Babette Fraser Hale - NARCISSI

Brazos welcomes Babette Fraser Hale on Tuesday, October 20 at 6:30 p.m. to discuss her newest book, Narcissi. Cole Burnett, a Texas novelist, is the kind of man whose need for freedom should send lovers running in the opposite direction. But he has a lanky charisma and the gift of listening, rare enough at any time.The women he encounters in Narcissi, a novel-in-stories, find his attention compelling, and they all get hurt, or cause hurt. But hurt is never the whole story.Each woman brings her own complicated life into her time with Cole, conflicts with husbands, traumas survived, needs postponed, children. And children grow up with questions.Burnett understands that loneliness compels him toward the women he meets--whether in a tavern, like Amelia; or a street dance, like Stephanie; or a hotel event, like Lorna. And others he connects with while working, like Dolly, Elsa, Trish and Gladys.None of them quite reaches where the loneliness resides, where whatever's missing pushes him to keep moving, to write more, to find a purpose for his future. Later, after the death threat, traveling becomes a way to stay alive. Babette Fraser Hale is the author of A Wall of Bright Dead Feathers, 2022 winner of the debut fiction award from the Texas Institute of Letters and This Familiar Heart: An Improbable Love Story. Her fiction has received notice from Best American Short Stories, 2015 and the Meyerson Award from Southwest Review. In addition to writing fiction, Babette has been a magazine feature writer,columnist, contributing editor, book editor, publisher and part owner of a bookstore. In 2025 she became a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.