Multifaceted author William Jack Sibley, who penned the Present’s San Antonio Eccentrics column within the late aughts and early 2010s, died unexpectedly at a San Antonio hospital on Aug. 31, in keeping with associates.
The 72-year-old was an brisk storyteller, equally adept at bringing tales to life on the written web page or in dialog. Along with a trio of novels, he penned performs, screenplays, served as a contributing editor at Andy Warhol’s Interview Journal, composed dialogue for TV reveals together with Guiding Gentle and Murphy Brown and labored on his household’s ranches.
“I’m simply your frequent, on a regular basis, New York Metropolis, Texas, rancher playwright novelist,” Sibley advised the Categorical-Information in 2021 after the publication of his novel Right here We Go Loop De Loop, the third installment in a collection highlighting uncommon characters in rural Texas.
The fourth novel in that collection, The Dangle of It, is predicted to launch quickly, his household mentioned in a web based obituary.
Sibley was born in Corpus Christi and moved to upstate New York in sixth grade , in keeping with the obit. Later, whereas residing in Scarsdale, north of New York Metropolis, he started taking appearing lessons. His time attending school in Austin hurled him into radio, TV and movie.
After time in New York, LA and elsewhere, Sibley settled in San Antonio, residing in a River Highway residence designed by famend architect Don B. McDonald that associates describe as being stuffed with eclectic artwork.
Between work on his novels and travels that he wrote up for magazines and newspapers, the fifth-generation rancher would drive to the his household’s cattle operation in Atascosa County to assist out his siblings, the obituary notes.
“Each time we launched [Sibley] to certainly one of our associates, we’d go on and on about how glamorous he was — how he as soon as kissed Andy Warhol on the road in New York, he was an announcer at Sea World however couldn’t get Shamu to carry out, he was a flight attendant for Braniff within the groovy ’70s!” pal Vicky Dewey, a San Antonio architect, mentioned in an announcement she learn on the writer’s memorial, held Wednesday.
“I hadn’t even heard of Braniff earlier than assembly Invoice, however we beloved being a part of his fascinating universe,” she added. “He was simply so worldly and but fully right down to earth.”
Former Present Editor-in-Chief Elaine Wolff introduced Sibley onboard to put in writing his San Antonio Eccentrics column, which spotlighted colourful native personalities similar to Karlos (with a “Ok”) Anzoategui and Polly Lou Livingston.
“As soon as we turned acquainted in individual, I spotted that [Sibley] talked in the identical colourful approach that he wrote — and that his persona was simply as massive and engaging because the wildcards he profiled,” Present Contributing Arts Editor Bryan Rindfuss mentioned of his contribution.
“He was maybe the best ‘eccentric’ within the bunch and had all of the tales to again it up — from assembly Andy Warhol at Studio 54 in 1978 to writing about theater for Warhol’s journal Interview within the Eighties,” Rindfuss added. “He was the actual deal.”
Sibley was inaugurated into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2015, becoming a member of it prestigious ranks in a category that included fellow San Antonians Nan Cuba and the late Gregg Barrios.
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This text seems in Sep 3-17, 2025.
