“This whole area I thought was just kind of mysterious for me. I liked the culture. I liked the desert. I found it fascinating,” said Welsh. (David A. Reyes/Borderzine.com)

Lawrence Welsh – Digging for verse in the deserts of the Southwest

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EL PASO – The watercolor on the wall in Lawrence Welsh’s office gleams with warm sun spilling across the panorama, as if light lived inside every leaf, every strand of grass, every inch of wood and tin. The Associate Professor of English at El Paso Community College said it reminds him of his own deep “digging” for art, poetry and history in the desert lands of the Southwest. In his new collection of poems written from 1994 to 2009, Begging for Vultures, Welsh sweeps readers through voices and landscapes of the Southwest. His personal excavation began in Los Angeles where he was raised, and where he began uncovering his love for words and music, co-founding the punk rock band, The Alcoholics in the late 1970’s, then writing and editing on newspapers, and writing fiction and poetry. Now, he teaches at the community college.

John Sheridan. (Yahchaaroah Lightbourne/Borderzine.com)

El Pasoan sheds light on Howard Hughes’ Las Vegas Years

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EL PASO – America’s first billionaire Howard Hughes was a very reclusive man whose life was brought into the spotlight by great wealth and controversy. John Harris Sheridan, an El Pasoan who works for Chanel 9 news as a producer, brings Hughes’ secrets to light in his book Howard Hughes. The Las Vegas Years: The Women, The Mormons, The Mafia. Sheridan, who worked for Hughes in 1968 as a film editor, writes about the experiences he had with Hughes and his encounters with other characters in the hotels Hughes owned in Las Vegas. Sheridan picks up where the movie Aviator left off going deeply into the life of the man who “decided to keep himself hidden from the news and most people”.

Life’s little things carry loads of meaning for Dagoberto Gilb

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EL PASO, Texas – Dagoberto Gilb creates colorful images with a few words, drawing scenes in an audience’s imagination like a skilled painter. The El Pasoans present at a recent lecture here are his canvas and also his inspiration. This border city in the Chihuahuan desert is the main setting for many of the stories written by this internationally published author. “I have written 72 short stories and all of them except for three are set either in El Paso, or L.A.,” Gilb said. For the first time since he wrote Pride a feature in the Texas observer in 2001, Gilb, read it here, where it originated.