Malvern Books

The inaugural event in our Everything is Bigger monthly reading series, hosted by Tyler Gobble. To kick things off, we have readings from Dean Young, Blake Lee Pate, and Vincent Scarpa.

Dean Young is the author of more than ten collections of poetry, including most recently, Fall Higher and Bender: New and Selected Poems, as well as a book of prose on poetry, The Art of Recklessness. He is currently the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin. Additionally, he is this year’s Texas State Poet Laureate.

Blake Lee Pate is co-editor of Smoking Glue Gun Magazine and an MFA candidate in poetry in the New Writers Project at the University of Texas, Austin. She is currently the marketing director for Bat City Review. Her work can be found in Forklift, Ohio; elimae; and decomP, among other places.

Vincent Scarpa is a first-year fiction writer at UT’s Michener Center for Writers. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of the 2012 Norman Mailer College Fiction Prize.

Introducing W. Joe’s Poetry Corner! For the inaugural event in this reading series, we have an evening with poet and visual artist David Thornberry. The event will kick off with our host, W. Joe, interviewing David. Next up, David will give a reading, followed by an audience Q&A. David’s artwork will also be on display in the store.

Malvern Books will be exhibiting works from Josh Ronsen’s Tiny Art Exchange, an international art exchange of art between artists. We’ll have a ton of these tiny (less than an inch!) artworks for you to take a look at, so be sure to stop by! (The tiny art pictured below is by Reed Altemus.)

In association with the New Writers Project at the University of Texas, we’re proud to present a reading with poet Michael Teig. Michael is a founding editor of jubilat, and author of the collections Big Back Yard (2003; selected by Stephen Dobyns as winner of the inaugural A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize) and There’s a Box in the Garage You Can Beat with a Stick (2013).

“… Michael Teig maps the mercurial terrain of the imagination with such equipoise you may forget you’re dreaming just as these pages are so soaked with the miraculous everyday, you may forget you’re awake. Imagine getting a letter from a zinnia. Deft as an owl landing in a blossoming cherry tree, these are gorgeously uncanny and regal poems.”—Dean Young, in praise of There’s a Box in the Garage You Can Beat with a Stick

VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities) present an inclusive open mic afternoon for writers and musicians.

Come by Malvern Books for a fun, friendly, low-volume open mic suitable for performers of all ages and abilities!

So nice, we’re doing it twice! (And also: many more times!) This month’s reading will be hosted by the inimitable Tyler Gobble and will feature Claudia Smith, Dan Boehl, and Laurel Hunt.

Claudia Smith grew up in Houston, Texas. Her fiction has appeared in several journals and anthologies over the years, including Nortons’ The New Sudden Fiction: Short Short Stories From America And Beyond and Cinco Puntos/Akashic’s Lone Star Noir. Her collections of short-shorts The Sky is A Well and Put Your Head In My Lap are available from Rose Metal Press and Future Tense Books, respectively; her chapbook The Sky Is Well‘s first printing sold out, but was reprinted in the collection A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness. Her debut collection of short stories, Quarry Light, is now available from Magic Helicopter Press.

Dan Boehl is a founding editor of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry publisher, which put out his book The Kings of the F**king Sea. He helps run the Austin reading series Fun Party.

Laurel Hunt is an MFA candidate at the Michener Center for Writers at UT-Austin. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Smoking Glue Gun; Forklift, Ohio; and Whiskey Island, among other places.

If you’re the cautious type who would like to check out last month’s Bigger fun before you commit, please visit our YouTube channel for footage.

P.S. RAFFLE PRIZES! OH BOY!

For the second installment of W. Joe’s Poetry Corner, we’re delighted to present an evening with Austin poet Cindy St. John. The event will kick off with our host, W. Joe, interviewing Cindy. Next up, Cindy will give a reading from her new chapbook, I Wrote This Poem (forthcoming from Salt Hill), followed by an audience Q&A session.

Cindy St. John holds an MFA from Western Michigan University. She is the author of four chapbooks, including Be The Heat, and her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including H_NGM_N, No Tell Motel, and the Southern Review. She teaches Language Arts at Austin’s Fulmore Middle School and is one of the co-hosts of the Fun Party reading series. In 2013, she was a Millay artist-in-residence.

A reading with poets Peter Streckfus (author of The Cuckoo and Errings) and Rob MacDonald (editor of Sixth Finch).

Peter Streckfus’ debut collection, The Cuckoo, was selected by Louise Glück for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Additional honors include fellowships from the Peter S. Reed Foundation and the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, and two Pushcart Prize nominations. In 2013 he was a Rome Prize Fellow in Literature. His work has been anthologized in numerous collections, including Under the Rock Umbrella: Contemporary American Poets from 1951 to 1977 (2006).

In association with the New Writers Project at the University of Texas, we’re proud to present a reading with poet Noelle Kocot.

Noelle is the author of six poetry collections, including Soul in Space (2013) and The Bigger World (2011), and a book of translations of some of the poems of Tristan Corbière, Poet by Default (2011). Her poems have also been anthologized in numerous editions of The Best American Poetry. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the American Poetry Review, among others, and some of her work recently went to Mars on the spaceship MAVEN. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and currently lives in New Jersey.

“We read all types, we take all types. Aim to keep things light and fun.” Hosted by Jon Meador. Please visit Austin Book Club for more information.

The irrepressible Tyler Gobble hosts our monthly reading series, Everything is Bigger, which features prose and poetry and prizes! This month’s readers are Trey Moody, Nick Courtright, and Thomas Courtney Vance.

Trey Moody is the author of Thought That Nature (Sarabande Books, 2014), selected by Cole Swensen for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2009, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, and Washington Square. He lives in San Marcos, Texas.

Nick Courtright’s second book, Let There Be Light, is out now from Gold Wake Press. Punchline, his 2012 release, was a National Poetry Series finalist. His poetry has also appeared in many literary journals, including The Southern Review, AGNI, Kenyon Review Online, and Boston Review. In Austin, Texas, he is a freelance writing coach who also teaches university-level Creative Writing, Classicism, Romanticism, and Writing for Publication, among other literature and writing courses.

Thomas Courtney Vance’s writing appears or will appear in Revolution House, North American Review, Independent Ink, and Unstuck. She’s a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Finnegans Wake Reading Group of Austin is a monthly get-together to dive into the depths of James Joyce’s greatest, weirdest, and most notorious masterpiece.

The process is to take turns reading aloud from the text, which allows its musicality to flow forth. Then we all discuss our interpretations and the many meanings and themes contained within the selection we’ve read.

We’ll read 2 or 3 pages of the book, depending on how many people are there and how much time we spend discussing the content.

This event is FREE and open to everyone. NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE of Joyce or Finnegans Wake is required, just have an open mind—and be prepared to read aloud in front of strangers.

For more information, please visit the reading group’s website.

A representation of the book’s structure by Bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

We’re proud to present a reading with poets Gary Whited and Dave Oliphant. The evening will also feature jazz from Margaret Slovak and Tony Morris, so be sure to come by at 6.30pm for some excellent live music!

Gary Whited (above left) is a poet, philosopher, and psychotherapist. His poetry collection, Having Listened, won the 2013 Homebound Publications Poetry Contest and is being considered for a Ben Franklin Award. “Farm,” one of the poems from the book, has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including The Aurorean, Salamander, and Comstock Review. He is also a contributing author to a collection of essays in honor of his philosophy teacher, Henry Bugbee, titled Wilderness and the Heart: Henry Bugbee’s Philosophy of Place, Presence, and Memory. He is currently working on a new translation of Parmenides’ On Nature.

Dave Oliphant (above right) is the author of several volumes of poetry, including Memories of Texas Towns & Cities (2000) and Backtracking (2004). He has edited numerous anthologies, written many works of criticism, and is an important scholar of Texas Jazz. His translations include Figures of Speech by Enrique Lihn (1999), Love Hound by Oliver Welden (2006), and After-Dinner Declarations by Nicanor Parra (2008).

