Weekend Event Guide

Here are the top 5 things to do in San Antonio this weekend

A hat created the biggest buzz Zac Brown Band's Houston Rodeo concert.

Photo by John Boni/CatchlightGroup.com

Experience the many sights, sounds, and live attractions the Alamo City has to offer in the days to come. Celebrate the 40th Tejano Conjunto Festival, or see artists like Carla Morrison and Zac Brown Band live in concert. Check out the top five things to do in San Antonio this weekend.

Thursday, May 19

Tejano Conjunto Festival
Attend the longest-running festival of its kind in the nation at the 40th Annual Tejano Conjunto Festival. Hosted at The Historic Guadalupe Theater, this five-day celebration will showcase the very best Conjunto music from all over the state. The event will also feature a film festival, new Conjunto Music Hall of Fame inductions, a symposium about Conjunto music history, and much more. For a full schedule of activities and to purchase tickets, go to the festival website.

Freestyle Love Supreme in concert
Musical improv from the minds of Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail, and Anthony Veneziale comes to the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre. Audiences will get to participate firsthand in this fast-pace evening of entertainment, complete with humorous skits, spontaneous songs, and improvised musical numbers brought to life in an instant. In addition to the regular company performers, special guests including Miranda, Daveed Diggs, and Wayne Brady are slated to make surprise appearances for select shows. Performances are scheduled through Sunday, May 22.

Saturday, May 21

San Antonio Book Festival
Bookworms, rejoice! The beloved San Antonio Book Festival returns with a plethora of literary-inspired activities and a lineup of local, regional, and national authors. Highlights of this family-friendly festival include panel discussions, book signings, author presentations, live poetry readings, and more. Get all the festival details online here. Admission is free.

Carla Morrison in concert
Mexican songstress Carla Morrison will perform live in concert at San Antonio's new Tech Port Center + Arena. Morrison has won three Latin Grammy Awards and is a two-time Grammy-nominated artist known for popular songs such as “Disfruto” and “Todo Pasa.” A limited number of tickets are available.

Sunday, May 22

Zac Brown Band in concert
Zac Brown Band returns to San Antonio in support of 2021 album The Comeback for one night only. The beloved country music group will be the inaugural musical act hosted at the recently reopened Real Life Amphitheater. Visit the ticketing website to secure your seats.

The San Antonio Book Festival returns with book signings, panel discussions, and more activities this Saturday.

Photo by Patri Hadad

The San Antonio Book Festival returns with book signings, panel discussions, and more activities this Saturday.

event-planner

The Bard Beckons

San Antonio author's new novel sets Shakespeare and romance in the desert

inarsen.com

San Antonio author Isa Arsén is releasing her second novel, The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf, in January.

San Antonians may have heard of local author Isa Arsén, whose debut novel, Shoot the Moon, garnered great reviews from publications like the Associated Press (AP) and Publishers Weekly (PW). Now she's back with a new novel, The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf.

It will be available to read starting January 7, 2025. San Antonians can join the launch in person at Nowhere Bookshop, an independent, author-owned book store with a coffee, wine, and beer bar.

Both novels by Arsén — who calls herself a a certified bleeding heart — so far are romances, but the premises are very different. Shoot the Moon focused on a physics graduate starting a career at NASA while navigating feelings about a coworker — and time travel. AP called it "a bold and unconventional love story," and PW says "Arsén expertly navigates the back-and-forth of the story’s time-travel events."

For The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf, a press release heralds "darker themes with an atmospheric mid-century novel about two Shakespearean actors in an unconventional marriage finding their place in the world." According to the release, Arsén has spent some time in theater, so her writing is at least partially based on experience.

The plot follows the couple to the desert in New Mexico, where Margaret hopes for an escape from the stresses of everyday life and instead finds an eccentric director, a mysterious affair, and a challenge in figuring out how to move forward together.

Early reviews have flagged this novel as a culturally adept adept story that does justice to magical realism (Booklist), queer relationships (Kirkus Reviews), and of course, Shakespeare (CrimeReads).

“I had to write this book five times before it held any water," said Arsén in the release. "It used to be about opera singers and housewives and a very passive protagonist, which might still have made for an interesting story if that was anything close to what WOLF truly needed to be. This is the one that taught me to quit pulling my punches. ..."[I]ts core has been the same from the beginning: two twice-shy people find their teeth and learn to bite back, refusing to be leashed.”

The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf will be on sale January 7, 2025, for $30. It is published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, an imprint of the Penguin Group.

books novels

Weekend Event Guide

Here are the top 5 things to do in San Antonio this weekend

The San Antonio Book Festival returns with book signings, panel discussions, and more activities this Saturday.

Andy's Frozen Custard opens new San Antonio location with free treats

Ramen chain from Tokyo opens new location in San Antonio

Here are the top 7 things to do in San Antonio this weekend

The Bard Beckons

San Antonio author's new novel sets Shakespeare and romance in the desert