Alex Temblador wants Dallas to be known as a literary city. So, in addition to her own writing, she’s doing the hard work of networking: linking authors with editors while getting our indie bookstores and our more arts-minded bars and venues to provide homes for panels and readings and Q&As. The goal is to help the creators connect with readers. She focused this energy into LitTalk, a quarterly event with partner Interabang Books that you can read about in our February issue.
There are two literary events this week. Tomorrow’s LitNight is at Chocolate Secrets on Oak Lawn, where you can hear six authors read their own work. On Wednesday, the new Lovers Lane location of Interabang will host a Temblador’s LitTalk panel featuring authors Julie Murphy, who wrote Dumplin’, which was turned into a movie for Netflix; Rebecca Balcárcel, the author of Junior Library Guild-endorsed The Other Half of Happy; and Sanderia Faye, the author of Mourner’s Bench. Temblador is the author of Secrets of the Casa Rosada, which you can purchase right here.
We invited Alex to come on EarBurner and chat about LitTalk and the state of Dallas literature. Listen below, and head to the jump for an excerpt.
On her motivation to start LitTalk:
“I was kind of tired of people saying DFW didn’t have literary people here. We have writers and published authors and I was also a little bit tired of seeing the same published authors all the time on stages and, and panels. So I went to Blake Kimzey at Writing Workshops Dallas and said, ‘Hey, can we do something in which we bring out multiple authors of different genres, different backgrounds, different writing styles, and either talk about writing, talk about fiction, talk about publishing, whatever the case may be, but give a space for them to talk on panels. That’s sometimes more interesting than just me standing up there and reading from my book. At least the audience can talk to us.”