Presenting W. Joe’s Poetry Corner, in which our host W. Joe Hoppe interviews a poet, who will then give a reading and answer questions from audience members. For March 2014, W. Joe’s Poetry Corner welcomes Vicente Lozano to the stage. Lozano is a recipient of a postgraduate fellowship from the Michener Center for Writers, and has also participated in Macondo, Sandra Cisneros’ socially engaged writing community. In 2007 Lozano received a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship from The Texas Institute of Letters. The Vermont Studio Center has gifted him with several artist grants.

Lozano’s obsession has been with his family’s Mexican history in South Texas (though thirty years in Austin have, at times, made him an unavoidable watcher of whiteness and its awkward hat dance with an emerging Latino population). Precisely because Race and History are heavy—the gifts that keep on giving™—he escapes into pop culture, satire, and absurdity as often as he can.

By day he keeps computers from crashing. For the past ten years he has been Systems Administrator for The Undergraduate Writing Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

March 29th is Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Awareness Day… come and show your support at Malvern Books with a fun and friendly evening suitable for performers of all ages and abilities!

In association with VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities), we’re delighted to present an inclusive (mic-less) open mic for writers and musicians.

Join Smoking Glue Gun at Malvern Books for a night of readings by Claire Bowman, Meg McKeon, Taisia Kitaiskaia, and Scott Hammer. Smoking Glue Gun will provide refreshments and the new SGG Spring Chapbooks will be for sale!

Claire Bowman was born in the cornfields next to the Missouri river. Her mother raised her in the woods. She is an Assistant Poetry Editor for Bat City Review and an MFA Candidate at the Michener Center for Writers. She sometimes loves it all. There are demons in her heart. They never let up.

Meg McKeon holds an MFA in poetry from The New Writers Project at The University of Texas at Austin. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Ghost Town; H_NGM_N; ILK Journal; Blackbird; Spork Press; LEVELER; and Smoking Glue Gun.

Taisia Kitaiskaia was born in Russia and raised in America. Her poems and translations are forthcoming or have appeared in Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Narrative Magazine, and Poetry International, and she is currently a Michener fellow at the University of Texas in Austin.

Scott Hammer is the author of the poetry chapbook Some Body Some Hollow, forthcoming from Horse Less Press. His writing has appeared in places like Smoking Glue Gun, ILK Journal, La Petite Zine, Noo Weekly, The Baltimore Review, Vector Press and others. He is currently writing in Philadelphia.

The Finnegans Wake Reading Group of Austin is a monthly get-together to dive into the depths of James Joyce’s greatest, weirdest, and most notorious masterpiece.

The process is to take turns reading aloud from the text, which allows its musicality to flow forth. Then we all discuss our interpretations and the many meanings and themes contained within the selection we’ve read.

We’ll read 2 or 3 pages of the book, depending on how many people are there and how much time we spend discussing the content.

This event is FREE and open to everyone. NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE of Joyce or Finnegans Wake is required, just have an open mind—and be prepared to read aloud in front of strangers.

For more information, please visit the reading group’s website.

A representation of the book’s structure by Bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

Join us for an evening with poets Karen Kevorkian and Richard Bailey.

Karen Kevorkian has recently published two poetry collections, Lizard Dream (What Books Press) and White Stucco Black Wing (Red Hen Press). Her poetry and fiction have appeared in several anthologies and journals including Fiction International, Poetry International, Quarterly West, Witness, Volt, Shenandoah, and the Michigan Quarterly, Massachusetts, Antioch, Virginia Quarterly, Agni, Hayden’s Ferry, Los Angeles, and the Mississippi reviews. Educated at the universities of Texas, Virginia, and Utah, she now teaches creative writing in the English department at UCLA and before that in the creative writing program at the University of Virginia. For several years she edited and produced exhibition catalogues for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She has been awarded fellowships from the Wurlitzer, Ucross, Djerassi, and Millay foundations and the MacDowell Colony.

Richard Bailey’s poetry collection REVIVAL was awarded Finalist for the 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award. His poems have appeared in several journals, including The Madison Review, Mudfish, and Whiskey Island Magazine. His play A SHIP OF HUMAN SKIN was a Finalist at Kitchen Dog Theater’s New Works Festival, 2012, and Semifinalist at The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2012, and The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, 2012. His short films have shown in festivals across the country, including SXSW, Black Maria, FOCUS, Social Outcast, Wildcatter Exchange, and at Anthology Film Archives in NYC.

Join us for a reading and celebration as participants of the Free Minds writing workshop and students of the Class of 2014 share their original works of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction.

Members of the Free Minds writing workshop meet over the course of 8 weeks to produce and share writing in a supportive group environment. These workshops are founded on the principle that each person has a unique and powerful voice which deserves to be heard. Our spring workshop has been led by Mary Lavallee, an MFA candidate in UT’s Department of English and an instructor of literature and writing. Students in the Free Minds Class of 2014 will share excerpts from personal narratives, developed with guidance from Project Director Vivé Griffith, poet and graduate of UT’s Michener Center for writers. All are welcome to attend!

Free Minds is a collaboration between Foundation Communities, UT Austin, and ACC which offers educational and creative opportunities to adults who have faced barriers to higher education. To learn more about our free community writing workshops or our two-semester course in humanities, visit Free Minds Austin or call 512.610.7961.

The irrepressible Tyler Gobble hosts our monthly reading series, Everything is Bigger, which features prose and poetry and prizes! This month’s readers are Andrew Zawacki, Laurie Saurborn Young, and Fernando Flores.

“We read all types, we take all types. Aim to keep things light and fun.” Hosted by Jon Meador. Please visit Austin Book Club for more information.

Ivy and the Wicker Suitcase has been described as “an Epic Surreal Ear Movie Musical!” It’s an enchanting illustrated tale told with music, dialogue, and sound effects… think Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but with a distinctly Austin twist!

Join us at Malvern Books for a lively evening of Ivy-related fun. Author Brian Beattie will give a recitation of the “epic” poem, “The Backstory Ballad of Ivy Wire,” and we’ll also feature musical performances and an exhibition of original artwork from the book.

Brian and the book’s illustrator, Valerie Fowler, will also present a “crankie” show, in which a long illustrated scroll is “cranked” along while a song from the musical is played—a sort of a very low tech, handmade video! And you’ll also have a chance to ask questions of the book’s creators, as well as have copies of the book signed.

Brian Beattie and Valerie Fowler live in Austin with their two teenagers, Felix and Ramona Beattie.

We’re celebrating National Poetry Month with a very special edition of W. Joe’s Poetry Corner… it’s poetry karaoke time!

Here’s how poetry karaoke works: you roll a lettered die and then select a poem by a poet whose last name starts with the letter the die landed on—and then you read this poem aloud for everyone to enjoy! (Poems can be chosen from a book on our shelves, or from one of the anthologies we’ll provide.) And there will, of course, be fabulous raffle prizes for a few lucky readers.

Everyone is welcome to take part, but please note that participants can’t read their own poetry—poetry karaoke is all about introducing people to the poems and poets that have inspired you.

2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the original publication of Gertrude Stein’s modernist classic, Tender Buttons. To celebrate this groundbreaking work, poet Daniel Carter has created a puzzle zine based on Tender Buttons. Daniel will be hosting an evening of Tender Buttons fun at Malvern Books, using these puzzles to explore the wit and wisdom of Stein’s masterpiece.

We will also be celebrating the release of City Lights’ new edition of Tender Buttons. This centennial edition is the first version to incorporate Stein’s own handwritten corrections, as well as corrections discovered among her papers at the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

Daniel Carter is a writer, researcher, and designer, and is currently working on a PhD in Information Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Barrelhouse, Nashville Review, and Salt Hill.

In association with VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities), we’re delighted to present an inclusive (mic-less) open mic for writers and musicians. Join us for this fun and friendly afternoon suitable for performers of all ages and abilities!

Footage from previous Lion & Pirate open mic events can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1m7v4L8.

Join us for an evening with poets Nicolas Hundley and Samira Noorali.

Nicolas Hundley is the author of The Revolver in the Hive, published by Fordham University Press and winner of the 2012 Poets Out Loud Editor’s prize. His work has appeared in FIELD, Massachusetts Review, Crazyhorse, New Orleans Review, Gulf Coast, Verse, POOL, LIT, Conduit, Salt Hill, Seattle Review, and others. He attended the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He works and teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.

