Fiction writer and nonfiction essayist Luke B. Goebel – author of Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours – gives a history lesson like no other in this 8,000-word essay (separated into four parts) on the artist colony haven known as Marfa, Texas. From the Nazi prisoner of war camps of the 1940s to the great minimalist Donald Judd planting his roots here, Goebel brilliantly weaves his own historical narrative with art history’s narrative – he also combines his fears, his hopes, his aspirations and his yearnings for this art Shangri-La in the Texas badlands that is still hinged on the neon Americana of yesteryear’s no vacancy sign. It is a romantic, madcap, delirious tale that takes you on a romping ride through the hellish landscape of Goebel’s free associative wax poetics that at times gets caught up with the rolling tumble weeds and amber colored dust of the desert, but never leaves you lost and begging for water. Click here to read the full essay.