2nd
Annual Award of Literary MeritHonoring Sarah Bird The
Writers' League of Texas presented its annual Award of Literary Merit to novelist
and essayist Sarah
Bird on September 15, 2006, at the Bob
Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin, Texas. 
Photo by Duane Osborn
The evening included a talk by the author, gourmet
dinner, live music, and silent auction. Evan Smith, editor of Texas Monthly,
was the honorary chairperson of the ceremony. Among the distinctions
Sarah Bird has received for her novels are the Southwest Book Critics Best Novel
award, inclusion in Barnes & Noble's Discover Great Writers series, two Texas
Institute of Letters Jesse Jones Awards for Best Work of Fiction, and a listing
on the New York Public Library's Books to Remember. Her novel The Mommy Club
received the Writers' League of Texas's Violet Crown Award in 1991. Bird
has written screenplays for Paramount, CBS, Warner Bros., National Geographic,
ABC, TNT, Hemdale Studio, and several independent producers. Her articles have
appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine; The New York Times Magazine;
Mademoiselle; Glamour; Cosmopolitan; Seventeen; Ms.;
and The Texas Observer. She took over the back-page column in
Texas Monthly, from Kinky Friedman, in April 2005. In May 2006, Knopf published
Bird's latest novel, The Flamenco Academy, a story of obsessive love set
in the New Mexico flamenco-dance world.
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