On Saturday October 17, 2009 at 7 p.m. the Wittliff Collections will be celebrating their grand reopening. The major event of the season celebrates the newly expanded Wittliff Collections with a reception and program highlighting their fall literary and photographic exhibitions. Special guest Keith Carter will be signing his two most recent monographs from the University of Texas Press: A Certain Alchemy, the latest in the Wittliff's Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection Book Series, and Fireflies, Carter's photographs of children.

Committed to furthering the cultural legacy of the region's literary and photographic arts and to fostering "the spirit of place" in the wider world, THE WITTLIFF COLLECTIONS welcome visitors, tours, and classes, host lectures, readings, and symposia, assist researchers, and present major exhibitions year-round from their archival repositories. The Southwestern Writers Collection preserves and exhibits the literary papers and artifacts of principal writers, filmmakers, and musicians, including the major archives of such noted authors as Cormac McCarthy, Sam Shepard, and John Graves, as well as the production archives of Texas Monthly magazine, Fox's animated series King of the Hill, and the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove, which is featured in a permanent exhibition of props, costumes, and other materials from the making of the film. The Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection includes the major holdings of work by such renowned artists as Kate Breakey, Keith Carter, and Graciela Iturbide, and houses the largest archive of modern and contemporary Mexican photography in the United States.

The following events will help celebrate the grand reopening of the Wittliff Collection:

October 17, 2009 - February 1, 2010
THE LIGHTNING FIELD: Mapping the Creative Process
Mark Twain once noted, "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." Leading writers of the Southwest make it their business to be lightning rods, and their journals, notes, correspondence, and manuscripts in the Wittliff's Southwestern Writers Collection document their struggles to find precisely the right word. This exhibition features drafts of work by Cormac McCarthy, Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower, Sam Shepard, Jovita González, Rick Riordan, the King of the Hill writers, Texas Monthly journalists, and many others as it illustrates a variety of authors' compositional dilemmas and, through them, illuminates the how of creation. Fine-art prints from the Wittliff's Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection complement the display, with portraits of photographers including Keith Carter, Graciela Iturbide, Russell Lee, and more. Presented in conjunction with Texas State's 2009-2010 Common Experience theme, "The Whole Mind." (http://www.txstate.edu/commonexperience). This exhibition will be celebrated at the grand reopening event on October 17, which is open to the public.

October 17, 2009 - March 13, 2010
A CERTAIN ALCHEMY: Photographs by Keith Carter
Drawing from the animal world, popular culture, folklore, and religion, Carter's photographs explore relationships that are timeless, enigmatic, and mythological. The inaugural show in the Wittliff Collections' new gallery spaces, this exhibition presents 60 images from Carter's monograph published last fall in their Southwestern & Mexican Photography Book Series with UT Press. The Wittliff's archive of Keith Carter photographs is the largest in the world. The public is invited to the grand reopening celebration on October 17, which will feature a book signing with Carter.

October 17, 2009 - March 13, 2010
FIREFLIES: Photographs of Children by Keith Carter
From Keith Carter's forthcoming monograph with the University of Texas Press, the more than 20 images in this exhibition at the Wittliff Collections showcase the transcendent, lyrical depictions of children Carter has crafted throughout his photographic career. The Wittliff's archive of Keith Carter photographs is the largest in the world. The public is invited to the Wittliff Collections' grand reopening celebration on October 17, which will feature a book signing with Carter.

October 17, 2009 - March 13, 2010
NUEVA LUZ / NEW LIGHT: Recent Acquisitions
As part of their grand reopening following the construction of new exhibition galleries, the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University-San Marcos open the vault to bring out the newest additions to their Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection. With over 45 images by a host of internationally acclaimed photographers, this show exemplifies the breadth and strength of the Wittliff's growing permanent collection already renowned for its significant archive of modern and contemporary Mexican photography. Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Marco Antonio Cruz, Graciela Iturbide, Robb Kendrick, Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, Michael O'Brien, and Joel-Peter Witkin are just a few of the luminaries whose work is on display. This exhibition will be celebrated at the grand reopening event on October 17, which is open to the public.

