What would cause someone to withstand freezing temperatures in a cramped wooden box for hours on end, or stand in waist-high rushing waters, flicking a pole back and forth over and over—in many cases with nothing whatsoever to show for his efforts? Why is it that, into the twenty-first century, with the convenience of practically any type of red meat or fish available at the local supermarket, we continue to hunt game and fish on open waters? The answer is that no matter how sophisticated we think we are, no matter how technologically advanced we become, there is still something deep within us that beckons us to “the hunt.” This desire creates the customs, beliefs, and rituals related to hunting—for deer, hogs, and other four-legged critters, as well as fish and snakes, and other things that perhaps aren’t physically alive, but capture our interest as much as the prey mentioned above. These rituals and customs lead to some of our most treasured stories, legends, and practices. This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society includes serious, introspective articles on hunting and fishing, as well as humorous tall tales and “windies” about the big ones that got away—all lore …

Concert presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall.

Opera scenes performed at the UNT College of MusicVoertman Hall.

This translator's note is for the translation of Biodini's Asangba Nongjabi (Crimson Rainclouds).

Men's chorus concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall. This video is shot from the choir's perspective, showing the conductor.

Concert presented at Winspear Hall at the Murchison Performing Arts Center.

Women's and Men's chorus concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Choral concert performed at the UNT Winspear Hall.

Concert presented at Winspear Hall at the Murchison Performing Arts Center.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree.

Concert presented at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree

Concert presented at Winspear Hall at the Murchison Performing Arts Center.

Chamber choir concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Recital performed at UNT College of Music Kenton Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree.

Donut Dolly puts you in the Vietnam War face down in the dirt under a sniper attack, inside a helicopter being struck by lightning, at dinner next to a commanding general, and slogging through the mud along a line of foxholes. You see the war through the eyes of one of the first women officially allowed in the combat zone. When Joann Puffer Kotcher left for Vietnam in 1966, she was fresh out of the University of Michigan with a year of teaching, and a year as an American Red Cross Donut Dolly in Korea. All she wanted was to go someplace exciting. In Vietnam, she visited troops from the Central Highlands to the Mekong Delta, from the South China Sea to the Cambodian border. At four duty stations, she set up recreation centers and made mobile visits wherever commanders requested. That included Special Forces Teams in remote combat zone jungles. She brought reminders of home, thoughts of a sister or the girl next door. Officers asked her to take risks because they believed her visits to the front lines were important to the men. Every Vietnam veteran who meets her thinks of her as a brother-at-arms. Donut Dolly is …

A Capella concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Concert presented at Winspear Hall at the Murchison Performing Arts Center.

A sweet slipstream stew, a call and response to Hemingway’s In Our Time, Geoff Schmidt’s debut collection Out of Time is a meditation on meaning and mortality, and the ways that story and the imagined life can sustain us. In these stories, vengeful infants destroy and rebuild the world, rivalrous siblings and their mother encounter witches and ghosts and the possessed, Barack Obama and Keith Richards smoke their last cigarettes, men and women with cancer variously don gorilla suits or experience all time simultaneously. Time is running out for all of the people in these stories, yet the power of language, the human ability to tell, to imagine and invent, is a redemptive force. “The stories in Out of Time chase after the secrets and sorrows of families, revealing the lengths people will go, and the harm they will do, to keep their worlds together. These characters are not crazy, they are in love and afraid. Geoff Schmidt writes a lucid, new mythology in prose that's limned with fear and awe. To read these stories is to feel the force and urgency of a new and vital literary voice.”—Ben Marcus, author of Age of Wire and String, and judge

Jazz concert performed at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall.

Concert presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall.