We’re happy to announce the Statesman Selects pick for March is the beautiful new novel by author Michael Parker, All I Have in This World, a story that sets two strangers up over the hood of a used car in Texas and sets them on the course of a different kind of love story. Pick up the Statesman this Sunday to read their review of the book. We’re proud to partner with the Austin American-Statesman and Austin Bat Cave to bring Michael Parker to BookPeople on Tuesday, March 18 at 7pm. He’ll appear in conversation with Austin author Dominic Smith.
Michael Parker’s work has earned him a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Dominic Smith’s work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly. His short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
The fine folks at Algonquin Books who published All I Have in This World posted a little chat with Parker over on their books blog. Here’s an excerpt:
All I Have in This World is quite different from your previous books. The prose is still breathtaking, but this is your first novel set mainly in Texas. Why the change in geography?
I set it first in North Carolina, but it felt obvious to me, and stale. I was writing the novel while in West Texas. I have been living part-time in Central Texas for some time, and when I switched the setting to West Texas—a landscape that is always shifting and revealing itself anew, even though, to the innocent eye, it may look the same: rocks, dust, cacti—the novel took off. I suppose my adopting this landscape was a huge risk, and since the novel is about risk, it seemed fitting, if not inevitable.
We hope you can join us on Tuesday to welcome Michael Parker & Dominic Smith!
