Inprint’s Houston Poets & Writers Ball Highlights Top Authors and UH’s Powerhouse Creative Writing Program
A $500,000 Evening at River Oaks Country Club With Real Literary Clout
BY Shelby Hodge // 03.04.24
Inprint Poets & Writers Ball chairs Ky Cooksey, Todd Bondy, Pablo Hernández Schmidt-Tophoff, Cullen Schaar at River Oaks Country Club. (Photo by CJ Martin of RM Photography)
Many of Houston’s philanthropic fundraisers feed the soul for the good works that proceeds support, but for Inprint’s annual Poets & Writers Ball there is a cerebral gratification as well. Consider the recent evening when Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Anthony Doerr was headliner.
The author of the compelling and New York Times best selling All the Light We Cannot See shared with the audience the importance of failure in the creative process, his thoughts delivered in an amusing and engaging talk.
Before Doerr held court in the River Oaks Country Club ballroom, the sold out throng of more than 450 was invited to check in with salon style readings from the gifted Houston area authors who have benefited from Inprint programs and support.
Sharing their literary talents were:
Weijia Pan is a third-year MFA candidate at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program (UH CWP). His manuscript Motherlands was chosen by Nobel Laureate Louise Glück as the winner of the 2023 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and will be published by Milkweed Editions in 2024.
Gemini Wahhaj, who earned her PhD in literature and creative writing from the UH Creative Writing Program, is the author of the novel The Children of This Madness, and the forthcoming short-story collection Katy Family.
Elizabeth Anthony
Adele Elise Williams, a PhD candidate in literature and creative writing at UH CWP, is the author of Wager, selected for the 2024 Miller Williams Poetry Series.
The evening, which raised more than $500,000, was chaired by Inprint Book Club members Todd Bondy, Ky Cooksey, Stephen Goldfarb, Pablo Hernández Schmidt-Tophoff and Cullen Schaar.
As is tradition with this event, a limited edition chapbook for attendees, —this year featuring an excerpt from Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land — was created by artists Fiona McGettigan and Alan Krathaus of CORE Design Studio with the help of a number of volunteers. Also as is tradition, the menu was designed by Robert Del Grande, chef emeritus of The Annie Cafe & Bar, who shared an accompanying menu memoir that conveyed the literary inspiration for the meal from the work of Doerr.
PC Seen: Karen and Mike Brisch, Bettie Cartwright, Yini and Herman Collette, Carolyn and Platt Davis, Gwen Dawson and Ba Nguyen, Mary S and Jack Dawson, Franci Neely, Susie and Joe Dilg, Kate Dearing Fowler, Katharine Barthelme Frank and Shane Frank, Debbie Gary, Sis and Hasty Johnson, Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, Brittany Sakowitz and Kevin Kushner.
