DCCCD is proud to be a community sponsor of the Dallas Museum of Arts’ Arts & Letters Live series, featuring award-winning authors and performers of regional, national and international acclaim.
Please join us for these upcoming events:
Wednesday, May 9 - 7:30 p.m. - Horchow Auditorium
Wit and Wisdom: H. W. Brands and Mark K. Updegrove
As the author of 22 works of nonfiction, it seems there is little that H. W. Brands doesn’t know about our country’s history. Two of his books, “Traitor to His Class” and “The First American,” were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Brands’ newest book, “The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr,” is the second in his American Portraits series, a collection of books that “take moments and individuals who have interesting stories on their own, stories that are gripping in their own right, and use them to illuminate certain themes in American history.” “The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr” tells the story of Burr after his famous duel with Alexander Hamilton: of his exile, his devotion to his daughter and his return to the United States. Brands currently teaches American history at the University of Texas at Austin.
Born in Philadelphia, Mark K. Updegrove has loved presidential history ever since he attended the United States bicentennial celebration in 1976. It wasn’t long before he was collecting presidential autographs with the same passion his friends sought the signatures of professional athletes. He is the author of “Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House” and “Baptism by Fire: Eight Presidents Who Took Office in Times of Crisis.” In 2009 he became the director of the LBJ Library and Museum in Austin, Texas, the fourth director since its opening in 1971. His newest book is “Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency.” Updegrove’s enthusiasm for presidential history is evident in this comprehensive oral history of LBJ, which he hopes will burnish the legacy of a president he considers underrated and underappreciated.
“There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.” - Harry S. Truman
Ticket Prices:
Full: $37
Reduced: $32
Student: $15
Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.
Tuesday, May 15 - 7:30 p.m.
Majestic Theatre
1925 Elm St., Suite 500
Dallas, TX 75201
Distinguished Writers: John Irving (in conversation with Kevin Moriarty)
John Irving has created a body of fiction of extraordinary range, moving with ease from romance to fairytale to thriller. His first bestseller, “The World According to Garp,” introduced readers to his inventive style, memorable characters and masterfully woven stories-within-stories. It won a National Book Award and was made into a film starring Robin Williams.
Since Garp’s release, all of Irving’s novels (including “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” “A Son of the Circus” and “A Widow for One Year”) have been bestsellers and have sold tens of millions of copies. In 2000 he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the adaptation of his novel “The Cider House Rules.” Irving has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Irving will participate in a moderated onstage conversation with Kevin Moriarty, artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center, to share insights about his creative process, the body of his work and his new novel, “In One Person.” An absorbing novel of desire, secrecy and sexual identity, “In One Person” is a story of unfulfilled love and a passionate celebration of our sexual differences. Irving’s most political novel since “The Cider House Rules” and “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” “In One Person” is a tender portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself worthwhile.
“Irving’s writing has a sense of myth and time and weight and resonance. He’s probably the great storyteller of American literature today.” - author Peter Matthiessen
Ticket Prices:
Full: $37
Reduced: $32
Student: $15
Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.
Friday, May 18 - 7 p.m. - Horchow Auditorium
Fresh Ink: Ben Fountain and Alexander Maksik
Discover two exciting new voices in contemporary literature. Though both are debut novelists, they have each already earned incredible acclaim.
Ben Fountain received a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award and a PEN/Hemingway Award for his story collection “Brief Encounters With Che Guevara.” In 2007, Fountain was one of 10 emerging writers to win the prestigious Whiting Writers’ Award. His new novel, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” is a razor-sharp satire about a young, reluctant Iraq War hero, home on leave, who finds himself the guest of honor at a Dallas Cowboys football game. Author Madison Smartt Bell lauded the book saying, “Ben Fountain’s ‘Halftime’ is as close to the Great American Novel as anyone is likely to come these days — an extraordinary work that captures and releases the unquiet spirit of our age, and is likely to be remembered as one of the important books of this decade.”
Alexander Maksik is the recipient of the Truman Capote Fellowship and a fellowship from the Iowa Writers Workshop. His first novel, “You Deserve Nothing,” was featured in Publishers Weekly as one of 10 promising debuts. Set in Paris at an international high school, “You Deserve Nothing” is a gripping story of power, idealism and morality. In Maksik’s stylish prose, Paris is dazzling and dangerously seductive. It serves as a fitting backdrop for a dramatic tale about the tension between desire and action, and about the complex relationship that exists between our public and private selves.
Ticket Prices:
DMA Members: Free
Adults: $10
Seniors 65+/Military: $7
Students: $5
Children under 12: Free
Tickets to Fresh Ink programs include general admission to the museum.
Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.
Sunday, May 20 - 7:30 p.m.
First Presbyterian Church of Dallas
408 Park Ave.
Dallas, TX 75201
Artful Musings: Alan Lightman
Situated at the intersection of art and science, Alan Lightman’s work boldly bridges the gap between these two very different but similar worlds. A theoretical physicist at MIT and Harvard, Lightman is also an award-winning novelist. His provocative bestseller, “Einstein’s Dreams,” envisions a series of fables that Einstein might have dreamt while putting the final touches on his theory of relativity. The Los Angeles Times praised the book saying, “Lightman is an artist who paints with the notion of time.”
His forthcoming novel, “Mr. g,” is the story of creation as narrated by God, and explores scientific, philosophical, theological and ethical issues. The idea for “Mr. g” developed from a Boston group of MIT scientists and playwrights Lightman convened to discuss the merging of science and the arts. He noticed how often the subject of religion came up and asked himself, “What are the boundaries of science, and how does science know what it knows and how does religion know what it knows?” “Mr. g” is a stunningly imaginative work that celebrates the tragic and joyous nature of existence on the grandest possible scale.
“As human beings, don’t we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?” - Alan Lightman
Ticket Prices:
Full: $37
Reduced: $32
Student: $15
Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.