Known as "The Emerald City," Dallas has its own rich heritage
peculiar to its founding on the prairies and the Trinity River, and
editor Frances Brannen Vick has collected a cornucopia of all
things Big D in Literary Dallas, the third in TCU Press's "literary
cities" series.
There is C. C. Slaughter who helped make Dallas a banking
center; John Rosenfield, who made his city a haven for performing
arts; Evelyn Oppenheimer, who made her career reviewing books;
not to mention Frank X. Tolbert, both Chili King and writer.
Natalie Ornish writes of the merchants who made Dallas a city
where haute couture is comme il faut, but, where, as Prudence
Macintosh avers, it is also possible to live a perfectly happy life
and never wear a ball gown.
Historians and journalists have interpreted the city for generations,
and you will find A. C. Greene, Bob Compton, Stanley Walker, Kent
Biffle, Paul Crume and Jay Milner, among others.
The pivotal event in Dallas was the Kennedy assassination, and
Vick researched the journalists, writers, poets and observers who
tackled this subject, including Jim Lehrer, Bryan Woolley, and
Lawrence Wright, to name a few.
Fiction set in Dallas has been wide and deep. Authors explore
various backdrops, and from a Catholic church to an English manor
to local bars—and all the places in between—Dallas is covered.
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FRANCES B. VICK holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from
the University of Texas at Austin and Stephen F. Austin State
University, respectively, and a Doctor of Humane Letters (honoris
causa) from the University of North Texas. She began publishing
with E-Heart Press, then became director of the University of North
Texas Press. She most recently co-authored Petra's Legacy: The
South Texas Ranching Empire of Petra Vela and Mifflin Kenedy with
Jane Monday. Vick is past-president of the TIL and president of
TSHA. She lives in Dallas.
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