This anthology collects the ten winners of the 2022 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest at UNT’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. First place winner: Jason Fagone, “The Jessica Simulation: Love and Loss in the Age of A.I.,” about one man’s attempt to still communicate with his dead fiancée (San Francisco Chronicle). Second place: Jenna Russell, Penelope Overton, and David Abel, “The Lobster Trap” (The Boston Globe and Portland Press Herald). Third place: Jada Yuan, “Discovering Dr. Wu” (The Washington Post). Runners-up include Lane DeGregory, “Who Wants to Be a Cop? (Tampa Bay Times); Christopher Goffard, “The Trials of Frank Carson” (Los Angeles Times); Evan Allen, “Under the Wheel” (The Boston Globe); Mark Johnson, “A Wisconsin Mom Gave Birth in a COVID-19 Coma before Slipping to the Brink of Death” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel); Annie Gowen, “A Dance, Not a War” (The Washington Post); Peter Jamison, “They’d Battled Addiction Together. Then Lockdowns became a ‘Recipe for Death’” (The Washington Post); and Douglas Perry, “The Obsession” (The Oregonian / Oregon Live).

Two Counties in Crisis offers a rare opportunity to observe how local political cultures are transformed by state and national events. Utilizing an interdisciplinary fusion of history and political science, Robert J. Dillard analyzes two disparate Texas counties—traditionalist Harrison County and individualist Collin County—and examines four Reconstruction governors (Hamilton, Throckmorton, Pease, Davis) to aid the narrative and provide additional cultural context. Commercially prosperous and built on slave labor in the mold of Deep South plantation culture, East Texas’s Harrison County strongly supported secession in 1861. West Texas’s Collin County, characterized by individual and family farms with a limited slave population, favored the Union. During Reconstruction, Collin County became increasingly conservative and eventually bore a great resemblance to Harrison County. By 1876 and the ratification of the regressive Texas Constitution, Collin County had become firmly resistant to all aspects of Reconstruction.

Interview with Susan Dowd Stone, a clinician, advocator, writer, family pillar, and educator at NYU from Englewood, New Jersey. Stone discusses working in business, transitioning to social work, the joint meeting between Depression After Delivery and Postpartum Support International, becoming PSI president, the Mothers Act, the DSM, and postpartum depression.

Interview with Nancy Byatt, a perinatal psychiatrist from Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Byatt discusses background, family, education, experiences with women who had postpartum depression, starting The Lifeline for Family Center and the Lifeline for Moms at UMass, founding The Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program for Moms, securing funding for the programs, and a sense of identity as a physician/scientist who partners with activists and advocates.

This anthology collects the nine winners of the 2021 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest at UNT’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. First-place winner: Greg Jaffe and his three-part series on the pandemic, beginning with “The Pandemic Hit and This Car Became Home for a Family of Four” (The Washington Post). Second place: Hannah Dreier with “The Worst- Case Scenario” (The Washington Post). Third place: Leonora LaPeter Anton, Kavitha Surana, and Kathryn Varn with “Death at Freedom Square” (Tampa Bay Times). Runners-up include Rory Linnane, “Maricella’s Last Breath” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel); Hannah Dreier, “Tatiana’s Luck” (The Washington Post); Deborah Vankin, “This 81-Year-Old was L.A.’s Most Devoted Museum-Goer until COVID-19” (Los Angeles Times); Lauren Caruba, “Night Shift” (San Antonio Express News); Mark Johnson, “Saving Raynah’s Brain” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel); and John Woodrow Cox, “They Depended on Their Parents for Everything” (The Washington Post).

Our Stories: Black Families in Early Dallas enlarges upon two pubLications by the late Dr. Mamie McKnight’s organization, Black Dallas Remembered—First African American Families of Dallas (1987) and African American Families and Settlements of Dallas (1990). Our Stories is the history of Black citizens of Dallas going about their lives in freedom, as described by the late Eva Partee McMillan: “The ex-slaves purchased land, built homes, raised their children, erected their educational and religious facilities, educated their children, and profited from their labor. “ Our Stories brings together memoirs from many of Dallas’s earliest Black families, as handed down over the generations to their twentieth-century descendants. The period covered begins in the 1850s and goes through the 1930s. Included are detailed descriptions of more than thirty early Dallas communities formed by free African Americans, along with the histories of fifty-seven early Black families, and brief biographies of many of the early leaders of these Black communities. The stories reveal hardships endured and struggles overcome, but the storytellers focus on the triumphs over adversity and the successes achieved against the odds. The histories include the founding of churches, schools, newspapers, hospitals, grocery stores, businesses, and other institutions established to nourish and …

University Band and Concert Band performance at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Wind Orchestra concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Wind Symphony concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Wind Symphony concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Concert Orchestra performance at the UNT college of music Winspear Hall.

