Lou Halsell Rodenberger – författare

'Stories about family, legacy, marriage, divorce, religion, all of them played out in relentless weather and under an all-encompassing sky...These female writers come from a storied place most often described from the perspective of the men credited with shaping it...This collection adds insightful dimension to a surprisingly inspiring place' - ""Fort Worth Star-Telegram"". 'A moving and engaging collection of short stories often set in demanding rural conditions...We learn how the seemingly blank, barren expanse that is West Texas is really a landscape of sublime and subtle opulence...Beyond survival, anything hardy enough to endure here doesn't merely exist, but thrives and flourishes. The stories these women have to tell prove exactly that' - ""El Paso Times"". 'The fullness of regional life is so engagingly chronicled here that you may never again think of West Texas without understanding the passions inspired by this seemingly empty land...The women featured in this collection ...focus on contrasts between the young and old, the East and West, the wet and the dry, the new and the old social norms...This collection adds insightful dimension to a surprisingly inspiring place' - ""Philadelphia Inquirer"". 'The vast skies west of Fort Worth have captured the endless space these authors love. This anthology ...gives voice to their identities and their connections to place and the people who live there' - ""Review of Texas Books"". 'The 26 contemporary women writers featured in [this] new anthology have one thing in common: West Texas...All have been touched, inspired, or in some way affected by the landscape, the people, the climate, the history, the isolation, the sense of place...The essays, memoirs, and short stories included here cover a range of topics, approaches, interests, emotions, and writing styles. Some are humorous, others poignant. Some take an academic approach to their subject, others are raw and personal. The writing illustrates the diversity, not only of the women selected for this anthology, but of the region itself' - Glen Dromgoole, ""Lubbock Avalanche-Journal"". The vast, disparate region called West Texas is both sparsely populated and scarcely recognized. Yet it has given voice to a surprising number of women writers who have left more than a faint impression on its hardscrabble terrain and consciousness. These writers do much more than evoke the land and its celebrated skies. Often with humor and always with empathy, they manage to peg nearly every West Texas experience, including how West Texans respond to hardships, blessings, friendships, loneliness, tragedy, and yes, even sandstorms. The short stories and essays in this collection, through a strong emphasis on individual triumphs and failures, remind West Texans of their heritage and share with all readers an understanding of what it means to live in the endless space these authors know so well. 'West Texas latitude inspires its occupants to make new beginnings, to explore spiritual response to the beauty of sunrises and sunsets, and to achieve understanding of the people coming and going in their daily lives' - Lou Halsell Rodenberger, from the Introduction.

'Stories about family, legacy, marriage, divorce, religion, all of them played out in relentless weather and under an all-encompassing sky...These female writers come from a storied place most often described from the perspective of the men credited with shaping it...This collection adds insightful dimension to a surprisingly inspiring place' - ""Fort Worth Star-Telegram"". 'A moving and engaging collection of short stories often set in demanding rural conditions...We learn how the seemingly blank, barren expanse that is West Texas is really a landscape of sublime and subtle opulence...Beyond survival, anything hardy enough to endure here doesn't merely exist, but thrives and flourishes. The stories these women have to tell prove exactly that' - ""El Paso Times"". 'The fullness of regional life is so engagingly chronicled here that you may never again think of West Texas without understanding the passions inspired by this seemingly empty land...The women featured in this collection...focus on contrasts between the young and old, the East and West, the wet and the dry, the new and the old social norms...This collection adds insightful dimension to a surprisingly inspiring place' - ""Philadelphia Inquirer"". 'The vast skies west of Fort Worth have captured the endless space these authors love. This anthology...gives voice to their identities and their connections to place and the people who live there' - ""Review of Texas Books"". 'The 26 contemporary women writers featured in [this] new anthology have one thing in common: West Texas...All have been touched, inspired, or in some way affected by the landscape, the people, the climate, the history, the isolation, the sense of place...The essays, memoirs, and short stories included here cover a range of topics, approaches, interests, emotions, and writing styles. Some are humorous, others poignant. Some take an academic approach to their subject, others are raw and personal. The writing illustrates the diversity, not only of the women selected for this anthology, but of the region itself' - Glenn Dromgoole, ""Lubbock Avalanche-Journal"". The vast, disparate region called West Texas is both sparsely populated and scarcely recognized. Yet it has given voice to a surprising number of women writers who have left more than a faint impression on its hardscrabble terrain and consciousness. These writers do much more than evoke the land and its celebrated skies. Often with humor and always with empathy, they manage to peg nearly every West Texas experience, including how West Texans respond to hardships, blessings, friendships, loneliness, tragedy, and yes, even sandstorms. The short stories and essays in this collection, through a strong emphasis on individual triumphs and failures, remind West Texans of their heritage and share with all readers an understanding of what it means to live in the endless space these authors know so well. 'West Texas latitude inspires its occupants to make new beginnings, to explore spiritual response to the beauty of sunrises and sunsets, and to achieve understanding of the people coming and going in their daily lives' - Lou Halsell Rodenberger, from the Introduction.

Jane Gilmore Rushing grew up in Pyron, a Texas town no longer in existence, and from childhood she knew that she would be a writer. In seven novels produced between 1963 and 1984, she built her stories around themes that few West Texas writers had dared to tackle. Much of her work centers on cotton farms and early ranches in a land she calls the too-late frontier. Those not familiar with her novels might find it surprising that Rushings plots explore such sensitive topics as an affair between a mulatto girl and a West Texas cowboy, or the painful recognition in an early-nineteenth-century community that one of their own is capable of child and wife abuse. Lou Halsell Rodenberger explores Rushings life and discusses in depth her novels and memoir. She finds that although Rushing thought of herself as a regionalist, her fiction transcends region in illuminating what has motivated and sustained the Midwestern frontiers settlers and their descendants. Lou Halsell Rodenberger, professor emerita of English at McMurry University in Abilene, Texas, has devoted twenty-five years to research into what women writers have accomplished in Texas. Her most recent work, coedited with Laura Payne Butler and Jacqueline Kolosov, is ""Writing on the Wind: An Anthology of West Texas Women Writers"" (Texas Tech 2005).

A collection of 22 stories by Texas women writers that weave a story of their own: the story of women's writing in the Lone Star State, from 1865 to the present. Authors include Berverly Lowry, Carolyn Osborn, Annette Sanford, Denise Chavez, Katherine Anne Porter, Judy Alter and Joyce Gibson Roach.