Every day on Art&Seek, we’re talking to people who have tips for virtual art experiences.  Share yours with us on Facebook, Instagram or @artandseek on Twitter. Click above to listen to Blake Kimzey with Writing Workshops Dallas, share his tip with KERA’s Nilufer Arsala. 

Blake Kimzey, Executive Director, Writing Workshops Dallas

Writing Workshops Dallas invites you to unglue yourself from the TV and unplug from the outside world, and join them for virtual a book club, a really big book club.  The Big Texas Read is a collaboration between Writing Workshops Dallas and Gemini Ink in San Antonio and is a statewide virtual book club created to get us through the pandemic.

Blake Kimzey is the executive director of Writing Workshops Dallas. He says club members read a book and meet every other Wednesday with the author on Zoom.

Another component of the book club is the partnerships with local bookstores.  This is very important, says Kimzey because stores like Interabang Books in Dallas and Twig Bookshop in San Antonio are selling books for the book club. And so it’s a way to support independent bookstores, as well as the authors, nonprofit writing workshops and of course, avid readers.

The club spotlights a diverse selection of authors from across the state. Right now, the club is reading “Tell Me How This Ends Well” by San Antonio-based novelist David Samuel Levinson.  Kimzey says it’s a dystopian novel about one funny and troubled family and a compelling exploration of the state of America. After Levinson’s book, the club moves on to Dallas-based and New York Times best-selling novelist Kathleen Kent.

Upcoming authors and titles include:

June 24 and July 8:  New York Times bestselling novelist Kathleen Kent, ” The Dime” and “The Burn”
July 22 and Aug. 5: Texas Poet Laureate Emmy Perez, “With The River on Our Face”
Aug. 19 and Sept. 2: Winner of the Iowa Prize for Nonfiction Kendra Allen, “When You Learn the Alphabet”
Sept. 16 and 30: Edgar-winning novelist Joe R. Lansdale, “Edge of Dark Water”
Oct. 14  and 28: Debut Novelist Fowzia Karimi, “Above Us the Milky Way”

Got a tip? Email Gila Espinoza at gespinoza@kera.org. You can follow her on Twitter @espinoza_kera.

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