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Printed From North Texas e-News == ntxe-news.com Front Page The release falls in Kelton’s centennial year. Born April 29, 1926, in Andrews County and raised on a ranch near Crane, Kelton would have turned 100 this spring. Angelo State University’s Mayer Museum in San Angelo is marking the anniversary with the exhibit Where the West Lives: The Stories of Elmer Kelton, on view through January 9, 2027. The book collects two talks Kelton gave in the 1980s: one to the Friends of the Library Symposium at Texas Tech University in 1985 and one to the Texas Folklore Society in Lubbock in 1988. In both, Kelton reflects on life in West Texas and on the writer’s craft, with the ranch anecdotes, dry humor, and plain speaking readers know from his fiction. The speeches were first issued in 1988 in a signed limited edition and have been out of print for decades. Kelton often said of his characters, “I can’t write about heroes seven feet tall and invincible. I write about people five feet eight and nervous.” Dearen, a 2022 inductee into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, knew Kelton personally. His foreword opens on the McElroy Ranch, where a young Kelton was assigned to watch the horse herd during a roundup and read a comic book instead. “Elmer’s failure as a cowboy was the literary world’s good fortune,” Dearen writes. Cochran is the owner of Cactus Book Shop in San Angelo, a longtime Kelton bookseller. About Elmer Kelton. Elmer Kelton (1926–2009) wrote more than 40 novels, including The Time It Never Rained, The Good Old Boys, and The Day the Cowboys Quit, while working 42 years as an agricultural journalist in San Angelo. He received seven Spur Awards from Western Writers of America, which in 1995 voted him the greatest Western writer of all time, and four Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. TCU Press keeps many of his novels in print. Book details Living and Writing in West Texas: Two Speeches by Elmer Kelton By Elmer Kelton | Foreword by Patrick Dearen | Afterword by Felton Cochran TCU Press | Publication date: September 15, 2026 Hardcover | 37 pages | $26.95 | ISBN 978-0-87565-971-8 Available from tcupress.com, bookstores, and online retailers | Distributed by Longleaf Services Review copies, cover images, and interviews with Patrick Dearen and Felton Cochran are available on request. About TCU Press. Founded in 1947 at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, TCU Press publishes books on the history, literature, art, and music of Texas and the American Southwest. Copyright © - North Texas e-News, LLC |
