Campfires, Chili con Carne, and the Words of J. Frank Dobie
"Any tale belongs to whoever can best tell it!" J.F.D.
A night of campfire cooking, booksigning and Texas authors' reading from the works of the master South Texas storyteller (Live Oak County born and raised).
Proceeds to this event went to benefit the restoration of the Dobie-West Performing Arts Theatre in George West, Tx.
To learn more about the Historic Oakville Jail, visit their website at www.oakvillejail.com.
Click here to read the 2012 Dobie Dichos Press Release.
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Storytellers
Readers
Brandon D. Shuler |
Brandon D. Shuler is a seventh generation Texan. He is a Literature, Social Justice, and the Environment Ph.D student at Texas Tech University where he studies Southwestern literatures with an emphasis on Texas literature. Mr. Shuler is a frequent contributor to Outdoor Life, Saltwater Sportsman, and other outdoors-themed magazines. Mr. Shuler has won numerous excellence-in-craft awards from the Texas Outdoor Writers Association for his environmental and outdoors reporting. His fiction and poetry appears in Dark Sky Magazine, Red River Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Interstice, and other fine literary journals. Mr. Shuler won a prestigious Gold Circle Award from Columbia University's School of Journalism for humor in a magazine for his piece, "My Life with Ashley: How Jonathan Swift Saved My Marriage." Mr. Shuler is currently editing NewBorder: Contemporary Voices from the Texas/Mexico Border (TAMUP) and "Whispering Like a Mountain: The Selected Letters of Tom Lea and J. Frank Dobie" (University of Texas Press). He is also an advisory board member and partner liaison for the Texas Manuscript Cultures project. Mr. Shuler is a Thinking Like a Mountain Writer in Residence alumnus and a Bruce Family Foundation Fellow for American Literature. He lives on the Llano Estacado with his wife Ashley; their two children, Parker and Imogen; and various cats, dogs, and fish. If you cannot find Mr. Shuler in the classroom or in his office, he is either in the nearest field shooting birds or searching for fishable waters. And, if he is outdoors, he is definitely photographing it all. |
Steven Davis |
Steven L. Davis is the author of J. Frank Dobie: A Liberated Mind and Texas Literary Outlaws: Six Writers in the Sixties and Beyond. He has been described by the Austin American-Statesman as "one of Texas' leading scholars of our indigenous culture." His new book, co-written with Bill Minutaglio, is DALLAS 1963, a riveting account of how a group of larger-than-life individual turned Dallas into a city that became infamous for the assassination of John F. Kennedy. DALLAS 1963 will be published by Twelve in Fall 2013, on the 50th anniversary of JFK's tragic trip to Texas. Davis is a Curator at the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University-San Marcos, which holds the literary papers of the region's leading writers. He has developed and curated over 30 exhibits at the Wittliff Collections. He has made dozens of talks and presentations to the public. He is editor of Land of the Permanent Wave: An Edwin "Bud" Shrake Reader and co-editor of Lone Star Sleuths: Mystery-Detective Fiction in Texas. He is the author of numerous articles and reviews, appearing in publications such as Texas Monthly, the Texas Observer, the San Antonio Express-News, Southwestern American Literature, Texas Books in Review, and the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. In 2009 Davis was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. He currently serves on the TIL Council. Steve Davis also serves as the Series Editor for the Southwestern Writers Collection Book Series, published by the University of Texas Press. He lives in New Braunfels, Texas, with his wife, Georgia Ruiz Davis, and their children. We should also mention Truman the Dog. |
W. C. Jameson |
W.C. Jameson is the award-winning author of seventy books, 1500 articles and essays, 300 songs, and dozens of poems. He is the best selling treasure author in the United States, and his prominence as a professional fortune hunter has led to stints as a consultant for the Unsolved Mysteries television show and the Travel Channel. He served as an advisor for the film National Treasure starring Nicolas Cage and appears in an interview on the DVD. His book, Treasure Hunter: Caches, Curses, and Deadly Confrontations, was named Best Book of the Year (2011) by Indie Reader. Jameson has written the sound tracks for two PBS documentaries and one feature film. His music has been heard on NPR and he wrote and performed in the musical, "Whatever Happened to the Outlaw, Jesse James?" Jameson has acted in five films and has been interviewed on The History Channel, The Travel Channel, PBS, and Nightline. When not working on a book, he tours the country as a speaker, conducting writing workshops and performing his music at folk festivals, concerts, roadhouses, and on television. He lives in Llano, Texas. |
