National Book Foundation's BookUpTexas
Since
2007, we have been proud to administer BookUp, an after-school
program for middle-school students, at five sites in
New York City. In September, 2010, BookUp expanded to
a new site at the Boys & Girls Club of Brazos Valley,
Texas, led by instructor Angie Cruz and our very first
BookUp Fellow, Casie Cobos. The new site began with
a small group of just five students, but over the course
of its first semester, membership grew to a total of
twenty students. Generous financial support from the
Education Department of the George Bush Presidential
Library and Museum goes toward purchasing books for
BookUpTX participants and funding their field trips
to literary destinations.
Angie
Cruz
Angie Cruz is the author of two novels, Soledad (2001) and Let it Rain Coffee (2005). Her work has earned numerous honors, including the Camargo Fellowship, the New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and residencies at Yaddo and the Macdowell Colony. Her shorter works have appeared in the New York Times, the Indiana Review, and the Callaloo Literary Journal. Angie currently teaches creative writing at Texas A&M University, where she is at work on her third novel, In Search of Caridad.
Casie
Cobos
Casie Cobos graduated with an MFA in fiction and an MA in literature from McNeese University in 2006. She currently lives in Houston with her spouse, Andrew Cobos, and two cats (with two huge personalities) while she commutes to Texas A&M University to complete her Ph.D. in Cultural Rhetorics and Writing.
For more information, visit:
Boys & Girls Club of Brazos Valley
www.bgcbv.orgAngie Cruz, Department of English, Texas A&M University:
www-english.tamu.edu/index.php?id=1411George Bush Presidential Library and Museum:
http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu
A Recent Field Trip
On
March 27, 2011, the BookUpTX group took an hour-and-forty-five-minute
bus ride to Houston, where they had lunch at the Downtown
Aquarium and then shopped at the independent Brazos
Bookstore. It was many of the students’ first
time in Houston, and all of the students’ first
experience visiting a small, independent bookstore.
As is the custom in BookUp, the students received $25
each to purchase books for their own home libraries.
The group then continued on to Pershing Middle School,
where YA author Rebecca Stead read from her work, took
questions from the audience, signed books, and posed
for a photo with the group.