Our Books
Faculty Books
An Authentic Life | Jennifer Chang
Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity, Some Say the Lark, and An Authentic Life, which will be published in October 2024. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including American Poetry Review, The Believer, Best American Poetry 2012 and 2022, The New Yorker, The New York Times, A Public Space, and Yale Review and has been honored with fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Elizabeth Murray Artists Residency and with the William Carlos Williams Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine. She is the poetry editor of New England Review.
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Barn 8 | Deb Olin Unferth
Deb Olin Unferth is the author of six books, including two novels, Barn 8 (Graywolf 2020) and Vacation (McSweeney’s 2008); two story collections, Wait Till You See Me
Dance (Graywolf 2017) and Minor Robberies (McSweeney’s 2007); the memoir Revolution (Henry Holt 2011); and the graphic novel I, Parrot (Catapult 2017). Her fiction and essays have appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Granta, the New York Times, among others. She has received a Guggenheim fellowship, three Pushcart Prizes, a Creative Capital Grant, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. She runs the Pen City Writers, creative writing program at the John B. Connally Unit, a prison in south Texas.
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Best Barbarian | Roger Reeves
Roger Reeves is the author of King Me, Best Barbarian, and Dark Days: Fugitive Essays. Best Barbarian was a winner of the 2023 Griffin Prize, the 2023 Kingsley Tufts Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN / Voelker Poetry Award, and the NAACP Image Award. Roger Reeves is also a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard University, a 2015 Whiting Award, and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, among other honors. His work has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Austin, Texas.
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Dream Apartment | Lisa Olstein
Lisa Olstein is the author of five poetry collections: Radio Crackling, Radio Gone, Lost Alphabet, Little Stranger, Late Empire, and Dream Apartment. Her nonfiction includes Pain Studies, a book length lyric essay, and Climate, an exchange of epistolary essays with the poet with Julie Carr. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Lannan Residency Fellowship, Hayden Carruth Award, Pushcart Prize, and Writers League of Texas Award. Her next book, Distinguished Office of Echoes, is forthcoming in 2025.
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Edith Holler | Edward Carey
Edward Carey is a writer and illustrator whose books include The Iremonger Trilogy; Observatory Mansions; Little; the Swallowed Man and Edith Holler. His artwork has been exhibited in Britain, Ireland, Italy and America; his essays and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Observer, Corriere della Serra and La Repubblica. Named a Guggenheim fellow in 2019, his writing has been translated in over twenty-five languages.
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The Hero of This Book | Elizabeth McCracken
Elizabeth McCracken is the author of four novels, three collections of short stories, and a memoir. Her work has appeared in four editions of The Best American Short Stories and has won three Pushcart Prizes, as well as The Story Prize and the Wingate Prize. She was a 2021 United States Artists Fellow.
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Sleeping Mask: Fictions | Peter LaSalle
Peter LaSalle is the author of nine books, including novels, short story collections, and collections of essays on literary travel, most recently The World Is a Book, Indeed (LSU Press, 2020) and Sleeping Mask: Fictions (Bellevue Literary Press, 2017). He has had work selected for a number of anthologies, such as Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Fantasy, Best American Travel Writing; Best Short Stories, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. He has received an NEA Fellowship, the Flannery O'Connor Award, and the Antioch Review Award for Distinguished Prose.
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We Burn Daylight | Bret Anthony Johnston
Bret Anthony Johnston is the internationally bestselling author of We Burn Daylight, Remember Me Like This and the multi-award-winning collection Corpus Christi: Stories. He is the editor of Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. His work appears in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Best American Short Stories, and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. His honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the world’s “richest and most prestigious prize for a single short story.”
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Where We Come From | Oscar Cásares
Oscar Cásares is the author of the story collection Brownsville, and the novels Amigoland and Where We Come From, which have earned him fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Copernicus Society of America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Guggenheim Foundation. His personal essays have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, Texas Monthly, and on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” He directs the New Writers Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Alumni Books
What Good is Heaven | Raye Hendrix
Set in a rural agricultural community in north Alabama, deep in the Appalachian foothills, What Good is Heaven interrogates the complicated relationship between violence and love.
Raye Hendrix is the author of the chapbooks Fire Sermons (Ghost City Press, 2021) and Every Journal is a Plague Journal (Bottlecap Press, 2021). Her poems appear in American Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, 32 Poems, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. The winner of the 2019 Keene Prize for Literature and the 2018 Patricia Aakhus Award (Southern Indiana Review), they have also received fellowships from Bread Loaf, the Oregon Humanities Center, and the Juniper Writing Institute. Raye holds a BA and MA from Auburn University, an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon.
2024 | Poetry | TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series
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Plastic | Scott Guild
For fans of Interior Chinatown and American War, a surreal, hilarious, and sneakily profound debut novel that casts our current climate of gun violence and environmental destruction in a surprising new mold.