Bill Sibley |
A versatile writer, William Jack Sibley's work has spanned from writing dialogue for television's The Guiding Light to serving as a contributing editor at Interview Magazine to seeing his work produced Off-Broadway and regionally. His first play Governor's Mansion won the Southwest Regional Playwright's Competition and was produced at Center Stage in Austin, TX. His play Mortally Fine was produced at The Actors Outlet Theater (W. 28th St.), NYC, and at The Group Rep Theater in Burbank, CA,. On September 24, 2004, the world premiere of If You Loved Me was held in San Antonio, Texas, at The Cameo Theater. The play was awarded a "Globe" by the Alamo Theatre Arts Council in September 2005 for "Best Original Script" of the 2004-2005 season, and in the spring of 2008 selected by the Texas Nonprofit Theatre Association as winner of the "New Play Development Playwriting Project." Sibley's new comedy play, Mean, had a June 2011 staged-reading at the New Dramatists in New York. Academy Award/ Tony and Golden Globe winner Ellen Burstyn, Saturday Night Live Rachel Dratch and The School of Rock Chris Stack all performed in it. His novel Any Kind Of Luck was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, a runner-up for the Texas Institute of Letters, "Funniest Book of the Year," John Bloom Award, and the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award. Any Kind of Luck was chapter excerpted in Southern Lights: PEN South, Literary Review, Vol II. |
Mr. Sibley has nine screenplays in various stages of Hollywood production, including the award winning Where all the Rattlesnakes Are Born (Silver Medal, Best Screenplay, WORLDFEST, Houston) and White On Rice (re-titled from Approximate Lives, Finalist, Best Screenplay, Charleston-Spoleto Festival). December Story, Amor, and Dead Giveaway are all presently under option. December Story was one of 12 Finalist for the 2008 KAIROS PRIZE for "Spiritually uplifting screenplays." His screenplays have also been optioned by such esteemed directors as John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy), Arthur Hiller (Love Story) and Pete Masterson (The Trip to Bountiful). He's co-written three screenplays with actress Diane Ladd (Hot Water Biscuits, High Maintenance, and The Last of the Bad Girls) and another (The Big Hurt) for actor Tab Hunter. His writing has appeared in Utne Reader, Hallmark Magazine, Brilliant Magazine, The San Antonio Current, The Orlando Weekly, The Dallas Times Herald, Heritage Magazine (summer 1996), Texas Co-op Power Magazine, The Dead Mule ("A Journal of Southern Literature"), Flying Colors Magazine, Southwest Airlines Magazine, Ford Times, The Texas State Reading Association ("Cookin' and Bookin'") and The New York Native. A graduate of the University of Texas, Austin, BS in Communications (Radio, Television, Film), Sibley is a former member and board member of The New Dramatists and is a member of the Writers Guild of America/West, the Dramatist Guild, The Writer's League of Texas, Gemini Ink and PEN International. He has been the playwright-in-residence at Humboldt University (Arcata, CA), as well as a guest playwright at the Tennessee Williams Festival in Key West and The Texas Playwright's Festival, Stages Theater, Houston. A fellow at the Blue Mountain Writer's Colony in Blue Mountain, New York, Sibley has also had residencies at the Saskatchewan Writers/Artist Colony (St. Peters) and The Colony at Dairy Hollow, Eureka Springs, AR. In the Spring of 2003 he was a visiting guest lecturer at the Pen Ethnic Conference, Bay Shore, Long Island, NY. In July of 2003, he was guest speaker at the Tenth Annual Agents Conference, sponsored by the Writer's League of Texas, Austin, TX. In August of 2003 Mr. Sibley was selected to attend The Julia and David White Artist Colony in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica. In June of 2004 Mr. Sibley led a 3-day seminar for The Writer's League of Texas on creating and sustaining believable dialogue. |
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Performers
Dana Hubbard |
Winner of both the Telluride Blues & Brews Festival's Acoustic Blues Competition and the Indie International Songwriting Contest for Folk/Acoustic in '09, as well as the 2010 Ashland Blues Society's Road to the IBC, Dana Hubbard will be performing traditional country western songs at the 24th Annual George West Storyfest. The list of folks he's opened for and shared the bill with span the spectrum from western to blues, folk to bluegrass: Jesse Winchester, Sam Bush, Joe Ely, David Wilcox, Greg Allman, Etta James, Little Feat, Robert Cray, Albert King, Charlie Musselwhite, John Hammond, Chris Isaak, David Lindley... Dana was born and raised on the Central Coast of California, attended UC Santa Cruz only long enough to finish an elective course on country blues, then hit the road and never looked back. |
