Mind Maze & Novel Night at Malvern Books

We have a couple of fantastic literary happenings to share with y’all! Last Wednesday the splendid Raw Paw crew returned to our stage for their fifth Mind Maze chapbook release. This month it was a brand-new title from Montsho Jarreau Thoth, who gave a moving, meditative reading. Montsho was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia around Christmas, and many of the poems in his chapbook were finished while he was in hospital undergoing treatment. (If you’d like to help support his speedy recovery, Raw Paw also has a benefit coming up.) Montsho was joined by spoken word poet Joe Brundidge (aka Element615) and Ash Smith (who will also be W. Joe’s guest for his next poetry corner), and the evening was ably hosted, as always, by Wade Martin and A.R Rogers.

And last Thursday we turned our attention to all things prose, with the second installment in our Novel Night series, featuring debut novelists Howard A. Schwartz and Ernie Wood. We also heard from Malvernite Schandra, who introduced us to The Passion According to G.H. by Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (stay tuned till the end of Schandra’s talk to see how Ms. Lispector forms a puzzle). And our open mic-er, a middle-school teacher, read an excerpt that gave us an insightful account of eighth-grade life. Check out the footage below, and be sure to join us for next month’s Novel Night on March 12th.

January’s Fond Farewell

We were a supremely lucky bookstore on Saturday night, as we got to play host to a talented quartet: Christopher Petkus, Danielle Sellers, Ricardo Acevedo, and Greg Brownderville (below, left to right). The perfect finale to a brilliant month of events!

Christopher, Danielle, Ricardo, Greg

Christopher opened the show with some ethereal experimental guitar…

Danielle read some new work, as well as a selection of poems from Bone Key Elegies, her moving collection of mostly autobiographical poems about growing up in Key West.

Greg read “The Homemade Fireworks,” a captivating poem/prose work addressed to a writer friend who was thinking about putting down his pen. (Also: I heartily approve of the student from Memphis who spelled Brownderville with a little wondervillage.) And last but certainly not least, Christopher returned with his guitar to accompany the multi-talented Ricardo, who read a selection of poems—my favorite was the one in which he reminisces about visiting his grandfather, who described distant lightning storms as “heaven taking pictures.”