Samira R. Noorali is an Austin-based writer. She has been published in Poetry Nook Magazine, won awards for appellate advocacy while a Juris Doctor candidate at University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, and has served as a news writer for ITL News. In 2013, she published A Simple Rebirth, an anthology of illustrated poems. Most recently, she has written a play based on A Simple Rebirth, which is set for a June reading with Shunya Theater in Houston.

Hosted by Tyler Gobble and featuring Katherine Noble, Corey Miller, Alen Hamza, W. Joe Hoppe, Tiff Holland, Lisa Olstein, and Tomas Morin.

To close the book on National Poetry Month, Everything is Bigger host Tyler Gobble is throwing a special shindig called Poets Picking Poets. It’s inspired/modeled after that McSweeney’s anthology called Poets Picking Poets, except as a reading.

Here’s how it’s gonna go:

– Two flights of readers, four poets per flight
– Malvern employee Katherine Noble and W. Joe’s Poetry Corner host W. Joe Hoppe were chosen to start each flight
– Each poet picked a poet to follow them
– Each poet will read four poems—one by his/herself, one by someone/anyone else, another by his/herself, and one by the poet they picked

We’re delighted to present an evening with writers Gregory Robinson and Adeena Reitberger.

Gregory Robinson lives in Boulder City, Nevada with his wife Joan and his dog BinBin. He is currently Chair of the Humanities Department at Nevada State College. When he is not writing, he is hiking around the desert, doing iaido, or (of course) watching movies.

Adeena Reitberger was born in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. Her stories and essays have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Mississippi Review, Cimarron Review, Nimrod International Journal, Sierra Nevada Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Austin, Texas, and is the coeditor of American Short Fiction.

Come hear readings from the authors whose work is featured in Hothouse Literary Journal‘s Spring 2014 issue and be the first to get a copy! As the official literary journal of UT’s Undergraduate English Department, Hothouse is a collection of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction written by English majors. Copies of the journal are FREE and there will also be an electronic version released. This is a literature event you won’t want to miss!

The captivating Tyler Gobble hosts our monthly reading series, Everything is Bigger, which features prose and poetry and prizes. This month’s intrepid readers are Tim Earley, Jess Stoner, and Will Clark.

The Finnegans Wake Reading Group of Austin is a monthly get-together to dive into the depths of James Joyce’s greatest, weirdest, and most notorious masterpiece.

The process is to take turns reading aloud from the text, which allows its musicality to flow forth. Then we all discuss our interpretations and the many meanings and themes contained within the selection we’ve read.

We’ll read 2 or 3 pages of the book, depending on how many people are there and how much time we spend discussing the content.

This event is FREE and open to everyone. NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE of Joyce or Finnegans Wake is required, just have an open mind—and be prepared to read aloud in front of strangers.

For more information, please visit the reading group’s website.

A representation of the book’s structure by Bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

Join us for an afternoon with novelist Larry Brill, a twenty-five-year veteran of TV news and former Austin TV news anchor. Larry will sign copies of his latest novel, The Patterer, a comic odyssey through the world of 18th-century London trash journalism, but based on Brill’s 20th-century experiences in the business. Along with a reading by one of the characters in his novel, Larry will be joined by Austin’s own Next Chapter Improv Group. The actors will call on writers in the audience to read a single page from their own work and then create a comedy sketch on the spot based on that reading.

Larry Brill spent twenty-five years as a television news anchor and reporter in four states, picking up numerous awards along the way. After leaving the business in 2000, Larry penned his first novel, Live At Five, a gentle lampooning of the TV news business. His second novel, The Patterer, carried that theme back in time, to imagine the hilarious possibilities of how today’s news clichés might look to a theater audience in 18th-century London.

Larry was crowned the “Worst Writer in America” twenty years ago as the winner of a tongue-in-cheek competition to intentionally write the WORST opening sentence to an imaginary novel based on that famous line “It was a Dark and Stormy Night….” The small amount of fame that followed gave him a new goal: with two books published and inching towards the bestseller list, he has set his sights on becoming the first author to officially go from worst to first.

The Next Chapter Improv is a group of twelve gifted actors from around the country now living in Austin. Their weekly performances received rave reviews during the 2013 season at The Institution Theater, and the recent Improv Play Festival. The concept is simple: a published author reads a short segment from his or her book, and based only on that, the actors create a sketch to advance the story in any way they see fit.

Presenting W. Joe’s Poetry Corner, in which our host W. Joe Hoppe interviews a poet, who will then give a reading and answer questions from audience members. This month, Joe will play host to poet Cindy Huyser. Cindy’s poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Tri-State University TriAngle, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, GrrlTalk: An Anthology of Writing by the Austin WriterGrrls, and San Pedro River Review. She co-edited the Texas Poetry Calendar from 2008 through 2013, and has read her work at a number of venues across Texas.

In association with VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities), we’re delighted to present an inclusive (mic-less) open mic for writers and musicians. Join us for this fun and friendly evening suitable for performers of all ages and abilities!

Footage from previous Lion & Pirate open mic events can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1m7v4L8.

Join us for an evening with writers Lowell Mick White and Ken Fontenot. Be sure to come by at 6.30pm for live music from TOPSY; the reading will begin around 7pm.

Lowell Mick White is the author of two novels, Professed and That Demon Life, and a story collection, Long Time Ago Good. Awarded the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters, White lived in Austin for twenty-five years, at various times working as a cab driver, as a shade tree salesman, and as an Internal Revenue Service bureaucrat. Formerly NEA Artist-in-Residence at the federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, he is currently Assistant Professor of English at Pittsburg State University, where he teaches creative writing and literature.

Ken Fontenot has an MA in German Language and Literature from UT Austin. His most recent book of poems, In a Kingdom of Birds, won the 2013 Texas Institute of Letters award for best book of poems. His novel came out in 2010 from Slough Press. It’s called For Mr. Raindrinker.

Join us for a reading to celebrate the launch of the latest issue of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review! Featuring keynote poet Laurie Ann Guerrero (winner of the 2012 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize and author of the collection A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying), along with writers Ken Fontenot, Jonathan Moody, Anis Shivani, Scott Wiggerman, and Steve Wilson. We’ll also showcase work from photographer Joel Salcido, whose current touring exhibit is “Aliento A Tequila.” Southern funk band Westgate Revival will open the program with blues and jazz.

Join us for an evening with writers Lauren Becker, Josh Denslow, and Tyler Gobble. Lauren will read from her new short story collection, If I Would Leave Myself Behind, and sign copies of the book.

Lauren Becker recently moved to Austin from Oakland, California. She has worked as an attorney, a health care policy analyst and advocate, a freelance writer, and a disability specialist. Her fiction has appeared at Tin House online, Hobart, the Los Angeles Review, Pedestal Magazine, Wigleaf, [PANK], and NANO Fiction. Her non-fiction has been featured on The Rumpus and The Nervous Breakdown. She is editor of the online literary journal, Corium Magazine.

Josh Denslow’s stories have appeared in Third Coast, Black Clock, Cutbank, Pear Noir!, and Wigleaf, among others. He is a staff editor at SmokeLong Quarterly and an Associate Editor at Unstuck. He has written and directed five short films, and he plays the drums in the band Borrisokane.

Tyler Gobble is a proud Hoosier in Austin, TX. He runs the Everything is Bigger reading series at Malvern Books, and his first book will be out from Coconut Books in the fall. He likes bacon, disc golf, and tank tops, in no particular order. More at tylergobble.com.

“We read all types, we take all types. Aim to keep things light and fun.” Hosted by Jon Meador. Please visit Austin Book Club for more information.

The Finnegans Wake Reading Group of Austin is a monthly get-together to dive into the depths of James Joyce’s greatest, weirdest, and most notorious masterpiece.

The process is to take turns reading aloud from the text, which allows its musicality to flow forth. Then we all discuss our interpretations and the many meanings and themes contained within the selection we’ve read.

We’ll read 2 or 3 pages of the book, depending on how many people are there and how much time we spend discussing the content.

This event is FREE and open to everyone. NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE of Joyce or Finnegans Wake is required, just have an open mind—and be prepared to read aloud in front of strangers.

For more information, please visit the reading group’s website.

