The Lost World of 1970s Black Rodeo
Nearly half a century after they were first taken, a cache of photos of an unsung subculture are finally coming to light. And they're thrilling.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, essayist, and journalist. She has been an NPR Moth Radio Hour storyteller, a nine-time winner of the Austin Chronicle’s best fiction writer award, a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award, and an Alex Award nominee. Her books have been included on the Library Journal Best Books, Amazon Best Books of the Year, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers, and New York Public Libraries Books to Remember lists. She is a Texas Literary Hall of Fame honoree and was a Dobie Paisano fellow.
She has written for O magazine, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Texas Observer, Texas Highways, Slate, the Daily Beast, and Salon, and she was the back-page columnist for Texas Monthly for five years starting in 2005. During a ten-year career as a screenwriter, she wrote for Warner Bros., TNT, Paramount, Hallmark, National Geographic, ABC, CBS, and many independent producers. In 2015 she was selected to attend Meryl Streep’s Writers Lab.
Bird cofounded the Writers League of Texas, is the 2020 winner of the University of New Mexico’s Paul Bartlett Ré Peace Prize, and was selected as the “hologram” greeter at Austin Central Library in 2017.
Her latest book, A Juneteenth Rodeo: Let’s Go! Let’s Show! Let’s Rodeo!, a book of photos she shot at Black rodeos while working as a photojournalist in the late 1970s, will be published by UT Press on Juneteenth 2024.
After a nomadic Air Force childhood, Bird is happy to have found a forever home in Austin with her G-men—George and Gabriel—and Collie, arguably the world’s cutest corgi.
Nearly half a century after they were first taken, a cache of photos of an unsung subculture are finally coming to light. And they're thrilling.
By Sarah Bird
In the half-century since a troop of Japanese macaques arrived in Texas, a truly wild tale has played out.
By Sarah Bird
Organized crime! Illicit booze! The beach! In this exclusive excerpt from her new novel ‘Last Dance on the Starlight Pier,’ Sarah Bird explores Galveston at the end of the twenties, a setting she calls “a gift to a novelist.”
By Sarah Bird
He wasn’t always kind, but he was kind to me in ways that mattered a great deal.
By Sarah Bird
How I ended up spending my panel appearance at the Texas Book Festival lying on a bench and drooling on the floor.
By Sarah Bird
Developing my twisted sense of humor was a family affair.
By Sarah Bird
When Dallas’s very own Marvin Lee Aday—that’s Meat Loaf to you—optioned one of my screenplays, he didn’t just offer me a glimpse of paradise by the dashboard lights. He also helped me write a novel.
By Sarah Bird
In an excerpt from Sarah Bird's new novel The Gap Year, a single mom prepares to send her only daughter off to college. Guess which one is a wreck.
By Sarah Bird
Help! My voice recognition software is making me save airy funnel things witch nobody wonder Stans.
By Sarah Bird
Am I the only person who has always wanted to get picked for jury duty?
By Sarah Bird
Turns out being a test subject for a dermatology research lab is not the best thing that could ever happen to a girl.
By Sarah Bird
It was the breast of times, it was the worst of times.
By Sarah Bird
Or, how I stopped worrying and learned to love my formerly ugly, recently hip, linoleum-clad, mid-mod house.
By Sarah Bird
All my friends are going to be status updates.
By Sarah Bird
Every female on earth believes she can dance. My big break came when a Bob Hope wannabe with shiny suits and a pinkie ring took me on as his sidekick for a two-week tour of Tokyo.
By Sarah Bird
My trashy, sordid, steamy, decently paid turn as a writer for the pulps.
By Sarah Bird
Eating high on the hog when you’re low on the totem pole.
By Sarah Bird
My only son is leaving for college, and I’m weeping through Mamma Mia! Lord help me.
By Sarah Bird
Introducing the Dean of Doors, in all his doorificence.
By Sarah Bird
Putting the fun in fun bags! The mommy in mommy muffins! (I could go on.)
By Sarah Bird
In this excerpt from writer-at-large Sarah Bird’s new novel, How Perfect Is That, the realities of life in early twenty-first century Austin become all-too-clear to a defrocked socialite.
By Sarah Bird
Hey, captains of industry: If Dr. Evil can have a Mini Me, why can’t the rest of us?
By Sarah Bird
My Petco encounter with a shampoo celebrity.
By Sarah Bird
Greetings from Snowbirdlandia! Wish you were old.
By Sarah Bird
One year (okay, two days) of livin’ la vida locavore.
By Sarah Bird
Suburban mom seeks motorcycle jacket.
By Sarah Bird
Let’s go to the science fair!
By Sarah Bird
I subject myself to yet another seminal Texas experience: the hunt.
By Sarah Bird
My instructor is a Flabbo Nazi, and other tales from the aerobics wars.
By Sarah Bird
Bill Zedler’s plan to keep me married—forever.
By Sarah Bird
Getting in touch with my inner bargain hunter.
By Sarah Bird
My short, happy life as a poker player.
By Sarah Bird
The absurdity of the college visit (and why you should leave your kids at home).
By Sarah Bird
Texas versus Iowa State versus me.
By Sarah Bird
The day I slithered from movie theater to movie theater.
By Sarah Bird
Nora Ephron’s wattle, and Ann Richards’s, and mine.
By Sarah Bird
Teen Boy’s sugar-free education.
By Sarah Bird
I’m a slob. There, I said it. Now don’t mess with me.
By Sarah Bird
Teen Boy gets behind the wheel.
By Sarah Bird
A few sore points about HMOs— and two thumbs-up for the acupuncturist.
By Sarah Bird
My dancing feet. And, hopefully, yours.
By Sarah Bird
There is a world where the kings of small African countries send cases of Dom Pérignon as hostess gifts, where you get to choose between the white-striped chinchilla and the violet beaver shearling poncho. Who let me in?
By Sarah Bird
Ladies’ fashion is nothing if not a fantasy inside an illusion wrapped in a thong. Every season, there is a new “look,” a new “trend,” a new “paranoid schizophrenic thought disorder.” And then there are returns.
By Sarah Bird
Living proof that moms shouldn’t take the SAT.
By Sarah Bird
The quest for the perfect author photo (or at least one I can live with).
By Sarah Bird
My short, happy life as a Catholic schoolgirl.
By Sarah Bird
That jerkwad talking on his phone in the movie theater.
By Sarah Bird
Man, do I hate book clubs.
By Sarah Bird
My family unplugs (for a few days).
By Sarah Bird
What high school is really like.
By Sarah Bird