The October 24th Poetry & Prose event presents readings in association with the Shrimp Boat Project, a creative research project that explores the regional culture of the Houston area and is sponsored by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston.

The reading will feature local authors and students from this semester’s Creative Writing Program’s Shrimp Boat Workshop. These writers will present works of non-fiction, poetry, and fiction that delve deeply into the issues surrounding Galveston Bay. Additionally, the reading will feature a small exhibit connected to the Shrimp Boat project, containing books and postcards from the UH Libraries’ Special Collections and photographs by MFA student Stacey Farrell.

The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts will host a reception following the reading.

Find brief reader and artist biographies on the Poetry and Prose website.

The reading is free and open to the public. We look forward to seeing you there!

Mark your calendars for the 2011-2012 season of Poetry & Prose Readings!

The University of Houston Libraries and the Creative Writing Program present the Poetry & Prose reading series, featuring UH faculty, students, alumni and other well-known writers.

Each segment of the reading series takes place at 5:30pm in the Honors College Commons, on Level 2 of the M.D. Anderson Library. The lineup is as follows:

• Wednesday, September 21 featuring new Creative Writing Program graduate students.
• Monday, October 24 featuring the Shrimp Boat Project.
• Wednesday, November 16 featuring UH Creative Writing faculty Chitra Divakaruni, UH alum Charles Alcorn, and poet Garrett Hongo from the U of Oregon.
• Wednesday, February 15 featuring UH Creative Writing faculty Antonya Nelson and Robert Boswell.
• Wednesday, April 18 featuring undergraduate Creative Writing students with work appearing in the forthcoming issue of Glass Mountain.

All readings are free and open to the public. Lemonade and light refreshments are provided. For more information about Poetry & Prose, see http://info.lib.uh.edu/p/poetryandprose

The UH Summer Book Club will have its first meeting on Wednesday, June 22 at noon in the Women’s Resource Center to discuss the book The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie by Wendy McClure.

We will also meet Friday, August 19 at 12 noon we will meet to discuss Pym: A Novel by UH professor Mat Johnson.

The Summer Book Club is co-sponsored by the UH Libraries and the Women’s Resource Center. All UH staff, students and faculty members are welcome.

If you don’t have the books and don’t wish to purchase them, you can pick up a copy from the M.D. Anderson Library’s Service Desk, while supplies last.

Plaza publishes works by graduate students on literature, composition studies, folklore, cultural studies, language studies, and gender studies.

This is a journal published by University of Houston English Department Graduate Students.

Check out the debut issue! Also, a CFP for their next issue.

In 1901 Minnie Fisher Cunningham became one of the first women to receive a degree in pharmacy in Texas; she worked as a pharmacist in Huntsville for a year, but she later said that inequity in pay “made a suffragette out of me.” In 1902 she married Beverly Jean (Bill) Cunningham, a lawyer and insurance executive. His successful race for county attorney as a reform candidate was her first taste of the campaign trail, but the marriage was unhappy, in part because of her increasing political activity and his alcoholism.

The Cunninghams moved to Galveston in 1907. By 1910 she was elected president of the Galveston Equal Suffrage Association and toured Texas to speak for the cause. In 1915 she was elected to the first of four annual terms as president of the Texas Woman Suffrage Association (subsequently the Texas Equal Suffrage Association). The number of local auxiliaries quadrupled during her first year in office, largely because of her leadership. In 1917 she moved to Austin, opened state suffrage headquarters near the Capitol, and began a campaign that culminated in legislative approval for woman suffrage in state primary elections in 1918.

In 1919 Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, persuaded Minnie Cunningham to lobby Congress for the Nineteenth Amendment. When the amendment finally was passed and submitted to the states for ratification, Cunningham said she “pursued governors all over the west” and urged them to ratify it. That same year, she helped organize the National League of Women voters and became its executive secretary. Twenty years later Eleanor Roosevelt recalled that Cunningham’s address at the league’s second annual convention made her feel “that you had no right to be a slacker as a citizen, you had no right not to take an active part in what was happening to your country as a whole.”

The Shamrock Collection consists of menus from the many restaurants, bars and lounges in the hotel, staff newsletters, and promotional pamphlets. It chronicles the transition of ownership and highlights of the hotel’s golden years.