A representation of the book’s structure by Bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

Texas Association of Authors celebrates the winners of their third annual Book Awards Contest with a weekend of readings at Malvern Books.

Saturday’s Reading Schedule:

• 1.15pm—Myra Hargrave McIlvain, author of Stein House (General Fiction winner)
• 2.15pm—Jedah Mayberry, author of The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle (Multi-Cultural Fiction winner)
• 3.15pm—Robert Stevens, author of Master Robert (Civil War Historical Fiction winner)
• 4.15pm—R. Flowers Rivera, author of Troubling Accents (Poetry winner)

Texas Association of Authors celebrates the winners of their third annual Book Awards Contest with a weekend of readings at Malvern Books.

Sunday’s Reading Schedule:

• 1.15pm—Elizabeth A. Garcia, author of One Bloody Shirt at a Time (Police/Crime Fiction winner)
• 2.15pm—Howard Webb, author of Loup Garou (Supernatural Fiction winner)
• 3.15pm—Marjorie Brody, author of Twisted (Young Adult Fiction winner)
• 4.15pm—L. A. Starks, author of Strike Price (Mystery/Thriller Fiction winner)
• 5.15pm—Kenneth Womack, author of Playing the Angel (Contemporary Fiction winner)

W. Joe is back for another round of poetry karaoke!

Here’s how it works: you roll a lettered die and then select a poem by a poet whose last name starts with the letter the die landed on—and then you read this poem aloud for everyone to enjoy! (Poems can be chosen from a book on our shelves, or from one of the anthologies we’ll provide.) And there will, of course, be fabulous raffle prizes for a few lucky readers.

Everyone is welcome to take part, but please note that participants can’t read their own poetry—poetry karaoke is all about introducing people to the poems and poets that have inspired you.

Join us for the launch of All the Unspeakable Things, a collection of poetry and shorter pieces by Marty Lloyd Woldman.

Marty Woldman is a Texas-born writer, performer and philosopher. Traveling far beyond his native borders, he has spent his entire life writing, wandering and performing, and will spend the rest of his life doing the same. Marty has been featured in publications ranging from innovative indie rag Raw Paw to the Texas capital staples The Austin Chronicle and Austin Daze. Austin’s world-renowned performance venues (Emos, Red Eyed Fly, Ruta Maya) have been his forge and witnessed his fury for more than a decade as a spoken-word host, feature and walk-on performer.

The works of Marty Woldman are honest to absurdity, cohesively surreal, and just as blissfully contradictory as the man. His words present an influence of the masters delivered with a flawless lack of pretension, finely honed by real-world grit.

Join us for an evening with noir writers Tom Zigal and Rod Davis. They will be sharing work from their recent New Orleans-based novels: Rod Davis will read from South, America and Tom Zigal will read from Many Rivers to Cross. There will also be live music from Americana roots duo Mark Viator and Susan Maxey. Music starts at 6.30pm; the readings will begin around 7pm.

Tom Zigal (above left) was born in Galveston, Texas, in 1948 and grew up in nearby Texas City. He attended high school in Louisiana and received degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and Stanford University. He has been publishing short stories, reviews, and essays for forty years, and he is the author of three popular crime novels featuring Kurt Muller as the sheriff of Aspen, Colorado. He has completed two novels of a trilogy-in-progress set in New Orleans—The White League and Many Rivers to Cross, which won the 2014 Jesse Jones Award for Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters. Zigal lives in Austin with his wife and stepchildren.

Rod Davis (above right) was the recipient of the fiction award in the 2005 PEN Southwest Book Awards for Corina’s Way. Davis is also the author of American Voudou: Journey into a Hidden World, a study of West African religion in the United States. A six-part series on the Texas-Mexico border, “A Rio Runs Through It,” appears in Best American Travel Writing 2002, and his PEN/Texas-award-winning essay, “The Fate of the Texas Writer,” is included in Fifty Years of the Texas Observer. His most recent novel, South, America, has been described as “a triumph of Southern noir” and compared to the works of James M. Cain and Mickey Spillane. Davis is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, PEN Center USA, and the National Book Critics Circle. National professional honors have included a fellowship at the Yaddo Colony, a Lowell Thomas Award (Bronze) for personal commentary on post-Katrina New Orleans, and Gold and Silver Awards for feature writing from the City/Regional Magazine Association (CRMA). He has taught writing at the University of Texas at Austin and Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

In association with VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities), we’re delighted to present an inclusive (mic-less) open mic for writers and musicians. Join us for this fun and friendly evening suitable for performers of all ages and abilities!

Footage from previous Lion & Pirate open mic events can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1m7v4L8.

Join us for an afternoon with Sarah Stark, author of the novel Out There. Sarah will give a reading, answer questions, and sign copies of the book.

Out There is the story of a young Army veteran of Native descent (Jefferson Long Soldier) who returns home safely to New Mexico after two tours of duty in Iraq convinced that the book he carried with him (One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez) saved his life. But when he can’t get the medical care he needs to heal from the dark memories of war, he borrows his cousin’s motorcycle and rides south across the border to Mexico in search of the famous writer behind the magic of the life- saving classic novel. Humorous, redemptive, and awash in magical realism, Out There exalts the process of healing, the power of literature and the very real possibility of hope and love emerging from tragedy. It is also a beautiful homage to García Márquez, who recently passed away at the age of 87.

Sarah Stark grew up in the Austin, Texas area among readers and teachers and football enthusiasts. After graduating cum laude with a B.A. in Foreign Service from Baylor University, she earned an M.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. Afterwards she worked as a foreign policy analyst in Washington, D.C., writing about international security issues, including nuclear nonproliferation and peacekeeping. For the last fourteen years Sarah has made her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she currently teaches literature and creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA).

Join us for an evening with writers Pam Jones and Kelly Luce.

Pam Jones (left) is an East Coast native, now planting her roots in Austin, Texas with her husband and cat. She studied Creative Writing at Hampshire College, and has held down a variety of jobs, at YMCAs, at an art gallery, even as an artists’ model. Her writing has appeared in Otoliths e-magazine as Pam Hopkins. The Biggest Little Bird is her first novel.

Kelly Luce (right) grew up in Brookfield, Illinois. After graduating from Northwestern University with a degree in cognitive science, she moved to Japan, where she lived and worked for three years. Her work has been recognized by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Ragdale Foundation, the Kerouac Project, and Jentel Arts, and has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, and other magazines. She lives in Santa Cruz, California, and Austin, Texas, where she is a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas and fiction editor of Bat City Review. Her first book, the short story collection Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail, will be released shortly.

The Finnegans Wake Reading Group of Austin is a monthly get-together to dive into the depths of James Joyce’s greatest, weirdest, and most notorious masterpiece.

The process is to take turns reading aloud from the text, which allows its musicality to flow forth. Then we all discuss our interpretations and the many meanings and themes contained within the selection we’ve read.

We’ll read 2 or 3 pages of the book, depending on how many people are there and how much time we spend discussing the content.

This event is FREE and open to everyone. NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE of Joyce or Finnegans Wake is required, just have an open mind—and be prepared to read aloud in front of strangers.

For more information, please visit the reading group’s website.

A representation of the book’s structure by Bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

“We read all types, we take all types. Aim to keep things light and fun.” Hosted by Jon Meador. Please visit Austin Book Club for more information.

Join us for an evening with acclaimed poets Marcela Sulak and Jenny Browne.

Marcela Sulak is the author of Immigrant (Black Lawrence Press, 2010) and the chapbook Of All the Things that Don’t Exist, I Love You Best (Finishing Line Press, 2008). She has translated three collections of poetry: by Karel Hynek Macha, K.J. Erben, and Mutombo Nkulu-N’Sengha. She is co-editor of Family Resemblances: An Anthology and Exploration of Eight Hybrid Literary Forms (forthcoming from Rose Metal Press). She is also an editor of The Ilanot Review and Tupelo Quarterly, and hosts the weekly TLV1 radio show “Israel in Translation.” Her essays have appeared in the Iowa Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Rattle, among others. She is currently the Director of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University.