On Permanent Display
THE LONESOME DOVE COLLECTION
From hats to bandanas to boots, the complete outfits of Woodrow F. Call and Augustus "Gus" McCrae (played by Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall) are just a few of the many "making of" materials on display from the beloved miniseries based on Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. This exhibition from the Wittliff's major Lonesome Dove production archive takes visitors behind the scenes of the Emmy-winning show, with a look at props and principal costumes, set designs, costume sketches and production notes, Bill Wittliff's screenplay drafts, script pages, and photographs, plus much, much more. Temporarily located on the first floor until mid October, this exhibition is on view regular library hours: http://www.library.txstate.edu/about/hours.html. Tour the Lonesome Dove Collection online: http://thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu/swwc/ld/ldexhibit.html

Additional Future Events, which includes a reading and book signing from Tim O’Brien:

October 28, Wednesday
3:30 pm
WOMEN AND PLACE: TWO VOICES, TWO PERSPECTIVES
Reading / Book Signing with SUSAN WITTIG ALBERT and SUSAN J.TWEIT
Susan Wittig Albert, founder of the Story Circle Network, will read from the latest book in the Wittliff's Southwestern Writers Collection Book Series, Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place, published by the University of Texas Press. Susan J. Tweit, a much-published nature writer, will read from her latest memoir, Walking Nature Home, also from UT Press.  Books will be for sale by the University Bookstore.

November 3, Tuesday
3:30 pm
TIM O'BRIEN Reading / Book Signing
Currently holding the University Endowed Chair in Creative Writing for Texas State's Department of English, Tim O'Brien is the author of Going After Cacciato, winner of the 1979 National Book Award in fiction, and The Things They Carried, which was named by the New York Times as one of the ten best books of l990. He received the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award in fiction, and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1993 the French edition of The Things They Carried received the prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger. In the Lake of the Woods was named by Time magazine as the best novel of 1994. The book also received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was selected as one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times. His other books are If I Die in a Combat Zone, Northern Lights, and The Nuclear Age. His two most recent books, Tomcat in Love and July, July, were national bestsellers. This summer, his essay, "Telling Tails," on the craft of fiction appeared in The Atlantic Fiction Issue. O'Brien's short stories have appeared in Esquire, Harper's, Atlantic, Playboy, Granta, Gentleman's Quarterly, The New Yorker, and in several editions of The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Short Stories. In 1987 he received the National Magazine Award for his story The Things They Carried, which was also selected for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. O'Brien has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

November 14, Saturday
7:00 pm
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER: A DRIVING DESIRE
A performance by PENNYLYN WHITE
In a tribute to Katherine Anne Porter's life, work, and legacy, actress Pennylyn White brings to life the woman behind the myth in a probing performance using extracts of Porter's body of work, including her personal letters, thanks to the Jane Hope Hastings Philanthropic Trust.

November 19, Thursday
4:00 pm
J. FRANK DOBIE: A LIBERATED MIND Reading / Book Signing by STEVEN L. DAVIS
"At last, after a long wait, we have a crisp, reliable, and thorough biography of J. Frank Dobie: a colossus who bestrode the Texas literary scene ebulliently for more than three decades. Steve Davis gives us a much richer understanding of Dobie than we have had previously. All in all, a fine effort".  - LARRY McMURTRY. In this lively biography, Steve Davis takes a fresh look at a J. Frank Dobie whose "liberated mind" set him on an intellectual journey that culminated in the folklorist becoming a political liberal who fought for labor, free speech, and civil rights well before these causes became acceptable to most Anglo Texans. Tracing the full arc of Dobie's life (1888-1964), Davis shows how Dobie's insistence on "free-range thinking" led him to such radical actions as calling for the complete integration of the University of Texas during the 1940s, as well as taking on governors, senators, and the FBI (which secretly investigated him) as Texas's leading dissenter during the McCarthy era. Davis is assistant curator of the Wittliff's Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State University-San Marcos. http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/davjfr.html

The Wittliff Collections are located on the seventh floor of the Alkek Library, Texas State University-San Marcos. 512.245.2313 More exhibitions and events at: http://www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu
Admission is free and open to the public. RSVP to thewittliffcollections@txstate.edu.