Join us for another installment of Novel Night, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. And we’ll also have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles. Also worth noting: we’re donating all proceeds from this Novel Night to CASA and Malaria No More.

This month’s Novel Night guests are Maureen Asantewaa and H.R. Young-Lira. Maureen will be reading from her debut novel, Tenth Year in the Sun, and H.R. Young-Lira will also be sharing her debut novel, The Truth About Sunday Minor.

In high school, Maureen Asantewaa dreamt of writing, but it would be over twenty years before she entertained the idea of writing as a career. In the meantime, she began work in Human Resources in Houston and D.C. before eventually moving overseas. There, she experienced many fulfilling moments as she traveled and lived around the world. Later, as Maureen delved into fiction, she made sisterhood and West African culture a recurring theme in her work. She crafts her inspirational literature from her home base in Austin, Texas. Maureen’s debut novel, Tenth Year in the Sun, is a women’s fiction story inspired by her experiences and the connections she made in her life at home and abroad. Maureen describes the novel as being “at the intersection of Women’s Fiction and West African culture.”

H.R. Young-Lira is a Texas writer living east of Austin among the loblollies of Lost Pines Forest. She is shopkeeper of Loblolly Lost, an online bookstore of curated collectibles for the personal library. She graduated from the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at Texas State University. The Truth About Sunday Minor is her first novel.