting point for most if not all of rock and roll. Whether the garage was literal was irrelevant - the term could apply to a basement, empty room or vacant storage space/warehouse, or really anyplace a band could put their roots down, plug in equipment and then plug away at songs without disturbing the peace. Back then, rough demos were cut onto cassette tape (putting a pillow over the built-in microphone helped stifle cymbal noise), and “in the garage” recordings were the first and easiest way to get the word out about a project. more ›

There will be readin’s a transpirin’ at Café Mundi! Local writers and connoisseurs of wit-by-words Billy Cope and Benjamin Reed (of The Accidental Gentrifist fame) will both be reading excerpts from their newest works. We here at Austinist are big fans of local writers, and these two both have special places in our hearts as kickass representations of the writing quality present in our special little town. more ›

Watching the presidential primary unfold these last few weeks, the thought has often occurred to us: "When will Obama and Clinton shut up about saving the people of Darfur from displacement and genocide, and start talking about the important stuff, like plaigarized speeches and superdelegates?" Haven't had the same reaction? Tonight, a very different kind of politics will be on display at the B. Iden Payne Theatre at the University of Texas. Our city will play host to one of the great voices for democracy and social justice in post-colonial Africa. more ›

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. more ›

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. more ›

The UTTER Reading Series presents two young, local writers who are finding national success and recognition. Poet D. Antwan Stewart will present selections from his two books, The Terribly Beautiful (2006) and Sotto Voce (forthcoming) . Fiction writer Brian Hart, the winner of the first-ever Keene Prize for Literature, may read from his forthcoming and already-awarded novel, The Dog With the Broken Teeth, the One That Fetches Rocks. Stewart has an MFA from the Michener... more ›

Best known as the frontman of alt-country group Richmond Fontaine, Willy Vlautin is now also an author. His debut novel, The Motel Life, takes the same bleak, resigned-to-fate look on life that fuels his music. The story centers around the relationship of brothers Frank and Jerry Lee, who flee town after one of them accidentally kills a boy in a drunken hit-and-run accident. They find a strange kind of freedom in their ensuing travels; it's... more ›

That's right: it's time to heat up your winter nights again, with the 14th season of FronteraFest. The Short Fringe, the Long Fringe, or Mi Casa es su Teatro -- FronteraFest is five weeks of alternative, offbeat, new, and just plain off-the-wall fringe theatre presented by Hyde Park Theatre and Austin Script Works. For complete FronteraFest 2007 information, including times and locations for the Short Fringe, the Long Fringe and Mi Casa es su... more ›

Whether you've just entered your twenties and are thinking about things like what to major in in College, or you can see 30 looming on the horizon (or fading behind you, for that matter) there's at least one thing that everyone has in common: parenthood. Wait, what? Seriously. Think about it: you are either a parent yourself, or you'll eventually become one, or your friends are parents or maybe you simply have parents (and the... more ›

Official Poster of First Night Austin 2007 by Peat Duggins After the tremendous success of last year's inaugural festival, First Night Austin returns to downtown this New Year's Eve with an all-day program full of music, art, theatre, dance, and more. Begun in Boston back in 1976 as a massive public gathering to ring in the new year through "art, ritual, and festivity," First Night events are now held all over the world, from... more ›

Someone other than the government might have your census information. Speaking of the government, the feds allowed the Red Cross to visit the "high value detainees" at Guantanamo. The Yankees pitcher who loved flying was killed yesterday in a fiery plane crash in Manhattan. Gothamist kept us updated throughout the afternoon. No more cursive in schools? What about graphologists? Won't somebody think of them? Students at Gallaudet University are so upset with their proposed... more ›

Aqua Teen Hungerforce is one of our favorite late-night TV shows. Cartoon Network's trippy and witty antics of fast food products living in the suburbs of New Jersey has been entertaining inebriated viewers since Adult Swim's debut. One of the signature artists in Adult Swim's motley crew of hip-hop contributers is DJ Spooky, who penned theme songs and more for these cult cartoon favorites. Hailing from Washington D.C. and armed with a degree in... more ›