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.
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Watch more videos from the Dobie Dichos event by clicking here. |
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Storytellers
Donna Ingham |
Donna Ingham, an award winning author and performer of the spoken word from Spicewood, Texas, now has 28 of her favorite Texas tales collected in a book, Tales with a Texas Twist (2005). Her two newest books about Texas are 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said about Texas (2006) and You Know You’re in Texas When (2007). A retired English professor turned author and storyteller, Donna has spent over 30 years as a writer and teacher of writing and over 12 years performing as a professional storyteller. Featured on the Exchange Place stage at the National Storytelling Festival in 2003, she has also performed at every major storytelling and folk festival in her home state and in several other states and in Europe. She is the 2007 recipient of the John Henry Faulk Award for “outstanding contributions to the art of storytelling.” In her work, she takes the ancient art of storytelling and gives it a Texas twist with a unique repertoire of tales drawn from folklore and history, particularly that from her own Texas roots; from personal narratives she’s created about growing up an only child (and so did her sister); and from myths, legends, and fairy tales she has Texanized and made truly her own. She also was the very first winner of the Texas State Liars’ Contest © at Storyfest. |
Larry Thompson |
Larry Thompson has been in front of audiences for 25 years. Whether in storytelling performances for adults and children, providing emcee services for indoor and outdoor events, or providing technical and soft skill training, Larry is at home helping the audience laugh, learn, and let loose. He has told stories on mountain tops and in valleys from New Mexico to South Carolina and many large and small places in between. Larry tells cowboy tales, folk tales, and home-grown tales and guarantees to make the audience smile. He has recorded two compact discs with old and new favorite stories and has published a book of his own campfire stories. His newest book, Wild West—Plastic Cowboys and Indians Have Feelings Too, is a collection of western stories. He is past president of the San Antonio Storytelling Association. |
Mary Grace Ketner |
Whether surrounded by folks on haybales at George West, kids on carpet samples in the library, college students at a keynote, or families in the cushioned seats of San Antonio’s Majestic Theatre, Mary Grace Ketner brings listeners an elegant gift of story. Stirred by passion and a deep love of tale-tellling, long silent traditional oral narrative stirs back to life in her gentle hands. Experience whimsy, wit, insight, “ROFL” or universal human values with a Texas drawl, all spun into a fantasy before your very ears. As one listener commented, “I believe that we opened ourselves up to create a magic space. What happened in that magic space? Can’t say exactly, but I know the climate was ripe for transformation.” |
Mary Ann Blue |
A Spanish teacher and professional storyteller from San Antonio, Texas. As a professional storyteller, she has worked in a variety of settings since 1988. In addition to being a past featured teller at Storyfest numerous times, she has also has been a featured teller at a number of other festivals, including the Tejas Storytelling Festival in Denton, Texas. Her story "Tio Conejo and the Hurricane" has been published in several short story collections. She has also appeared as a guest storyteller on the PBS television show Barney and Friends. Mary Ann has worked in education for thirty years, teaching children from pre-school to high school. Presently, she teaches Spanish at the Lower School at St. Mary's Hall in San Antonio. |
Readers
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Robert Flynn, professor emeritus, Trinity University, and a native of Chillicothe, Texas, is the author of thirteen books, a collection of essays, and two story collections. His dramatic adaptation of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying was the United States entry at the Theater of Nations in Paris in l964 and won a Special Jury Award. He is also the author of a two-part documentary, "A Cowboy Legacy" shown on ABC-TV; a nonfiction narrative, A Personal War in Vietnam, an oral history. |
Flynn also contributes to The Door: "The World’s Pretty Much Only Magazine of Religious Satire." North to Yesterday received awards from the Texas Institute of Letters and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times. Seasonal Rain, was co-winner of the Texas Literary Festival Award. Wanderer Springs received a Spur Award from Western Writers of America. Living With the Hyenas received a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. Flynn’s work has been translated into German, Spanish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Malayalam, Arabic, Tamil, Hindi, Kanada, and Vietnamese. Flynn is a member of The Texas Institute of Letters, The Writers Guild of America, Marine Corps Combat Correspondents, and P.E.N. In 1998, he received the "Distinguished Achievement Award" from the Texas Institute of Letters. In 2010, Echoes of Glory won the Western Writers of America 2010 Spur Award in the Western Long Novel category. His life and work could be described as 'The Search for Morals, Ethics, Religion, or at least a good story in Texas and lesser known parts of the world'. |
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Jan Reid has been a senior writer at Texas Monthly for three decades and has contributed to Esquire, GQ, Slate, Men's Journal, Men's Health, and the New York Times. An early article about Texas music spawned his first book, The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, which he updated for its thirtieth anniversary in 2004. Among his ten books are a well-reviewed novel, Deerinwater, that won a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship; a collection of his magazine pieces, Close Calls, that was a finalist for a Texas Institute of Letters book of the year award; Rio Grande, a compilation of choice writing and photography on the storied border stream; and The Bullet Meant for Me, a reflection on marriage, friendship, boxing, and physical and emotional recovery from a deadly shooting in Mexico. |
