S. Kirk Walsh

2025 National Book Awards Longlist for Nonfiction The ten contenders for the National Book Award for Nonfiction

Omar El Akkad's One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is hands down the book of the year.

www.nationalbook.org/2025-nationa...

The First Birding Season Without the Birdman of Texas The renowned Victor Emanuel, who founded one of the first ecotourism companies almost fifty years ago, taught me and countless others about the ephemeral beauty of the spring migration and the wonders...

I wrote this remembrance of legendary Texas birder Victor Emanuel for @texasmonthly.bsky.social. www.texasmonthly.com/travel/birdi...

Hey Austin, this is happening May 9! Looking forward to being in conversation with the brilliant @skirkwalsh.bsky.social about my new novel at @bookpeople.bsky.social!

Why the Bolivar Peninsula is One of the Best Birding Spots in the World Surveying the Texas Coast with renowned birder Victor Emanual

Rip Victor Emanuel 🐦

Here's a lovely 2020 piece @skirkwalsh.bsky.social wrote on the master birder at work on the Bolivar Peninsula for @texashighways.bsky.social.

texashighways.com/outdoors/wil...

Twitter being down is like a brief respite from cataclysmic brush fires. Suddenly the air begins to clear.

BookPeople Events presents Ashley Whitaker in conversation with S. Kirk Walsh (author of THE ELEPHANT OF BELFAST) on April 18th at 7PM

The Royal Tenenbaums meets Fleabag...

Join Ashley Whitaker on April 18th discussing BITTER TEXAS HONEY, a hilarious and dizzyingly smart debut about an over-the-top evangelical Texas family!

More info + RSVP: www.eventbrite.com/e/bookpeople...

@skirkwalsh.bsky.social

One thing Democratic leadership could do right now is to name an alternate HHS secretary--someone to provide ongoing public updates and health information. And do it for other departments too. Start showing voters what a Democratic government would look like--press conferences, speeches, all of it.

Great news for independent bookstores. bookshop.org/ebooks

We are delighted to announce Rachel Heng as our 2025 fiction contest judge! Her novels include Suicide Club (2018) and The Great Reclamation (2023), which is the winner of the New American Voices Award and a Best Book of 2023 (TIME Magazine, The New Yorker, Amazon Books, and Kirkus Reviews).

The lynchers of democracy hanging out with the lynchers of Black people, both empowered to do it again: now that is more American than the Army-Navy football game. 2/2

You choke to death a Black man named Jordan Neely. You get away with it. Days later, you watch the Army-Navy football game alongside the incoming U.S. president who got away with choking out the peaceful transfer of presidential power. 1/2

the very best historical *fiction*

!!

Highly recommend this beautiful novel—THE LILAC PEOPLE by Milo Todd—about the experience & prosecution of trans individuals during WW2. This novel does what the very best historical does—provide a timeless account of humanity that speaks to our present moment. Pub: 4/29/25, Counterpoint Press.

Austin friends! This weekend! Come and see St. Stephen's production of the timeless evocative classic, OUR TOWN, directed by Mike Dolan and featuring his talented students.
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It's free! No tickets are required. (I'll be at the Friday and Saturday evening performances.) Hope to see you there!

Jenny Browne and I are excited to announce our inaugural Dublin/Belfast Writers' Retreat, coming this summer: August 10-17, 2025!

The more your work is deemed successful, the louder the cries will become, the more they will fall like leaves on that path until it is hard to even see, just as your own thoughts are hard to hear in the clamor. But you must try to remember that purpose, that self, that path anyway. And do the work.

Deadline for applications: February 15, 2025. For more details about daily activities, application process, and fees, please visit the link below. www.skirkwalsh.com/ireland-work...

Over the years, Jenny and I have discovered—and have been inspired—by the rich literary traditions of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and we look forward to sharing these places and their artistic history and inspiration with other writers.

Jenny Browne and I are excited to announce our inaugural Dublin/Belfast Writers' Retreat, coming this summer: August 10-17, 2025!

Austin friends! This weekend! Come and see St. Stephen's production of the timeless evocative classic, OUR TOWN, directed by Mike Dolan and featuring his talented students.
.
.
It's free! No tickets are required. (I'll be at the Friday and Saturday evening performances.) Hope to see you there!

Small Town Texas Inspires Original Works of Fiction The emotional fragility of romantic, platonic, and familial relationships shapes the contours of these short stories

Any short fiction fans out there looking for a read? Have I got the thing for you. Here’s a package I produced last year for @texashighways.bsky.social in partnership w @skirkwalsh.bsky.social. Six wicked good writers on small town Texas. Have at it.

texashighways.com/culture/smal...

Took my big Austin novel to my big Austin bookstore for a visit. It seemed at home! Hope you’ll consider preordering THE SLIP from @bookpeople.bsky.social or your local indie! Out 6/3/25 🥊

Adrienne made the books section at Esquire the best one in the business. Heartbreaking to see her and it become a casualty of bad management.

Submersed by Matthew Gavin Frank: 9780593700952 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books An exquisite, lyrical foray into the world of deep-sea divers, the obsession and madness that oceans inspire in us, and the story of submarine inventor Peter Madsen's murder of journalist Kim Wall—a.....

SUBMERSED by Matthew Gavin Frank is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read.

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735986...

Personal/professional news: I am now the Editor-in-Chief of @texasobserver.org. My entire journalism career has taken place here, as I've learned from all who've come and gone from this little magazine. Thank you to all the colleagues and sources who helped me along the way

Nixta Taqueria Chef Edgar Rico on the Joys of Tacos The James Beard award winner and Austin-based chef is on a mission to spread taco culture

Congrats to Edgar Rico of Nixta Taqueria in Austin on his appointment tonight as the MICHELIN Guide Texas 2024 Young Chef Award Winner. Check out @skirkwalsh.bsky.social’s interview with Edgar from the January 2024 issue of Texas Highways.

texashighways.com/culture/nixt...

It was an honor and a pleasure to interview George Saunders about his early years in the Texas Panhandle—and how it shaped and influenced his fiction for Texas Highways.

One of his favorite Texas authors! One guess? (Elizabeth McCracken, among others!) 🙃 texashighways.com/culture/peop...

A: Who is your favorite novelist of all time?"

Tiya Miles: "Toni Morrison — for her sheer bravery, breathless wordsmithing, intellectual range and incomparable understanding of our emotional and social realms." www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/b...

Thanks, Scott!