Jenny Browne is the author of three collections of poems: At Once, The Second Reason, and Dear Stranger. Recent poems and essays have appeared in numerous venues, including American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, The New York Times, Tin House and Zocalo Public Square. A former James Michener Fellow at the University of Texas-Austin, she is the recipient of two Texas Writers League Fellowships and a 2012-13 NEA Literature Fellowship. For many years she worked as poet in residence for the Texas Commission on the Arts, and with the University of Iowa’s International Writers Program. She currently lives in downtown San Antonio, Texas, and teaches at Trinity University.

In association with VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities), we’re delighted to present an inclusive (mic-less) open mic for writers and musicians. Join us for this fun and friendly evening suitable for performers of all ages and abilities!

Footage from previous Lion & Pirate open mic events can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1m7v4L8.

Join us for an evening of readings with visiting poets Joshua Marie Wilkinson and Zach Schomburg.

Zachary Schomburg (above right) is the author of The Man Suit; Scary, No Scary; Fjords Vol. I, and The Book of Joshua (all from Black Ocean). He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he runs Octopus Books and the Bad Blood Series.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson’s recent books are Meadow Slasher, The Courier’s Archive & Hymnal, Swamp Isthmus, and Selenography (all from Black Ocean and Sidebrow Books). He lives in Tucson, where he edits The Volta and Letter Machine Editions and teaches poetry at the University of Arizona.

Mathias Svalina is the author of three books: Destruction Myth, I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur, and The Explosions. Big Lucks Books will publish his book Wastoid this fall. He is a co-editor for Octopus Books and teaches writing in universities, community centers, and prisons in Denver.

Join us in celebrating the release of Next Stop, Heaven, the third book in Ron Jaeger’s
Trilogy of Light series. Ron will be joined by Austin poet Jan Marquart, founder of the About The Author Network.

Ron Jaeger wrote the three novels of the Trilogy of Light (The Secret of the Bermuda Triangle; Sharing a Man; and Next Stop, Heaven) over five years—but it was only after he had published the second novel that he realized he had written an unintended trilogy. One theme in particular runs through all three novels: We all have genius, inner light, but we seldom bring it out in creative acts because we have been bludgeoned into conformity.

Jan Marquart is a psychotherapist and author of eleven books. She believes in the power of personal story and helps those who come to her uncover, discover, and recover from personal narratives. Jan has a private practice in Austin and is CEO and Founder of About the Author Network, which helps those interested in writing keep their pens moving. Jan also teaches writing classes for Story Circle Network and has published essays, poems, stories, and articles for in print and online publications.

Join us for an evening with writers Harold Whit Williams and David Longoria. We’ll kick things off at 7pm with music from Harold and Jon Bookout, followed by readings from Harold and David.

Harold Whit Williams is guitarist for the critically acclaimed rock band Cotton Mather. He is recipient of the Mississippi Review’s 2014 Poetry Prize, and his newest collection, Backmasking, is winner of the 2013 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize from Texas Review Press. His first collection, Waiting For The Fire To Go Out, is available from Finishing Line Press, and his poems have appeared in numerous literary journals.

David Longoria was born in Houston, Texas. He is a singer, songwriter, and poet living in Austin, Texas. Influenced by the songs of Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, Hank Williams, etc., Longoria plays guitar and harmonica. In 2002 Longoria formed The Black, a country rock band performing with as few as two and as many as ten members. He has performed or toured with the Trail of Dead, Yo La Tengo, James Hand, Deertick, Fiery Furnaces, Joe Ely, Shiva’s Headband, The Sword, and Voxtrot.

“We read all types, we take all types. Aim to keep things light and fun.” Hosted by Jon Meador. Please visit Austin Book Club for more information.

Join us for an evening with writers Samuel Snoek-Brown and Zoë Miller.

Samuel Snoek-Brown writes and teaches in Portland, Oregon. He also works as production editor for Jersey Devil Press. His work has appeared in Bartleby Snopes, Ampersand Review, Fiction Circus, Eunoia Review, Red Fez, SOL: English Writing in Mexico, and others. He’s the author of the flash fiction chapbook Box Cutters, and of the novel Hagridden, for which he received a 2013 Oregon Literary Fellowship.

Zoë Miller grew up in Los Angeles. She received her BA in Liberal Arts from The New School University in New York City as a Riggio Honors Fellow, and completed her MFA in Fiction at the University of Minnesota. Her short stories have appeared in 12^th Street, Front Porch, and Fields Magazine. She lives in Austin, Texas.

The Finnegans Wake Reading Group of Austin is a monthly get-together to dive into the depths of James Joyce’s greatest, weirdest, and most notorious masterpiece.

The process is to take turns reading aloud from the text, which allows its musicality to flow forth. Then we all discuss our interpretations and the many meanings and themes contained within the selection we’ve read.

We’ll read 2 or 3 pages of the book, depending on how many people are there and how much time we spend discussing the content.

This event is FREE and open to everyone. NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE of Joyce or Finnegans Wake is required, just have an open mind—and be prepared to read aloud in front of strangers.

For more information, please visit the reading group’s website.

A representation of the book’s structure by Bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

In association with VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities), we’re delighted to present an inclusive (mic-less) open mic for writers and musicians. Join us for this fun and friendly evening suitable for performers of all ages and abilities!

Footage from previous Lion & Pirate open mic events can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1m7v4L8.

Join us for an evening with writers Eric Shonkwiler, Ray Shea, and special guests.

Eric Shonkwiler (above left) has had writing appear in Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, Fiddleblack, [PANK] Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere. He received his MFA in Fiction from University of California-Riverside, where he was the recipient of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellowship Award, and is the Regional Editor for Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as a former reader for [PANK] and former Editor-in-Chief and fiction editor for CRATE: The Literary Journal of UCR. He is the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel, Above All Men, a 2014 Midwest Connections Pick released in March from MG Press. Critics have called Above All Men “sparse and poetic” (Frank Bill) and “stark and plainspokenly honest” (Sundog Lit), and have said it “weaves a compelling narrative together with tightly written prose that makes the realities of the post-collapse society profoundly acute” (CCLaP).

A native of Boston and New Orleans and a graduate of Rice University, Ray Shea (above right) has lived in Austin for most of the last two decades. His writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Hobart, apt, Sundog Lit, Fourteen Hills, and elsewhere. His essay “Forensic Biography and the Art of the Screenwriter” was recently a finalist for the Phoebe 2014 Annual Creative Nonfiction award judged by Cheryl Strayed. He is currently at work on a collection of personal essays and a book-length memoir about fatherhood, violence, addiction, and memory, and writes poetry in his spare time.

We’re having an all-day party to celebrate the 100th birthday of world-renowned Chilean (anti)poet Nicanor Parra!

Here’s a taste of what we’ll be doing to mark this grand centenary:

• Starting at noon, guests will be giving readings from Chilean writers every half an hour
• There’ll be an opportunity for you to share your favorite Parra poems
• From 7pm onwards, we’ll host a reading and discussion with poet and Parra translator Dave Oliphant, who has many tales to tell about his interactions with the great man
• Cake and refreshments with the program at 7pm

Nicanor Parra is hugely popular in his native Chile, and many consider him to be one of the most significant poets of Spanish-language poetry—Pablo Neruda called him “one of the great names in the literature of our language.” Parra has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 2011 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world. Despite his fame as a poet, Parra kept up his “day job” as a professor of theoretical physics until his retirement in 1991. Parra describes himself as an “anti-poet,” someone who disdains any hint of poetic grandiosity. He shuns poetic convention in favor of playful, conversational musings, and his verse is full of raucous wit and humor. Stop by Malvern Books to celebrate his happy 100th and learn more about this wonderful poet!

Join us for the inaugural shindig in a new monthly series, the Raw Paw reading series.

Raw Paw was founded in Austin, Texas, in 2010. Here’s what they have to say about this awesome new series:

In our larval stages, Raw Paw was a weekly poetry potluck where writers would share wine and words. We are so pleased to be returning to our root with our new poetry imprint: Mind Maze. Mind Maze will be released every month and showcase 20 poems by one of Austin’s best; all wrapped in a patterned, screen-printed cover designed by Nicole Carleton.

