november, 2025
Event Details
Join us for an evening of Texas voices that cross borders—geographical, political, and personal. Three Texas Authors: NO to MX to LA brings together three distinguished writers whose lives and work have been deeply intertwined with the region’s history, culture, and contradictions. From the bayous of New Orleans to the deserts of Big Bend, from Mexico’s borderlands to Los Angeles’s sprawl, these authors trace the evolving story of Texas and its restless spirit of reinvention.
Rod Davis, Sean Mitchell, and Dick Reavis have each carved distinct paths through journalism and literature, yet share a common pursuit: telling the truth about the world they’ve lived and witnessed. Their books explore the enduring complexities of identity, class, race, and justice across the American South and Southwest, offering portraits of communities shaped by both resilience and reckoning.
Rod Davis’s fiction and nonfiction explore survival, moral ambiguity, and transformation in the face of crisis. His Life in the Time of Hurricanes follows a group of friends fleeing New Orleans after Katrina to the Texas Big Bend, where they try to rebuild amid the storm’s lingering emotional wreckage. Sean Mitchell, in his new memoir Irresistible Calling: A Memoir of Journalism and the Arts, revisits his early days as editor of Dallas’s iconic alternative weekly The Iconoclast, and his later career as an arts critic and Hollywood correspondent. His story reflects a lifetime spent in pursuit of truth and beauty, tracing how journalism and creativity intersect in the search for meaning. Dick Reavis, a Texas Monthly veteran and author of Texas Reporter, Texas Radical, has chronicled Texas and Mexico’s intertwined realities for over four decades, from labor strikes to border conflicts. His fearless reporting and empathy for the overlooked have made him one of the state’s most vital chroniclers.
Together, these three writers represent the deep, defiant, and diverse soul of Texas storytelling—a blend of grit, intellect, and unflinching honesty. Their conversation promises insight into the craft of writing and the landscapes that continue to shape their work.
Author Bios
Rod Davis is an award-winning journalist and novelist, author of Life in the Time of Hurricanes, The Life of Kim and the Behavior of Men, and Corina’s Way, which won the PEN Southwest Fiction Award. He has taught writing at SMU and UT Austin, and his work has appeared in The Texas Observer, D Magazine, and the San Antonio Express-News. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters and PEN America, he lives in Dallas.
Sean Mitchell is the author of Irresistible Calling: A Memoir of Journalism and the Arts (TCU Press, 2025). Formerly the editor of The Iconoclast, he worked as a critic for the Dallas Times Herald and later as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. A graduate of St. Mark’s School and Brown University, his writing bridges the worlds of journalism, art, and memory.
Dick Reavis is a journalist, author, and educator whose career spans more than four decades of reporting on Texas, Mexico, and social justice. His works include Texas Reporter, Texas Radical and The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation. A former senior editor at Texas Monthly and journalism professor at North Carolina State University, he continues to write on politics, class, and the people who define the region.
