More Texas Authors to Get to Know

Jann Alexander
May 11
4 min read

Updated: May 20

In the Lone Star State, we celebrate Texas Writers Month in May. We start with the women who speak and write Texan.

For the second part of this series in Pairings, where I feature Texas authors throughout May during Texas Writers Month, we turn to the women. I've long loved reading Texas authors who write about Texas, and love watching films set in Texas, and having a woman's point of view is in itself a whole new genre. As a woman author, I'm honored to join them with the July 3 release of my historical book, Unspoken: A Dust Novel, set in the Texas Panhandle in the 1930s-1950s.

Today: Get to know nine Texas women authors whose books are set in the Longhorn State (thought nary a one of the books mentioned features a longhorn).

Discover Texas women authors who write what they know: Texans themselves, at home in their own state.

From the All Texas, All The Time booklist at Bookshop•org:

Dorothy Scarborough (Anonymous)

When native Texan Dorothy Scarborough's The Wind was published anonymously in 1925, it was because she feared her story, which depicted the harsh realities of West Texas, might be seen as unflattering by powerful individuals Texas. She expected the book to be removed from libraries and other institutions. A century later, her concerns are still founded.

Katherine Anne Porter

The classic 1939 collection of 3 novellas by Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning author and journalist Katherine Anne Porter included her famous title story, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, set during the influenza epidemic of 1918 that threatens a Texas teen's journey of self-discovery. Porter was born, and buried, in Indian Creek, Texas.

Edna Ferber

Though Edna Ferber is not from the Lone Star State, she wrote a story as large as Texas in 1952 that became a classic film, and forever stamped the aura of Texas on the general public. The 1956 film based on her novel, Giant, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean, and made Texas larger than life (though the novel was dubbed "sharply critical of Texan society.)" Ferber spent time in San Antonio to research her book.

Mary Karr

Mary Karr's 1995 moving memoir, The Liars Club, explores her deeply troubled childhood in the 1960s, spent in a gritty industrial section of Southeast Texas, like her own hometown of Groves. Her memoir detailed a family and town where heavy alcohol abuse and psychological problems were common. The book was an instant New York Times bestseller, and won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award; it was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Elizabeth Crook

Born in Houston and a graduate of Rice University, historical novelist Elizabeth Crook has been honored with every Texas literary award there is for her five books. Monday, Monday, her powerful 2014 account of the 1966 University of Texas tower shootings, follows three students moment by moment who are caught up in the massacre, and their lives in the aftermath. Crook's novel was awarded the 2015 Jesse H. Jones Award for fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters.

Stormy Weather tackles Texas in the oilfields and dust storms when the best bet was on a wildcat oil well or the fastest horse on a bush-track race.

Paulette Jiles

The News of the World may be Paulette Jiles' most familiar tale, but it's her 2007 historical novel, Stormy Weather, that tackles Texas in the oilfields and dust storms when the best bet was on a wildcat oil well or the fastest horse on a bush-track race. In her story of hardship and sacrifice by resilient women, she portrays Texans who persevered. Since 2003, Jiles has lived on a 36-acre ranch near Utopia, Texas.

Sarah Bird

Sarah Bird has made Texas her home since she received her MA in journalism from the University of Texas, and is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, essayist, and journalist. She's Austin's most familiar and beloved resident writer, with 11 novels to her name and the nonfiction A Love Letter to Texas Women (2016), called an inimitable "tribute to the Texas woman in all her glory and all her contradictions."

Sandra Brown

Born in Waco and raised in Fort Worth, Sandra Brown has published 70 romantic, historical and suspense/thriller novels since 1981, 50 of them on the New York Times bestselling list. Her historical novel, Rainwater, takes place in Gilead, Texas in 1934 and "was inspired by a true family story."

Attica Locke

Sharp writing characterizes Attica Locke's Highway 59 crime thriller series, which begins with Bluebird, Bluebird and is set in an East Texas that "plays by its own rules." Her 2009 debut novel, Black Water Rising, was widely acclaimeded and received an Edgar Award and an NAACP Image Award. A Houston native, Locke is also a screenwriter, showrunner, and producer and was a fellow at the Sundance Institute's Feature Filmmakers Lab.