To debut this imprint we will be releasing the first book of the series, Bluenote, by revered Austin poet David Jewell. The event will include a reading by five very gifted writers and future Mind Maze poets: Ed Buffaloe, A.R., Jonathon Lowell, Brandy Ingram, and Paula Mendoza. Join us in this literary synergy of events and publications!

Join us for an evening with authors Henry Chappell and James Magnuson. We’ll kick things off at 7pm with live music from Americana roots duo Mark Viator and Susan Maxey; the readings will follow.

Henry Chappell is a field reporter for The Land Report and writes a regular column for Texas Wildlife. He has been a full-time freelance writer since 1997. His first novel, The Callings, was a 2003 Spur Award finalist in the Western Writers of America “best first novel” category, and his second, Blood Kin, was a finalist for the same award in 2005 for the “novel of the west” category, as well as runner-up for the TCU Texas Book Award. His most recent book, Silent We Stood, won the 2014 Western Writers of America Spur Award for best historical novel.

James Magnuson is the author of nine novels, including Famous Writers I Have Known, Ghost Dancing, and Windfall. He has also written more than a dozen plays that have received productions everywhere from the street theaters of Harlem in the Sixties to Lincoln Center and Playwrights Horizons. He has been a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, winner of an NEA grant for his fiction, and for twenty-one years has been the Director of the Michener Center for Writers.

Bigger is back! The captivating Tyler Gobble hosts our monthly reading series, Everything is Bigger, which features prose and poetry and prizes. This month’s intrepid readers are Lisa Olstein, Dobby Gibson, Sam Sax, and Deb Olin Unferth.

The Finnegans Wake Reading Group of Austin is a monthly get-together to dive into the depths of James Joyce’s greatest, weirdest, and most notorious masterpiece.

The process is to take turns reading aloud from the text, which allows its musicality to flow forth. Then we all discuss our interpretations and the many meanings and themes contained within the selection we’ve read.

We’ll read 2 or 3 pages of the book, depending on how many people are there and how much time we spend discussing the content.

This event is FREE and open to everyone. NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE of Joyce or Finnegans Wake is required, just have an open mind—and be prepared to read aloud in front of strangers.

For more information, please visit the reading group’s website.

A representation of the book’s structure by Bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

“We read all types, we take all types. Aim to keep things light and fun.” Hosted by Jon Meador. Please visit Austin Book Club for more information.

Join us for an afternoon with poets Sarah Webb, David Meischen, and Carol Hamilton.

Sarah Webb edited poetry for twelve years for Crosstimbers (University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma). She co-edits the Zen arts magazine Just This for the Austin Zen Center and serves on the editorial committee of All Roads Will Lead You Home. Her work is currently appearing in A Ritual to Read to Each Other: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford, The Enigmatist, Blue Hole, Persimmon Tree, Pushing the Envelope: Epistolary Poems, Portland State ReadAround (KPSU.org), and The Texas Poetry Calendar. Her collection Black (Virtual Artists Collective, 2013) was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award.

David Meischen has been writing poetry and teaching the writing of poetry for thirty years. He has had poems in The Southern Review, Southern Poetry Review, Borderlands, Cider Press Review, and other journals, as well as Two Southwests (Virtual Artists Collective, 2008), which features poets from the Southwest of China and the United States. Meischen has participated in four collaborative poetry and art shows, most recently Ekphrasis: Sacred Stories of the Southwest (Phoenix, AZ, Obliq Art, 2014). Also a fiction writer, Meischen has recent stories in The Gettysburg Review, Bellingham Review, The Evansville Review, and elsewhere. Winner of the Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest in Mainstream Fiction, 2011, and the Talking Writing Fiction Contest, 2012, he has finished a novel in stories and is currently seeking an agent. Meischen is a co-founder and Managing Editor of Dos Gatos Press; he lives in Austin, TX, with his husband—also his co-publisher and co-editor—Scott Wiggerman.

Carol Hamilton is a former elementary school teacher in Connecticut, Indiana and Oklahoma, the last twelve years in a school for gifted children. She taught in the English departments of a community college and on the graduate faculty at The University of Central Oklahoma. She has been a translator at a clinic for women and children for 20 years and translates for medical teams to Latino countries. She received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Central Oklahoma in 2007. She has published 16 books: children’s novels, legends, and poetry. She has won a Southwest Book Award, an Oklahoma Book Award, Cherubim Award, Chiron Review Chapbook Award, Pegasus Award, David Ray Poetry Prize, the Byline Literary Awards for both short story and poetry, and the Warren Keith Poetry Prize. She is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize. She has a soon-to-be-released book of poetry titled SUCH DEATHS.

Presenting W. Joe’s Poetry Corner, in which our host W. Joe Hoppe interviews a poet, who will then give a reading and answer questions from audience members. This month, Joe will play host to Lyman Grant: poet, intrepid traveler, and the Dean of Arts & Humanities of Austin Community College.

Lyman is the author of three volumes of poetry, one chapbook, and two textbooks. He has also edited two books relating to Texas literature. His articles and essays have appeared in the Texas Observer, Texas Humanist, Texas Books and Review, Dallas Morning News, and Langdon Review, among others. Lyman recently returned to Austin after spending a year on the road visiting 47 states with his family in a 34-foot RV.

Join the editors at Revista Pterodáctilo, a journal of Latin American literature, arts, and culture, for tamales and a bilingual poetry reading. The reading will feature poets Ignacio Carvajal and Christina Marie Lancastar. This event is free & open to the public. Sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Program in Comparative Literature at UT Austin, and held in conjunction with the GRACLS conference.

In association with VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities), we’re delighted to present an inclusive (mic-less) open mic for writers and musicians. Join us for this fun and friendly evening suitable for performers of all ages and abilities!

Footage from previous Lion & Pirate open mic events can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1m7v4L8.

In honor of Banned Books Week, we’re teaming up with the Media Law Resource Center to host a discussion on censorship’s effects on First Amendment rights.

The Censorship Presentation touches upon various types of regulation and censorship relating to both everyday individuals and the press, discussing schools, universities, online issues, television, radio and international variations. This presentation will be given by lawyer Stacy Allen, a partner at Jackson Walker, and will also include an overview of Banned Books Week, including the event’s history and some more recent well-known challenges to books. There will be an opportunity for an audience Q&A following the talk.

Join us for an evening with poets Timothy Donnelly and Cecily Parks.

Timothy Donnelly is the author of Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit (Grove, 2003) and The Cloud Corporation (Wave, 2010; Picador, 2011), winner of the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His chapbook Hymn to Life was recently published by Factory Hollow Press and with John Ashbery and Geoffrey G. O’Brien he is the co-author of Three Poets, published by Minus A Press in 2012. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fence, Harper’s, Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of The Paris Review’s Bernard F. Conners Prize and the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, as well as fellowships from the New York State Writers Institute and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He is the poetry editor of Boston Review and teaches in the Writing Program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

Cecily Parks’s first collection of poems, Field Folly Snow, was a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award. Her second collection, O’Nights, will be published by Alice James Books in April. She lives in Austin and teaches at Texas State University.

Join us for an afternoon of readings with poets Scott Wiggerman, Elizabeth Raby, and Joyce Gullickson.

Scott Wiggerman is the author of two books of poetry, Presence and Vegetables and Other Relationships, and the editor of several volumes, including Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry, Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga, and the brand new Wingbeats II. Recent poems have appeared in Decades Review, Frogpond, Pinyon Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and the anthologies This Assignment Is So Gay, Forgetting Home: Poems about Alzheimer’s, and The Queer South. He is chief editor for Dos Gatos Press in Austin, Texas, publisher of the Texas Poetry Calendar, now in its seventeenth year.

Elizabeth Raby is the author of a four-generation memoir in prose and poetry, Ransomed Voices (Red Mountain Press, 2013), three full-length poetry collections, including This Woman (finalist for a 2013 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award), and four chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in many journals and several anthologies. She received the Elmer Kelton Award for poetry from Angelo State University in 2010. Raby has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, since 2000. She was a poet-in-the-schools for the New Jersey and Pennsylvania arts councils and received her MA (Creative Writing) from Temple University.

Joyce Gullickson is a registered nurse and poet whose poems and chapbooks attempt to connect us, and wake us up to the world in all of its beauty. She co-edits The Enigmatist and Blue Hole. Her poems have appeared in The Map of Austin, Di-verse-City, Sunscripts and the San Antonio Express News. Her chapbooks include Against All Odds, What If, and Who’s Keeping Count.

