The University of Texas, Austin, recently announced that Sarah Bird and Diane Wilson are the winners of this year's Dobie Paisano Writing Fellowships. Both will receive a four-month stay at Paisano, a retreat west of Austin, and a monthly stipend of five thousand dollars. The fellowships, sponsored by the University of Texas and the Texas Institute of Letters, allow Texas writers (or writers who have written significantly about Texas) to live and work at the late J. Frank Dobie’s 254-acre ranch.
And just who, exactly, was J. Frank Dobie? He was an old-school Texan who wrote a bunch of books, including Cow People (1964) and Rattlesnakes (1965), that depicted the good life in rural Texas. But don't take my word for it; watch the well-groomed gentleman in the video below.