Wealthy Levy, government director of Inprint, addressing the group at one of many group’s well-loved $5 Margarett Root Brown Studying Collection occasions.
Houstonia’s The Should Listing tells you about one thing occurring in Houston that you simply completely can’t miss.
Houston is a literary metropolis that doesn’t get correct nationwide recognition. It has served as residence base for iconic authors like Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Larry McMurtry, Gwendolyn Zepeda, Mat Johnson, Edward Albee, and Katherine Heart, and welcomes rising writers to College of Houston’s celebrated inventive writing program. There’s additionally a wholesome appreciation for the native impartial bookstore scene, with Brazos Bookstore serving the studying public since 1974. Newcomers like Kindred Tales and Class faucet right into a heightened want for BIPOC authorship. Basket Books and Artwork pulls double obligation as each a store and a gallery, and the romance-focused Mossrose helps guests really feel the love.
Inprint, a inventive writing nonprofit that welcomes 15,000 bibliophiles to its workshops, courses, and occasions annually, serves as one of many linchpins of the Houston literary scene. The Margarett Root Brown Studying Collection is amongst its flagship choices, a long-running occasion that has introduced Pulitzer winners, Booker Prize authors, and MacArthur fellows to city—all for simply $5 a ticket.
Since 1980, when UH initially launched the talks because the “Houston Studying Collection,” audiences have gotten precisely what’s promised within the title: adorned authors from varied geographies and genres coming to Houston for a studying from their newest e-book, adopted by a Q&A, normally moderated by a UH inventive writing professor. Relying on the occasion, the writers might keep afterward for a signing and photograph alternatives, with books supplied by Brazos or Kindred Tales. Inprint took over the initiative within the Nineties, altering the title to Margarett Root Brown Studying Collection after receiving a grant from the Brown Basis. It wrapped its forty fourth season this previous April.
“We actually had this imaginative and prescient of constructing it a citywide sequence… In some unspecified time in the future, we started promoting season tickets,” says Krupa Parikh, deputy director at Inprint. “As soon as we took over, the Houston Chronicle and all the foremost publications began working articles in regards to the sequence, and folks actually began coming to the occasions and seeing it as a part of the foremost performing arts season.”
Over its four-decade historical past, the sequence has hosted a staggering roster of literary heavyweights. Pulitzer winners like Jhumpa Lahiri, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tony Kushner, W. S. Merwin, and Richard Powers have graced its stage, together with MacArthur fellows resembling Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jericho Brown (additionally a UH alumnus). Family names like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Karen Russell, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, and Khaled Hosseini have additionally packed the home.
“We at all times attempt to have a roster of writers that displays the nice range of Houston… In that means, we have been in a position to function writers from all around the world. We attempt to have a mixture of kinds and genres,” says Inprint government director Wealthy Levy. “Josie [Mitchell, Inprint’s communications manager] and I went to New York to go to with 10 totally different publishers this spring, simply to listen to what their new books are and share with them what’s been occurring within the sequence.”
And with so many writers heading to Houston to share a love of literature over time, the Inprint staff naturally has loads of tales to inform. Relatively than a conventional solo studying, Powers invited his fellow novelist, former neighbor, and pricey good friend Tayari Jones (2019 Girls’s Prize for Fiction winner for An American Marriage) to affix him on stage for a shared expertise that left the viewers charmed by their connection. George Saunders requested the service of native actors to carry out his works in lieu of a conventional studying, so Inprint enlisted just a few Alley Theatre actors to remodel his prose into theater. Adichie and Colum McCann appeared collectively through the winter holidays, studying from and discussing their books Americanah and TransAtlantic, respectively, with Divakaruni internet hosting. They concluded the night by singing “Molly Malone” collectively, on the identical stage that had hosted productions of A Christmas Carol earlier that season.
Not each go to essentially concluded on a lighthearted word. Following the publication of his novel Fury, Rushdie appeared in Houston after a 12-year hiatus from e-book touring, due to the demise sentence (typically interchangeably known as a “fatwa,” although the Arabic time period merely means a ruling by an Islamic choose) issued by then-Supreme Ruler of Iran Ruhollah Khomeini over his novel The Satanic Verses. It was a serious second within the globally well-liked creator’s historical past; Inprint ended up coping with what was, for them, an unprecedented crowd on the time. Levy says workers needed to flip away a whole bunch of individuals on the door as a result of so many Houstonians had been excited to hearken to the creator speak. Round 100 protesters additionally turned out with “Demise to Rushdie” indicators, necessitating further safety.
When the sequence first launched, the collaborating authors learn to audiences at Museum of High quality Arts, Houston’s Brown Auditorium. However following one among Atwood’s many appearances within the metropolis, the road to get in stretched all the way in which onto Bissonnet (and this was earlier than The Handmaid’s Story grew to become successful TV sequence). Levy chuckles over how then-MFAH director Peter Marzio “wasn’t so joyful about it.” The readings in the end settled on the Wortham Heart in downtown Houston, although sometimes writers will communicate at different places like Texas Southern College.
The $5 ticket value makes the Margarett Root Brown Studying Collection well-liked amongst Houston’s e-book lovers.
It isn’t simply the names that make the Margarett Root Brown Studying Collection entice wherever from 200 to 2,200 bibliophiles per occasion; it’s the affordability, too. Tickets stay free for college students and seniors. Everybody else pays solely $5. Costs haven’t modified for the reason that Houston Studying Collection days, because of beneficiant grants and donations, and Inprint’s workers has at all times insisted on conserving it that means. A decrease barrier to entry means extra Houstonians get uncovered to important views, politics, and experiences that form the world.
“We wish all people to come back out,” Parikh says. “We wish it to really feel like an area for connection and an area the place folks can actually have fun tales and be collectively.”
Inprint has but to disclose the lineup for its forty fifth season, which is able to run from fall 2025 till spring 2026, however they’ve just a few teasers for native lit followers. Adichie returns to kick off the sequence with a studying from her fourth novel, Dream Rely, regarding 4 Nigerian girls grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic. Mexican author Álvaro Enrigue is scheduled to go to in March 2026, with Lifetime of Pi phenom Yann Martel following in April. However one of the vital anticipated invitees doesn’t should journey very far to grace the stage.
Rice College school member Bryan Washington, the George Guion Williams Author in Residence and Scholar in Residence for Racial Justice, will make his Margarett Root Brown Studying Collection debut. A Katy native, Washington’s most up-to-date novel, Memorial, revolves round a “triangulation of house and identification” that’s “an indicator of Houston,” Mitchell says.
“We’re speaking about having Houston be this literary vacation spot, and the way a lot of a literary artwork scene is right here,” Mitchell says. “Bryan Washington is a extremely nice instance of that, as a result of he champions the town.”
Know Earlier than You Go
The Margarett Root Brown Studying Collection returns for its 2025–2026 season this fall. Tickets are at all times free for college students and seniors, with a $5 fundamental admission for everybody else. Guide add-ons and season tickets value further. For extra info, together with bulletins relating to the upcoming season, go to the web site.