It’s Harvey Pekar’s 75th birthday! He’s not around to enjoy it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate the life of this writer, jazz critic, inspiration, and all around Fine American.

Party MC’s W. Joe Hoppe, Kathy McCarty, and David Thornberry will be reading his comix, sharing reminiscences, spinning his greatest hits, and serving birthday cake!

Opening day seems like it was only yesterday, but in fact Malvern Books turns one this week! And we’re kicking off three days of birthday celebrations with something rather appropriate: a reading from UT Austin’s 1st year MFA students—hey, they’ve been immersed in literature for one year, too!

B & C Book Club has been with us since we first opened our doors, so it’s only appropriate that they meet to discuss Macbeth on the weekend of our first anniversary!

“We read all types, we take all types. Aim to keep things light and fun.” Hosted by Jon Meador. Please visit Austin Book Club for more information.

We’re celebrating Malvern Books’ first anniversary this weekend, and we’re doing it in fine style, with music, readings, food, prizes and cake! Come and join the fun!

This evening we’ll have classical guitar from Tony Morris, along with readings from W. Joe Hoppe, Kurt Heinzelman, and Richard Sober (who will also be displaying his artwork).

Kurt Heinzelman is a poet, translator, scholar, and editor. His latest book of poems, his fourth, is Intimacies & Other Devices (2013). Demarcations (2011) is his translation of Jean Follain’s 1953 volume of poetry Territoires. A scholarly article, “The Grail of Origin: Translation and Originality,” is forthcoming in The Writers’ Chronicle. He was founding co-editor of The Poetry Miscellany and is currently Advisor and Editor-at-Large for Bat City Review and Editor-in-Chief of Texas Studies in Literature and Language (TSLL). He is also an Honorary Professor at Swansea University (Wales).

Richard Sober has been painting and writing since he was fifteen. Sober’s checkered career includes work as a carpenter’s helper, mailroom clerk, cabdriver, messenger, dishwasher, line cook, housepainter, gardener’s helper, census field supervisor, bibiliographic searcher, caregiver, union steward, data entry clerk, warehouseman, and harm reduction specialist. He is the author of Chopin Express, Anything With a Hole In It, Rosewood-The Serpentine Nature of the Beast-Four Windowboxes, Correo Aereo, Because the House is Wild and Empty, and Adjusting to the Light. He is currently working on two manuscripts of poems, Borrowed Earth and Fictive Kin. This December he will have a solo exhibition of 350 paintings in Baltimore. Sober and Sandie Castle can be heard on a spiken word CD, Missing in Action, produced by Birdhouse Studios.

We’re celebrating Malvern Books’ first anniversary this weekend, and we’re doing it in fine style, with music, readings, food, prizes and cake! Come and join the fun!

This afternoon we have honky-tonk cabaret from TOPSY, a reading and book signing with Dr. Fred McGhee (author of Austin’s Montopolis Neighborhood), and a reading and screening of two short films from poet and film maker Richard Bailey.

Fred L. McGhee, Ph.D. is Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology at Austin Community College and served as the founding president of the Montopolis Neighborhood Association. Also a former board member of the Austin History Center Association, he has combined historical photographs with personal photographs and images generously provided by longtime residents and friends of the Montopolis neighborhood. A specialist in the multicultural history of Texas and Hawai’i, he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently a candidate for the Austin City Council from District 3, which includes Montopolis.

Richard Bailey’s poetry collection REVIVAL was awarded Finalist for the 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award. His poems have appeared in several journals, including The Madison Review, Mudfish, and Whiskey Island Magazine. His play A SHIP OF HUMAN SKIN was a Finalist at Kitchen Dog Theater’s New Works Festival, 2012, and Semifinalist at The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2012, and The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, 2012. His short films have shown in festivals across the country, including SXSW, Black Maria, FOCUS, Social Outcast, Wildcatter Exchange, and at Anthology Film Archives in NYC.

Join us for the Raw Paw reading series, which celebrates the release of a new issue of their poetry imprint, Mind Maze. This month’s release is Tiny Nothing, from poet A.R. Rogers. Tiny Nothing is A.R. Rogers’ first chapbook. As the title suggests, the work focuses on the smaller events of our lives: the love of a house plant, mourning a dead moth, an act of kindness, breakfast, and the goings-on of an imagination. Each poem arrives lightly on the page, their images left to linger in a corner of the reader’s mind. Despite a concentration on the author’s personal and mundane experience, the collection points toward something larger. The poet’s use of the shifting nature of free verse complements the emotional undertone of Tiny Nothing.

The event will include readings from A.R., Ken Fontenot, Brandy Ingram, and Margery Segal. With Master of Ceremonies David Jewell. Come along and enjoy this literary synergy of events and publications!

Raw Paw was founded in Austin, Texas, in 2010. Their new poetry title, Mind Maze, is released every month and showcases twenty poems by one of Austin’s best—all wrapped in a patterned, screen-printed cover designed by Nicole Carleton.

The Finnegans Wake Reading Group of Austin is a monthly get-together to dive into the depths of James Joyce’s greatest, weirdest, and most notorious masterpiece.

The process is to take turns reading aloud from the text, which allows its musicality to flow forth. Then we all discuss our interpretations and the many meanings and themes contained within the selection we’ve read.

We’ll read 2 or 3 pages of the book, depending on how many people are there and how much time we spend discussing the content.

This event is FREE and open to everyone. NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE of Joyce or Finnegans Wake is required, just have an open mind—and be prepared to read aloud in front of strangers.

For more information, please visit the reading group’s website.

A representation of the book’s structure by Bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

Join us for a reading to celebrate the launch of the latest issue of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review! Featuring keynote poet Sasha West, with Christian Rees, Sam Sax, Shonna Skarda, and David Meischen.

Sasha West’s first book, Failure and I Bury the Body (Harper Perennial), won the National Poetry Series and the Texas Institute of Letters First Book of Poetry Award. It was also featured in the Poets & Writers emerging poets issue. Her work has appeared in The Southern Review, Ninth Letter, Forklift Ohio, Born, and elsewhere. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she teaches writing at the University of Texas’s LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Christian Rees is an alumnus of Loyola University of Maryland’s writing program. He has been published online in JMWW, Row Home Lit, Pithead Chapel, and Permafrost Review and his poem “The Bone House” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He divides his time in Texas working as a literacy advocate, in prisoner outreach, and running long distances.

Sam Sax is a Fellow at The Michener Center for Writers and the associate poetry editor for Bat City Review. He’s the author of the chapbooks, A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters (Button 2014), and sad boy / detective (Winner of the 2014 Black River Chapbook Award). His poems are forthcoming from Boston Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Minnesota Review, Vinyl, and other journals.

Shonna Skarda was raised in El Paso and has lived in the Austin area since 1996. She is a licensed dyslexia therapist who works with children and adults to remediate difficulties with reading and writing. Shonna’s poetry also appeared in issue 39 of Borderlands.

David Meischen has been writing poetry and teaching the writing of poetry for thirty years. He has had poems in The Southern Review, Southern Poetry Review, Borderlands, Cider Press Review, and elsewhere. Co-founder of Dos Gatos Press and co-editor of Wingbeats and Wingbeats II, collections of poetry writing exercises, Meischen is also a fiction writer, with recent work in The Evansville Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Valparaiso Fiction Review.

Join us for an evening with writers Bayard Godsave and Dina Guidubaldi.

Bayard Godsave has an MFA from Minnesota State University, Moorhead; in 2008 he received his PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and currently he is an Assistant Professor, teaching writing and English literature at Cameron University in Oklahoma. His work has appeared in the Cream City Review, Confrontation, Another Chicago Magazine, Florida Review, Pleiades, Cimarron Review, Evansville Review, The Gettysburg Review, and is forthcoming from This Land Press. Bayard’s story “00:02:36:58,” which originally appeared in Carolina Quarterly in 2005, was included in 2006 in Flash Fiction Forward, an anthology of short short fiction published by WW Norton. He has co-edited American Fiction Vol. 11 (New Rivers Press), as well as the forthcoming Vol. 12 of the same series. His first collection of short stories, Lesser Apocalypses, was published in 2012 by Queen’s Ferry Press. His second collection, a pair of novellas titled Torture Tree, was published by Queen’s Ferry Press in 2014. He is currently at work on a novel set in rural, southwestern Oklahoma in the early 1930s.