Scott Guild is a writer and musician based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Plastic, his debut novel and album, was released in 2024 from Pantheon Books and North Street Records, followed by a 30-city book-and-music tour. He received his M.F.A. from the New Writers Project at the University of Texas at Austin, his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and is now an Assistant Professor at Marian University in Indianapolis. Scott also served for years as the Assistant Director of Pen City Writers, a creative writing program for students imprisoned in Texas, founded by UT’s Deb Olin Unferth. His writing has appeared in TIME Magazine, NPR, Literary Hub, Electric Lit, and many others. As a musician, Scott was the songwriter and lead guitarist in the Boston art-pop band New Collisions, which toured with The B-52s and opened for Blondie.
2024 | Fiction | Pantheon Books
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The Bandit Queens | Parini Shroff
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK
A young Indian woman finds the false rumors that she killed her husband surprisingly useful—until other women in the village start asking for her help getting rid of their own husbands—in this razor-sharp debut.
Parini Shroff received her B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and her J.D. for Loyola Law School. She also studied at the University of Texas at Austin, where she received her MFA in Creative Writing from the New Writers Project. She is a practicing attorney and currently lives in the Bay Area. The Bandit Queens is her debut novel and is a national bestseller that was longlisted for the Women's Prize in Fiction, as well as an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
2024 | Fiction | Ballantine Books
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The Last Karankawas | Kimberly Garza
"Debut author Garza skillfully links brilliantly crafted episodes to create an unforgettable community in Galveston, TX...Indeed, staying well-tuned to Garza’s work earns enduring rewards." — Booklist (starred review)
Kimberly Garza is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Last Karankawas, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and an Indie Next pick. Her stories and essays have appeared in Electric Literature, Texas Highways, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere, and she is a 2024 National Endowment of the Arts creative writing fellow. She earned a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D from the University of North Texas. A native Texan—born in Galveston, raised in Uvalde—she teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she directs the Creative Writing Program.
2022 | Fiction | Macmillan
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Barefoot Dogs | Antonio Ruiz-Camacho
Winner of the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters | A San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book of 2015 | Fiction Finalist for the 2015 Writers’ League of Texas Book Awards | A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2015 | One of the Texas Observer’s “Five Books We Loved in 2015” | One of PRI’s “The World’s Five Books You Should Read in 2016”
“Profound and wrenching…A deeply moving chronicle of one family’s collective devastation, full of remarkable wisdom and humor” (The New York Times Book Review) that follows the members of a wealthy Mexican family after their patriarch is kidnapped.
Antonio Ruiz-Camacho is a National Magazine Award finalist. His debut story collection Barefoot Dogs won the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction, and was named a Best Book by Kirkus Reviews, San Francisco Chronicle, Texas Observer and PRI's The World. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Texas Monthly, Texas Highways, The Millions, and elsewhere. A former Knight Journalism fellow at Stanford University and a Dobie Paisano fellow in fiction by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters, he earned his MFA from The New Writers Project at UT Austin.
2016 | Fiction | Scribner
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Antonio Ruiz-Camacho
Antonio Ruiz-Camacho is a National Magazine Award finalist. His debut story collection Barefoot Dogs won the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction, and was named a Best Book by Kirkus Reviews, San Francisco Chronicle, Texas Observer and PRI's The World. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Texas Monthly, Texas Highways, The Millions, and elsewhere. A former Knight Journalism fellow at Stanford University and a Dobie Paisano fellow in fiction by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters, he earned his MFA from The New Writers Project at UT Austin.
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Parini Shroff
Parini Shroff received her B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and her J.D. for Loyola Law School. She also studied at the University of Texas at Austin, where she received her MFA in Creative Writing from the New Writers Project. She is a practicing attorney and currently lives in the Bay Area. The Bandit Queens is her debut novel and is a national bestseller that was longlisted for the Women's Prize in Fiction, as well as an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
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Kimberly Garza
Kimberly Garza is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Last Karankawas, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and an Indie Next pick. Her stories and essays have appeared in Electric Literature, Texas Highways, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere, and she is a 2024 National Endowment of the Arts creative writing fellow. She earned a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D from the University of North Texas. A native Texan—born in Galveston, raised in Uvalde—she teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she directs the Creative Writing Program.
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Antonio Ruiz-Camacho
Antonio Ruiz-Camacho is a National Magazine Award finalist. His debut story collection Barefoot Dogs won the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction, and was named a Best Book by Kirkus Reviews, San Francisco Chronicle, Texas Observer and PRI's The World. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Texas Monthly, Texas Highways, The Millions, and elsewhere. A former Knight Journalism fellow at Stanford University and a Dobie Paisano fellow in fiction by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters, he earned his MFA from The New Writers Project at UT Austin.
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