With Lou Dubose, in The Hammer Comes Down, Reid documented the political rise and fall of Congressman Tom DeLay. With W.K. Stratton, he edited Splendor in the Short Grass, the collected work of the pioneering magazine writer Grover Lewis. Reid's latest book, in 2006, recounts the drama and recording of the album Layla and Other Assorted Long Songs, by Eric Clapton and the star-crossed band Derek and the Dominos. He is writing Texas Tornado, a biography of the multi-faceted singer Doug Sahm. Nearing completion is a historical novel driven by imagined lives of the Comanche chief Quanah Parker, the black cowboy Bose Ikard, Billy the Kid, and women they loved. Segments of the book previously appeared in Texas Short Stories. Reid's work has also been anthologized in Best American Sportswriting, Texas Monthly on Texas Women, and The Slate Diaries. He lives in Austin with his wife, Dorothy Browne. |
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Don Graham is the J. Frank Dobie Regents Professor of American and English Literature at The University of Texas at Austin. He has taught J. Frank Dobie’s famous course “Life and Literature of the Southwest” for more than 30 years. He is the author or editor of numerous books and articles, including Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire (2003), which won the Carr P. Collins Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters as best nonfiction book of the year, Lone Star Literature: A Texas Anthology (2006), and Literary Austin (2007). Graham has written two collections of essays and book reviews about Texas literature—including Giant Country and his newest volume, State of Minds: Texas Culture & Its Discontents. He is a past president of the Texas Institute of Letters and a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly. |
John Phillip Santos |
John Phillip Santos is a freelance filmmaker, producer, journalist, author and in 1979 became the first Mexican-American Rhodes Scholar. In 1997, Santos joined the Ford Foundation as an officer in the Media, Arts and Culture Program. He lived in New York City for twenty years, returning to San Antonio in May 2005, where he was born and raised. His articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, San Antonio Express-News, and the New York Times. As an executive producer, he has over forty broadcast documentaries on culture, religion, politics, and spirituality for CBS News and PBS, some of which have been nominated for Emmys. As a director, he has been involved in program development for Thirteen/WNET in New York City. Santos was an Emmy nominee in 1988 for From the AIDS Experience: Part I, Our Spirits to Heal/ Part II, Our Humanity to Heal, and in 1985 for Exiles Who Never Leave Home. He has an MA English Literature and Language from St. Catherine's College at Oxford University and a BA in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Notre Dame. |
Between August 7 and August 18, 2006, Texas Public Radio (KSTX 89.1 FM) broadcast Santos reading from his family memoir Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation. He has been awarded the Academy of American Poets' Prize at Notre Dame, the Oxford Prize for fiction, and the Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. His family memoir, Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation was a finalist for the National Book Award. He was also a past member of the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. |
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Elizabeth Crook |
Elizabeth Crook was born in Houston in 1959. She lived in Nacogdoches and then San Marcos, Texas with her parents and brother and sister until 1966 when the family moved to Washington D.C., where her father was director of VISTA for Lyndon Johnson. Two years later her father was appointed Ambassador to Australia and the family moved to Canberra. When they returned to Texas Elizabeth attended public schools in San Marcos, graduating from San Marcos High School in 1977. She attended Baylor University for two years and graduated from Rice University in 1982. She has written three novels: The Raven's Bride and Promised Lands were published by Doubleday and then reissued by SMU Press as part of the Southwest Life and Letters series. The Night Journal was published by Viking/Penguin in 2006 and reissued in paperback by Penguin. Elizabeth has written for periodicals such as Texas Monthly and the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and has served on the council of the Texas Institute of Letters. She is a member of Western Writers of America and The Texas Philosophical Society, and was selected the honored writer for 2006 Texas Writers' Month, joining previous honorees O. Henry, J. Frank Dobie, John Graves, Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy, Katherine Anne Porter, Elmer Kelton, Liz Carpenter, Sarah Bird, James Michener, and Horton Foote. Her first novel, The Raven's Bride, was the 2006 Texas Reads: One Book One Texas selection. The Night Journal was awarded the 2007 Spur award for Best Long Novel of the West and the 2007 Willa Literary Award for Historical Fiction. Elizabeth currently lives in Austin with her husband and two children. |
William Jack 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
Gil Prathner |
Pure Original’ describes Gil Prather. Known by his musician peers as ‘The Man from the Rio Grande’, Gil offers a unique style of self-penned Cowboy/Western music with a Tex-Mex border flavor. His music reflects his younger years of growing up on the Mexican border as a working cowboy in the Big Bend Country of West Texas. Early in his career, Gil’s versatility was recognized by major producers. He has written and produced several award-winning radio and TV commercials and, in 1996, he wrote the award winning song, I’ll Be Back in Texas by the Fall, which was voted Song of the Year by the prestigious Academy of Western Artists. From 1990 -1997, Gil was ‘the other brother’ in the nationally acclaimed ‘Jose Brothers’ comedy act which toured the southern United States and in the mid 1990’s, he teamed with Robert James Waller (The Bridges of Madison County) to co-write several selections from Waller’s Border Music album. Gil’s writing talent and unique style has made him well-known from Mexico to Canada, with performances throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico. Experience true Americana music from a unique grass roots artist who has written first-hand, a lifetime worth of songs reflecting the cowboy way of life. Look for Gil Prather on the Storyfest schedule where he will play his Cowboy/Western music, as well as traditional Gospel music. |
