A literary website that has connected bookish Texans since 2015 nearly closed this year. Then one of its readers saved it.
Out in West Texas, a pair of aspiring novelists and enterprising small-town newspaper owners, Barbara Brannon and Kay Ellington, were dismayed by the number of publications that were dropping book sections, cutting critics, and otherwise decimating literary coverage, especially in the Lone Star State.
Here’s the saga of how independent women business owners and book lovers in Texas founded that small company, expanded it, and now aim to save it. By December 2018, Ellington and Brannon, both “newspaper people” at heart, decided to sell their newsletter and Hall took over as the owner, manager, publisher, and frequent contributor.
Over the nine years of Lone Star Lit’s life, more independent booksellers and literary festivals popped up in unexpected places. The massive Texas Book Festival and the San Antonio Book Festival remained the biggest—drawing national and Texas talent—while the Hill Country town of Boerne built a beautiful new library, and librarians there turned their lovely town square into a festival venue.
By late March, she’d whittled down the list to four finalists, finally selecting Amy Kelly, a former middle school teacher and Lone Star Lit fan who had for years been writing about YA books on her own blog. “I feel like all of my experience so far has led to this because I am so passionate about the freedom to read and the fact that stories save lives,” Kelly told theBy May 1, Lone Star Lit will be under new ownership.
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