The seventeen newly elected members of the Texas Institute of Letters (TIL) are: three-time-Oscar-nominated screenwriter-director Wes Anderson (Houston); playwright and Broadway actor Eugene Lee (San Marcos); poets Rosa Alcalá (El Paso), Robin Davidson (Houston), and Carrie Fountain (Austin); fiction writers Tim Z. Hernandez (El Paso), Wendell Mayo (Corpus Christi/Ohio), and Ito Romo (Laredo/San Antonio); scholars Patrick Cox (Wimberley), Betty Sue Flowers (Austin/New York), and Ellen Clarke Temple (Lufkin); nonfiction writers Wes Ferguson (Austin) and John MacCormack (San Antonio); songwriter and children’s book author Tish Hinojosa (San Antonio/Austin); documentary and feature filmmaker Jesús Salvador Treviño (El Paso/Los Angeles); children’s book author Xavier Garza (Rio Grande City/San Antonio); and theater critic/playwright Robert Faires (Austin).
“We are very proud of the great diversity of exceptional talents in this year’s honorees,” said TIL President Carmen Tafolla. “These seventeen exemplars of literary innovation span the creative gamut from stage plays to song lyrics and from history to poetry, fiction, journalism, children’s works, and filmmaking. The Institute has again picked the very finest representatives of what it means to be outstanding, productive, and dynamically engaged in the advancement of the letters.”
The TIL has chosen Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the prestigious Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement, the highest honor given by the TIL. The award will be presented to Nye at the TIL’s annual meeting and banquet.
The next annual meeting and awards banquet will be held at Casa De Palmas in McAllen, Texas on April 26-27, 2019. The banquet is open to the public; tickets may be purchased at the TIL website.
For more info, see http://www.texasinstituteofletters.org