About this Event
Format:
- This event is free and open to the public.
- Location: The 2nd floor of BookPeople.
- Run time: 45-60 minute discussion, followed by a signing line.
Signing Guidelines:
- To get a book signed, a copy of the event book or an item of equal value must be purchased from BookPeople.
- The authors will be personalizing copies of the book.
- For high volume events, post-talk signing lines can become very long. Signing line placement is determined on a first-come, first-served basis.
General Info:
- Seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis and is not guaranteed.
- If you have any accessibility concerns, please contact [email protected]
- If you have any other questions, please visit our Eventbrite FAQ. If your question isn't covered in the FAQ, feel free to email us at [email protected].
- BookPeople reserves the right to cancel or postpone this event if necessary.
- There will not be a live stream or recording available.
- All event guidelines are subject to change.
About the panel:
For our October Third Thursday, the Writers' League of Texas is excited to be back in-person at BookPeople. If you’re in the Austin area, we hope you’ll join us.
If the truth is stranger than fiction, true crime is more complex. From the characters at the center of the story, who carry all the contradictions of humanity, to the labyrinth of the criminal justice system, which itself complicates our understanding of both crime and punishment, crafting narrative from true crime requires a unique approach to storytelling.
For our October Third Thursday panel, we’ll be joined by three brilliant true crime authors and journalists—Bryan Burrough, Maurice Chammah, and Beverly Lowry—to discuss the craft elements and ethical considerations writers must navigate in order to tell stories accurately and humanely while also captivating an audience. Join us to learn tips on research, craft, ethics, and more.
About the authors:
Bryan Burrough is the author or coauthor of eight books, four of them New York Times bestsellers, including the Wall Street classic Barbarians at the Gate and Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. A longtime correspondent at Vanity Fair and now editor at large at Texas Monthly, he lives in Austin.
Maurice Chammah is a journalist at The Marshall Project, where he hosted the true crime podcast series, The Last 12 Weeks, produced by Serial Productions and The New York Times. He was on a team that won a 2021 Pulitzer Prize, and is the author of Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty (Crown, 2021), winner of the Writer's League of Texas Nonfiction Book Award. His forthcoming book is called Arab/Jew: A Memoir of a Family Between Worlds (Schocken, 2027).
Beverly Lowry was born in Memphis and grew up in Greenville, Mississippi. The author of six novels and four previous works of nonfiction, her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Mississippi Review, Granta, and many other publications. She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. She lives in Austin, Texas.
About the moderator:
Sarah Renee Beach is the Program Director for the Writers' League of Texas. She is the author of the poetry chapbook IMPACT, which won Sundress Publications’ 2022 Chapbook Contest. You can read her poetry and essays in The Sewanee Review, Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from The New School, where she was awarded the Dean’s Merit Scholarship, and is an alum of the Tin House Summer Workshop.
By purchasing a book from BookPeople, you are not only supporting a local, independent business – you’re showing publishers that they should continue sending authors to BookPeople.
Thank you for supporting Bryan Burrough, Maurice Chammah, Beverly Lowry, Sarah Renee Beach, The Writers' League of Texas, and your local independent bookstore!
Event venue & nearby stays
BookPeople, 603 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, United States
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