Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas

Join author Stephen Harrigan in an interview by the Honorable Ken Wise of the popular podcast “Wise About Texas”.

Co-Chairs: Gwen and Ed Emmett & Angela and Will Cannady

Master of Ceremonies: Frank Billingsley

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6

11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

THE BRIAR CLUB, 2603 TIMMONS LANE

Heritage Award Recipients: To Be Announced Soon

Stephen Harrigan was born in Oklahoma City in 1948 and has lived in Texas since the age of five, growing up in Abilene and Corpus Christi. He is a longtime writer for Texas Monthly, and his articles and essays have appeared in a wide range of other publications as well, including The Atlantic, Outside, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Conde Nast Traveler, Audubon, Travel Holiday, Life, American History, National Geographic and Slate.

Harrigan is the author of twelve books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Gates of the Alamo, which became a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book, and received a number of awards, including the TCU Texas Book Award, the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and the Spur Award for Best Novel of the West.

Big Wonderful Thing, a sweeping narrative of Texas from prehistory to the present, was published in 2019 by the University of Texas Press. In a review for The Wall Street Journal, Willard Spiegelman noted that the book is “brimming with sass, intelligence, trenchant analysis, literary acumen and juicy details. . . It is popular history at its best.” And Michael Schaub, in his review for NPR, wrote that “It’s hard to think of another writer with as much Lone Star credibility as Stephen Harrigan. . . Harrigan, essentially, is to Texas literature what Willie Nelson is to Texas music.”