She said if you’re from Texas, son,

Where’s your boots and where’s your gun?

“She Never Spoke Spanish to Me,”

Butch Hancock

One might expect the editor of such a volume as this to begin with bold assertions about the power and range of fiction in Texas: as virile as a Texas bull, as varied as the Texas landscape—that sort of thing. I will spare us. Whenever fiction from this region is presented as in this volume, it is inevitably attached to the word Texas: Texas Fiction. Texas Literature. And off it goes into the back room to be shelved with the Texana between the boots and the spurs. I would like to fight that. Continue reading →