Texas Pages

When Junot Diaz visited Dallas in September, he drew a crowd of about 30 people. I imagine Dallas, which loves a winner, will turn out in bigger numbers whenever the newly minted Pulitzer winner returns.

Here's the interview he sat down for after his reading. You and also still read our review of "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao."

Also in the archives: Our review of Robert Haas' "Time and Materials" (catch him at Arts & Letters Live April 18.)

Here's the complete list of writing-related winners and finalists:

Fiction: "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books). Finalists: "Tree of Smoke" by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and "Shakespeare's Kitchen" by Lore Segal (The New Press).
Drama: "August: Osage County," by Tracy Letts. Finalists: "Yellow Face" by David Henry Hwang; "Dying City" by Christopher Shinn.
History: "What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815-1848," by Daniel Walker Howe (Oxford University Press). Finalists: "Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power" by Robert Dallek (HarperCollins); "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War" by the late David Halberstam (Hyperion).
Biography: "Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father," by John Matteson (W.W. Norton). Finalists: "The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein" by Martin Duberman (Alfred A. Knopf); "The Life of Kingsley Amis" by Zachary Leader (Pantheon).
Poetry: "Time and Materials," by Robert Hass (Ecco/HarperCollins) and "Failure," by Philip Schultz (Harcourt). Finalist: "Messenger: New and Selected Poems," 1976-2006" by Ellen Bryant Voigt (W.W. Norton).
General Nonfiction: "The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945," by Saul Friedlander (HarperCollins). "The Cigarette Century" by Allan Brandt (Basic Books); "The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century" by Alex Ross (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

-- The Associated Press

Junot Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction Monday for "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao."
Daniel Walker Howe won for history for "What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815-1848."
John Matteson won for biography for "Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father."
Saul Friedlander won the general nonfiction award for "The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945."
Two prizes were awarded for poetry: Robert Hass for "Time and Materials" and Philip Schultz for "Failure."
-- The Associated Press

The London Daily Telegraph's Sunday magazine, Seven, rolls out its list of "The 110 Best Books," a compilation which, it says, would make "the perfect library."

The perfect English gentleman's library, we presume they mean. It's a good list, all right, but awfully Brit-centric. What, no Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? No Great Gatsby?

And why, oh why, include Jonathan Livingston Seagull among "Books That Changed Your World"? OK, so it probably changed Richard Bach's world, not to mention his bank account. But was anybody else's worldview permanently affected by Bach's story of a seagull?

Here's the Telegraph's list. What do you think?

Your humble books editor gets a lot of his humility from being schooled in Kansas. A modest place, Kansas is. Maybe it's all those years of "Wizard of Oz" jokes.

The state has nothing to be ashamed of in a literary sense, of course. Lawrence alone was home to both Langston Hughes and William S. Buroughs.

It's also home to an inconsistent but just-brilliant-enough basketball team, which will play in a national championship game tonight.

Memphis fans will have to post their own literary heroes here. But I'll offer up these otherwise neutral links about basketball books, which I hope everyone can agree on. No matter who wins tonight. Though I modestly hope for ... oh, forget it. Rock chalk.

The Gateway, a collection of stories by Arizona writer T.M. McNally, will be honored next month as a finalist for the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The book was published in October by Southern Methodist University Press.

"We believe publishing literary fiction is very important," Keith Gregory, director of the press, told me when I called him. "This is -- I don't want to say ity's a validation of what we're doing, but it's really nice."

Later, by e-mail, he went on about the significance of the award: significance of the honor for the Press. "We are already known as a small press that publishes good fiction. I think the PEN/Faulkner recognition strengthens our reputation and will help us continue to acquire excellent fiction manuscripts."

And he gave abundant credit to Kathryn Lang, the senior editor who acquires and develops those manuscripts.

The press publishes 10 books a year, up to half of which might be fiction, Mr. Gregory said.

"The Gateway" is in esteemed company. Kate Christensen was the winner of the award for "The Great Man." Other finalists were Annie Dillard, for "The Maytrees;" David Leavitt, for "The Indian Clerk;" and Ron Rash, for "Chemistry and Other Stories". All will be honored at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. May 10.

Green Buddhas on the fruit stand. We eat the smile and spit out the teeth.