Alan Govenar – författare

Updated edition with new photos and text exploring the extraordinary life of Stoney St. Clair, circus performer turned tattoo artist!.

A visual history of the life of Augustus “Gus” Wagner and his work as a hand tattoo artist, exploring a relatively unknown area of American art history from the 1890s to the 1930s

The true story of Maud Wagner—contortionist, aerial artist, carnival performer and barker, wife, and mother—who defied Victorian-era conventions to blaze her own trail.

The true story of a strong, successful, and independent woman tattooist and artist through her own words and art; the third book in a series about the Wagner tattooist family

A collection of first hand narratives and oral histories portraying the African American experience from slavery through emancipation and into the 20th century.African American Frontiers concentrates on the period from 1703, the date of the first published narrative of an African slave's attainment of freedom in the American colonies, to 1948, the year in which President Harry S. Truman integrated the United States armed forces through Executive Order 9981.This book is an invaluable historical resource that brings together diverse first-person accounts of individual African Americans through primary source documents, including: Henry "Box" Brown, who escaped the South by express mailing himself to Philadelphia in a wooden crate; Herb Jeffries, who introduced the black cowboy in Westerns; and Eunice Jackson, whose funeral home was destroyed in the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Such little known stories, most of them previously unpublished, resonate with the determination, forbearance, moral strength, and imagination of the tellers, and give readers an opportunity to see the world as it once was, as told by the men and women who lived in it.Includes primary source documents

Inspired by The Decameron and its dark and satirical novellas, Boccaccio in the Berkshires chronicles the foibles of seven women and three men, all in their twenties, who meet in an online chat room for asymptomatic pandemic survivors. They have all endured the deaths of loved ones and decide to shelter together for fourteen days in an Italianate mansion in the Berkshires, offered to the group rent-free. The vacant but furnished villa provides a luxurious, yet bizarre, setting for members of the chat room, who leave their homes in different cities around the United States.Over the course of their stay, they bond together in unexpected ways as they tell each other stories, ranging from the personal to the ludicrous, at times riffing on the absurdity of Boccaccio’s tales. A terrible storm fractures the group and forces the characters to come to terms with their own lives as they pursue love, faith, and the truth that medieval history ultimately reveals.

A new edition of the biography of Dallas' own Deep Ellum. Just outside of downtown Dallas lies a section of the city called Deep Ellum, where graffiti and murals decorate the walls of trendy shops, loft apartments, restaurants, nightclubs, art galleries, and tattoo studios. The area has been home to a remarkable array of businesses, creatives, and artistic practices since its birth 150 years ago as a Black center of business.Because of the area’s long association with blues and jazz musicians, Deep Ellum has been shrouded in myth and misconceptions which obscure its actual history. Alan Govenar and Jay Brakefield—using oral histories, old newspapers and photographs, city directories and maps, as well as more traditional public records and secondary sources—reveal another side of Deep Ellum which includes Central Track (formerly called Central Avenue), an area lined with Black-owned businesses which served both Black and white patrons during its heyday in the 1920s and 30s.In the Deep Ellum and Central Track areas, African Americans and whites, primarily Eastern European Jews, operated businesses from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries, creating a unique social climate where cultural interaction took place. Much of the information in the book is presented through the stories of remarkable individuals, including professionals, pawnbrokers and other merchants, police officers, criminals, and the blues and jazz musicians who had a lasting impact on American popular music.

A new biography of the beloved but mysterious Blind Lemon Jefferson, famous blues musician. Born in 1897, Jefferson was a blind street musician who played his guitar at the corner of Elm Street and Central Avenue in the Deep Ellum area of Dallas, Texas, until a Paramount Records scout discovered him. Between 1926 and his untimely death in 1929, Jefferson made more than 80 records and became the biggest-selling blues singer in America. Although his recordings are extensive, details about his life are relatively few. Through Govenar and Lornell's extensive interviews and research, See That My Grave is Kept Clean gathers the scattered facts behind Blind Lemon Jefferson's mythic representations.

New from Alan Govenar, Come Round Right is a deeply personal novel and a paean to a pivotal moment in American history—when the Vietnam War was raging, and the idealism of the 1960s was losing ground to frustration, anger, and violence.Spring, 1971. Eighteen-year-old Aaron Berg is hitchhiking for his life, trying to come to terms with the sexual assault he and his new girlfriend survived in Canada five months earlier. Determined to reclaim his faith in humanity, Aaron’s harrowing journey through Appalachia reveals newfound joys and an unexpected truth that changes his life.Lyrical and poetic, juxtaposing Shaker melodies with a twangy sound and a heavy percussive beat, Come Round Right is at once a moving reckoning with the author’s own trauma and an expansive novel that speaks to the most pressing issues of our time.