Dina Guidubaldi graduated from Texas State’s MFA program and has since been living here in Austin, writing, teaching, and working various weird jobs. Her first book of stories, How Gone We Got, comes out in March with Queen’s Ferry Press.

The captivating Tyler Gobble hosts our monthly reading series, Everything is Bigger, which features prose and poetry and prizes. October’s readers will be Ben Kopel, Ana Carrete, and Mike Bushnell.

VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities) invite you to a Lion and Pirate Unplugged event. This month we are taking a break from our regular Open Mic to introduce a special guest: author Joyce Ann Tepley.

Joyce will be reading from and signing her new book Thriving Through It—How They Do It. Through personal stories, she shows how a group of people with physical disabilities transformed adversity into triumph and communicates what it takes to do well in life in the face of the difficulties small and large that vex you. Some of the people she interviewed for the book will also be in attendance and will share their story in person.

Please note: this is an OFF-SITE event that takes place at Studium, 908 E 5th St #106, Austin, Texas 78702.

We’re thrilled to once again be taking part in the Texas Book Festival, October 25th-26th (look for us in Booth 500), and we’re even more thrilled to be a part of their Lit Crawl, an awesome event that takes literature to unexpected places (including, in previous years, the Texas State Cemetery, assorted bars, and the kiln room of Clayworks). It’s a very fun night that draws about 2,000 people each year… so join our Everything is Bigger crew and thousands of lit-lovers for an evening of adventurous readings! The Everything is Bigger readers include Fernando Flores, Taylor Jacob Pate, Blake Lee Pate, Vincent Scarpa, Sam Sax, Lisa Olstein, and Laurie Saurborn Young. The Lit Crawl begins at 7.30pm; the Everything is Bigger readers will be on from 8.30pm SHARP!

Please visit the Lit Crawl website for more details.

Malvern’s own Tyler Gobble is launching his first poetry collection, MORE WRECK MORE WRECK (winner of the 2013 Cargill First Book Poetry Prize), at Malvern Books, and we couldn’t be more delighted/honored/STOKED. Join us for a celebratory night of readings from Tyler, Layne Ransom, and Jason Tobin, and for music by Lost John.

“These poems aren’t just one thing, or another, they are instead stuffed with so much energy that they are spilling all over the pages. Like industrious, tiny humans, they seep everywhere, sprawling across memories and dreams, carrying with them scars and shreds of real hope. Even better, More Wreck More Wreck is bubbling with the absolutely kick ass beauty of a great imagination let loose.” —Peter Davis

“These poems ask for permission and possibility, hopefulness’s redecoration in a purely American landscape of . . . rollercoasters, pizza parties, front porches, politics, pet dogs, and tank tops. These poems live in ‘the carnival of what is,’ and they shout from the rooftops: live! live!” —Alexis Orgera

Join us for an evening with poets Carmen Giménez Smith and Laurie Ann Guerrero.

Carmen Giménez Smith is the author of a memoir, Bring Down the Little Birds, and four poetry collections—Milk and Filth; Goodbye, Flicker; The City She Was; and Odalisque in Pieces. Milk and Filth was a finalist for the NBCC Award in Poetry. She is the recipient of a 2011 American Book Award, the 2011 Juniper Prize for Poetry, and a 2011-2012 fellowship in creative nonfiction from the Howard Foundation. She recently co-edited the anthology Angels of the Americplyse: New Latin Writing. A CantoMundo Fellow, she is the editor-in-chief of the literary journal Puerto del Sol and the publisher of Noemi Press. She teaches in the creative writing MFA program at New Mexico State University.

Poet Laureate of San Antonio, Laurie Ann Guerrero is the author of Babies under the Skin (Panhandler 2007), A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying (Notre Dame 2013) and the forthcoming A Crown for Gumecindo (Aztlan Libre 2015). Her honors include the 2012 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, 2013 Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and a 2014 International Latino Book Award. She holds degrees from Smith College and Drew University. Poet-in-Residence at Palo Alto College, she lives and writes in the Southside of San Antonio.

Join us for an evening with writers Rob Brunet and Brannon Perkison.

Rob Brunet will be reading from his novel Stinking Rich, a “deviously funny” crime caper that asks “what could possibly go wrong when the backwoods Libidos Motorcycle Club hires a high school dropout to tend a barn full of high-grade marijuana?” Brunet’s fiction has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Thuglit, Out of the Gutter, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Noir Nation, Shotgun Honey, and numerous anthologies. Before committing to writing, he ran a digital media boutique producing award-winning Web presence for film and TV, including LOST, Frank Miller’s Sin City, and the cult series Alias.

Brannon Perkison is a fellowship winner with the SLS Literary Seminars and two-time finalist at the Writers’ League of Texas manuscript contest, the largest of its kind in the state. His novel, The Do-Nothing, was a Quarter-Finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and earned the praise of best-selling author Louis Sachar with whom he studied. Brannon Perkison was born in Hawaii in 1969, the Navy-brat son of an intelligence officer. He was brought up in the piney woods of East Texas and has also lived in Germany and Ohio before moving to Dallas, Texas in 1998.

Stop by Malvern Books to enjoy an afternoon of folk/experimental country music with musicians Jackson Emmer and Alison May.

Jackson Emmer is an American Folk and Experimental Country composer, known mostly for his songwriting, unique vocal style, and dynamic performances. Emmer also plays the guitar, mandolin, and banjos. A prolific DIY artist, Emmer has self-released 21 records since 2007, both solo, and with old-time band The Howling Kettles. He collaborates frequently with Alison May, and performs with the group Hot Eagle. Emmer was born in Chicago, but raised in California and Colorado.

Alison May is a folk singer, song writer, and multi-instrumentalist who has been performing, writing and recording out of Oakland, CA since leaving her native Texas in 2012. In 2013, May promoted the release of her first album, Earnest Keep, with two regional tours through the South and Midwest, one of which was by way of Amtrak train. May’s latest album is called Loved/Dark.

Join us for an afternoon with poets Catharine Savage Brosman, Tomás Morin, and Erin Belieu.

Catharine Savage Brosman is Professor Emerita of French at Tulane University and Honorary Research Professor at the University of Sheffield. She is the author or editor of nineteen scholarly volumes. On the Old Plaza, just released, is her tenth collection of poetry. Her previous creative publications comprise two volumes of personal essays and nine collections of verse, including Range of Light, devoted to the American west, and Under the Pergola, featuring poems on Katrina and other Louisiana topics.

Tomás Q. Morín’s poetry collection A Larger Country was winner of the APR/Honickman Prize and runner-up for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award. He is co-editor with Mari L’Esperance of the anthology, Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine, and his translation of Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu was published by Copper Canyon Press. His poems have appeared in Slate, Threepenny Review, Boulevard, Poetry, New England Review, and Narrative.

Erin Belieu is the author of four poetry collections, all from Copper Canyon Press: Infanta, selected for the National Poetry Series; One Above & One Below, winner of the Midlands Poetry Prize; Black Box, a finalist for the Los Angles Time Book Prize; and Slant Six. Belieu’s poems have appeared in places such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Tin House, and Slate, as well as multiple appearances in Best American Poetry. She is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University, director of The Port Townsend Writers Conference, and co founder of VIDA: Women In Literary Arts.

Join us for the Raw Paw reading series, which celebrates the release of a new issue of their poetry imprint, Mind Maze. This month’s release is Stuck in the Future by Ed Buffaloe (cover image pictured below). The event will include readings from Josh Boyd, Wade Martin, Jim Redmond, and Ed Buffaloe, with Master of Ceremonies David Jewell. Come along and enjoy this literary synergy of events and publications!

Raw Paw was founded in Austin, Texas, in 2010. Their new poetry title, Mind Maze, is released every month and showcases twenty poems by one of Austin’s best—all wrapped in a patterned, screen-printed cover designed by Nicole Carleton.