One Page Salon

Featured Presenter(s)

Jennifer duBois’s debut novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was the winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction, the Northern California Book Award for Fiction, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction. Her second novel, Cartwheel, was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award and the winner of the Housatonic Book Award. DuBois’s third novel, The Spectators, was a recipient of a National Endowments for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. Her latest novel, The Last Language, was a finalist for the Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Fiction and was named a Vox Best Book of 2023. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Stanford University Stegner Fellowship, duBois teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University.

Michael Hall writes about criminals, musicians, the law, and barbecue. Mike graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1979 with a degree in government. He wrote for various publications, including Trouser Press, Third Coast Magazine, the Austin American-Statesman, and the Austin Chronicle. In 1997, he joined Texas Monthly, where he has won two Texas Gavel Awards from the State Bar of Texas and four Stephen Philbin Awards from the Dallas Bar Association. He was named Writer of the Year at the City and Regional Magazine Awards in 2015. His stories have appeared in The Best American Magazine Writing, The Best American Sports Writing, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Da Capo’s Best Music Writing, the New York Times, and Men’s Journal. Mike is also a musician and has played in Austin bands the Wild Seeds, the Setters, the Lollygaggers, and the Savage Trip. He pitches for the Burkas, the Texas Monthly softball team.

Amanda Johnston is a writer, visual artist, and the 61st Poet Laureate of Texas. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter, and editor of Praisesong for the People: Poems from the Heart and Soul of Texas. Her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them Callaloo, Poetry Magazine, The Moth Radio Hour, Bill Moyers, The Rumpus, and the anthologies Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Tasajillo, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Watermill Center, American Short Fiction, and the Academy of American Poets. She is a former Board President of Cave Canem Foundation and founder of Torch Literary Arts.  

Taisia Kitaiskaia was born in the former Soviet Union and raised in the United States. She is the author of four books, which have been translated into multiple languages: The Nightgown and Other Poems; two volumes of Ask Baba Yaga advice from the witch of Slavic folklore; and Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers, a collaboration with artist Katy Horan and an NPR Great Read of 2017. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in journals such as McSweeney’s, A Public Space, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, and Guernica. Her story, “Engelond,” was chosen by Lauren Groff for the Best American Short Stories 2024. The recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell, she has taught at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin.  

Sylvia Madrigal (she/her) was born and raised in San Benito, Texas. She graduated from Yale University in 1979. For over 30 years, Sylvia was an author and editor of Spanish language textbooks. In 2019, she received her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. She self-published a novella, Of Two Minds, and has completed two novels, The Garbo Bible and The Fifth Codex.