The Shamrock Hotel was the grandest hotel in the city of Houston from 1949 until its decline and demolition in 1987. Built by Glenn McCarthy (wildcatter and oil tycoon) between 1946 and 1949, it opened with great fanfare. Three thousand dignitaries, celebrities and the socially prominent were present for its grand opening on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1949, attended by no less than Errol Flynn, Ginger Rogers and Robert Preston. The partygoers were brought in on a customized Boeing 307 Stratoliner and by a Santa Fe Super Chief train specially chartered by McCarthy. Approximately 50,000 people gathered outside of the hotel.

While the hotel was immense, expensive and lavish, it was also considered by many to be garish and more than a little over the top.

The hotel became a destination for Houstonians and played host to numerous social events such as debutante balls, receptions, business meetings, presidential visits and visits from other heads of state. The Shamrock hosted cattle auctions and also was a gathering spot for the Houston Rodeo.

The hotel had 1,100 rooms and many restaurants, bars and lounges. Those who swam in the hotel’s huge swimming pool, which measured 165 by 142 feet, remember it fondly. The swimming pool even hosted water skiing exhibitions, complete with motorboats.

The Hilton Hotels Corporation acquired the Shamrock Hotel in 1954. Burdened with a poor location, burgeoning competition and stagnant occupancy rates, its popularity declined. The hotel described in Edna Ferber’s novel Giant as the “Conquistador,” which saw performers such as Dorothy Lamour and Frank Sinatra grace its clubs, never fulfilled McCarthy’s vision of a destination resort, conference and shopping center.

“Let us consecrate THE SHAMROCK to friendship – the motto of the State of Texas….May that motto be alive here as long as THE SHAMROCK is privileged to serve the great city of Houston as its ambassador of good will to the world.” – Glenn McCarthy

The Digital Services department at the M.D. Anderson Library would like to extend a huge thank you to Mark Young at the Hospitality Industry Archives, Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel & Restaurant Management, University of Houston, for his generosity and helpfulness in bringing this collection to the Digital Library.

The final Poetry & Prose reading of the season will feature UH undergraduate creative writers who have work appearing in the forthcoming issue of Glass Mountain: Mariah Kizer, Sessa Kratz, Penny Montalvo, Luke Patterson, Roxanne Terrell, David Toombs, as well as former co-editor Regina Vigil. For details and reader bios, check out the Poetry & Prose website.

Join us Wednesday, April 13th, at 5:30pm in the Honors College Commons (M.D. Anderson Library, Level 2).

The reading is free and open to the public, so bring friends and colleagues! Light refreshments will be served.

We look forward to seeing you at the final reading of the season!

Copies of Glass Mountain’s latest issue, featuring work by most of the event’s writers, will available for sale at the reading.

Today marks the first day for “Foley’s Department Store: Houston’s Community Partner, 1900-2005,” an exhibit curated and installed by Terry Tomkins-Walsh, archivist for the Houston History Archives, and her students.

The exhibit is in the M.D. Anderson Library, in the 1st floor cases and the exhibit space just outside the Special Collections department on the 2nd floor; the latter featuring a computer monitor with many, many photos of the Foley’s years.

For native Houstonians and those who’ve lived here long enough to remember shopping at Foley’s, this exhibit should provide a pleasant trip down memory lane – and you may learn some new things about Foley’s active role in the community.

The Poetry & Prose reading series presents its first event of 2011, featuring readings by prolific and award-winning UH Creative Writing Program faculty Nick Flynn and Tony Hoagland.

The reading series is free, open to the public and light refreshments are provided. Bring your friends, colleagues, and students! Copies of Flynn and Hoagland’s latest books will be available for sale, courtesy of Brazos Bookstore.

Join us Wednesday, February 23, at 5:30pm in the Honors College Commons (M.D. Anderson Library, Level 2).

Find additional details and reader bios on the Poetry & Prose website.

A collection of 9 published books (one of which spans 12 volumes) from the Houston Chamber of Commerce and other producers showing the progress of the city, its industry, and significant buildings. One booklet describes the building of the Gulf Building and includes lovely watercolor illustrations of the interior and exterior. Another series of books, Art Work of Houston, Texas, Published in Twelve Parts, was intended to describe and provide historical sketches of Houston from a strictly pictorial, artistic and non-advertising perspective. Published in 1904 it contains images of the neighborhoods, residences and buildings that made up the city of Houston at the time. The Souvenir Album of Houston Texas is the oldest book with a known date in the collection. Published in 1891 it give the viewer a historic look at the prominent buildings in Houston.

Greater Houston, Texas and the Southwest