
How InPrint Houston Gets it Right
In the literary world, event organizers and programming coordinators have a really tough job. They have to put together a schedule that will both appeal to their audience and, ideally, make a positive contribution to the reading lives of those audience members. This can prove challenging. Many of the major literary events – conferences, festivals, reading series – held across the country have line-ups that are made up, predominately, of white male authors.
This is an easy trap to fall into. Publishers put their money and their publicity departments behind white male authors. They offer these authors up readily, they encourage event planners to include them in their rotations. And when big names (regardless of why they are big names) are made available, it’s easy to accept. Their intentions may be good – probably are – but they are falling short. They need to try harder, and, more and more often, they are admitting that.
InPrint Houston is the city’s major literary organization. They offer writing workshops, a children’s reading series, a book club, poetry buskers at community events, and, most notably, the InPrint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series. It’s an impressive series. They are always held in one of the city’s larger auditoriums. They are almost always sold out. And the audience is always enthralled. Over the years, I’ve been able to see Margaret Atwood, Khaled Hosseini, and Junot Diaz. I’m sorry to say that I’ve gotten out of the habit of attending every event. That’s something I intend to change with this season’s line-up.
It’s always a stellar line-up, but I have to admit that this season stands out to me in a way that it hasn’t before. Not because they did anything differently this year than they have in the last 5 or 6 or even before that. It’s because this year, I’ve seen event after event commit scheduling faux pas, and I hoped that my beloved Inprint reading series would do better. They did.
You probably want to know who’s coming, right? Here’s the line-up:
- September 21 – Jonathan Franzen
- October 12 – Sandra Cisneros
- November 9 – Salman Rushdie