Symphony orchestra concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

William L. Wright (1868–1942) was born to be a Texas Ranger, and hard work made him a great one. Wright tried working as a cowboy and farmer, but it did not suit him. Instead, he became a deputy sheriff and then a Ranger in 1899, battling a mob in the Laredo Smallpox Riot, policing both sides in the Reese-Townsend Feud, and winning a gunfight at Cotulla. His need for a better salary led him to leave the Rangers and become a sheriff. He stayed in that office longer than any of his predecessors in Wilson County, keeping the peace during the so-called Bandit Wars, investigating numerous violent crimes, and surviving being stabbed on the gallows by the man he was hanging. When demands for Ranger reform peaked, he was appointed as a captain and served for most of the next twenty years, retiring in 1939 after commanding dozens of Rangers. Wright emerged unscathed from the Canales investigation, enforced Prohibition in South Texas, and policed oil towns in West Texas, as well as tackling many other legal problems. When he retired, he was the only Ranger in service who had worked under seven governors. Wright has also been honored as an …

In the late 1970s legendary pianist Bill Evans was at the peak of his career. He revolutionized the jazz trio (bass, piano, drums) by giving each part equal emphasis in what jazz historian Ted Gioia called a “telepathic level” of interplay. It was an ideal opportunity for a sideman, and after auditioning in 1978, Joe La Barbera was ecstatic when he was offered the drum chair, completing the trio with Evans and bassist Marc Johnson. In Times Remembered, La Barbera and co-author Charles Levin provide an intimate fly-on-the-wall peek into Evans’s life, critical recording sessions, and behind-the-scenes anecdotes of life on the road. Joe regales the trio’s magical connection, a group that quickly gelled to play music on the deepest and purest level imaginable. He also watches his dream gig disappear, a casualty of Evans’s historical drug abuse when the pianist dies in a New York hospital emergency room in 1980. But La Barbera tells this story with love and respect, free of judgment, showing Evans’s humanity and uncanny ability to transcend physical weakness and deliver first-rate performances at nearly every show.

Presentation on the interviews present in the John Gilliland Collection, and how they can inform rock music historiography. It was presented at the joint Texas Chapter of the Music Library Association and the Southwest Chapter of the American Musicology Society meeting held on September 24-26, 2020.

Notes accompanying a presentation on the interviews present in the John Gilliland Collection, and how they can inform rock music historiography. It was presented at the joint Texas Chapter of the Music Library Association and the Southwest Chapter of the American Musicology Society meeting held on September 24-26, 2020.

U.S. Marine George Burlage was part of the largest surrender in American history at Bataan and Corregidor in the spring of 1942, where the Japanese captured more than 85,000 troops. More than forty percent would not survive World War II. His prisoner-of-war ordeal began at Cabanatuan near Manila, where the death rate in the early months of World War II was fifty men a day. Sensing that Cabanatuan was a death trap, he managed to get transferred to the isolated island of Palawan to help build an airfield for his captors. Malaria and other tropical diseases caused him to be sent to Manila for treatment in 1943 (a year later, 139 of his fellow POWs were massacred on Palawan). After another year of building airfields, Burlage survived a 38-day voyage in the hull of a Japanese hell ship and ended the war as a miner for Mitsubishi in northern Japan. By sheer luck, strength, and a bit of sabotage, he survived and was freed in September 1945 after the Japanese surrendered. He had endured starvation and torture and lost half of his prewar weight, but no one had killed him. After the war Burlage became a journalist and wrote about …

Faculty recital performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Wind Orchestra concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Transcript of an interview with [C.] Dan Smith, UNT Athletic Hall of Fame Member, Distinguished Alumnus of UNT and Geezle Fraternity, and Board of Regents Member (Chair for two years). Smith shares concerning his childhood in Hawkins, TX, and his public education in Lewisville, TX; Insights about his athletic football career in high school, at Texas Technological College, and North Texas State College; Recollections on graduating in business administration, beginning a career in securities, and establishing his own business, CDS Resources; Views on staying committed and involved as an alumnus; His perspectives on the role of the Geezle Fraternity and its contribution to his college education, his career progress, and his continuing loyalty to UNT.

Interview with Dr. Nada Stotland, psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at Rush Medical College in Chicago. Her research has focused on issues of reproduction and psychiatry especially around abortion. In addition, she was the 135th President of the American Psychiatric Association, presiding over the publication of DSM-V. She discusses post-abortion trauma syndrome, postpartum depression, women and psychiatry, hormones, and her position as a public figure on abortion issues.

Band concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Interview with Michael O'Hara, a leading researcher in the psychology of postpartum depression since the late 1970s. O'Hara discusses his entry into psychology and perinatal mental health issues in particular; his involvement in the Marcé Society for Perinatal Mental Health; his overall research trajectory; transition from cognitive behavioral to interpersonal psychotherapy; changes in the field with regard to hormones and neuroscience; changing funding climates; the relationship between perinatal health researchers and activists; postpartum depression and race; and the politics of identifying postpartum depression as a discrete disease.

Orchestra concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.