Welcome to Malvern Books!

BlogMalvern Books is now closed. Malvern Books was a bookstore and community space in Austin, Texas. We specialized in visionary literature and poetry from independent publishers, with a focus on lesser-known and emerging voices.


An Update from the Manager of Malvern Books

Dear Friends,

We’ve had a wonderful time sharing our favorite books with you over the past nine years, and it’s been an honor to celebrate the work of so many brilliant writers through our readings and events.

Malvern Books is the realization of Joe Bratcher’s vision—Joe dreamt of a bookstore that would carry the books he loved, mostly poetry and fiction from small, independent presses. He wanted to promote writers and translators of books from other countries, while also championing the work of local writers.

When Joe first talked to me about opening Malvern Books, I must admit I was skeptical. I didn’t think we’d find an audience. It was 2012 and everyone was saying that bookstores were dead, Kindle and online shopping were the future. I anticipated many quiet sales days, with Joe and I just sitting there, looking at each other. He told me if that’s how it ended up, well, at least we’d have a chance to chat—and since we always seemed to laugh a lot when we talked, it sounded like a good way to spend some time. And so from then on, whenever we’d have a really slow sales day, with just a few people coming in, we’d look at each other and say, “We’re living the dream!” and we’d laugh.

But back to opening… in early 2013, with the help of our amazing architect, contractor, and interior designer, we created the space that Joe had in mind. We started posting on social media thanks to Tracey, our wonderful digital media manager and first Malvern hire. And we were so grateful to the many enthusiastic writers and readers who expressed their excitement at the imminent arrival of Malvern Books. From the very beginning it felt like we were building a community.

We opened our doors in October 2013, and we were shocked by how many people came by. You showed up and you loved what we had to offer! You constantly surprised and humbled us with your kind words and helpful suggestions. People from out of town would visit the store because a local friend had told them they had to come by, and we received much appreciated shout-outs from the Austin Chronicle and numerous other newspapers and journals.

And then 2020 hit—but even with the pandemic, we had loyal customers who came by for curbside pick ups, signed up for individual shopping appointments, and participated in our Zoom book clubs and events. If we didn’t say it enough, THANK YOU!

All along the way, we were lucky enough to have truly wonderful staff members who loved the books we carried and who helped us build the store we have now. Their work has been invaluable and we could not have done this without them.

On July 28th of this year, we lost Joe. I can’t tell you how hard it has been to try and carry on in this space without him. Our little Malvern world has not been the same since, and, as much as we love this store and our amazing customers, Malvern Books simply cannot continue without our Joe.

Malvern Books will be closing on December 31st, 2022. It has been a wonderful nine years and we thank each and every one of our cherished customers, friends, staff, and suppliers for helping us along the way.

As we move forward, we’ll be sharing our plans with you for sales and specials. For now, we just wanted to let you know this was coming. We hope you all continue to seek out works in translation and books published by small presses—there is so much great stuff out there—and that you continue to support our local independent bookstores, like our dear friends at BookWoman, among others. But, most importantly, we hope to see you in the store sometime soon, to say goodbye and to thank you, both for being the readers that you are and because you have come with us on this incredibly fulfilling journey in Joe’s world.

With heartfelt thanks and wishing you all the best,

Becky Garcia,
Manager, Malvern Books

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
1
An Evening with Dr. Sybil Pittman Estess 7:00 pm
An Evening with Dr. Sybil Pittman Estess
May 1 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
An Evening with Dr. Sybil Pittman Estess
Join us for a reading from poet Dr. Sybil Pittman Estess, who will be introducing her latest collection, Like That, published by Alamo Bay Press. Poet Dr. Sybil Pittman Estess was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and has degrees from Baylor University, the … Continue reading
2
Borderlands: Issue 42 Launch Party 3:00 pm
Borderlands: Issue 42 Launch Party
May 2 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Borderlands: Issue 42 Launch Party
Join us for a reading to celebrate the launch of the latest issue of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review! The keynote poet is Celeste Guzman Mendoza, author of Beneath the Halo (Wings Press, 2013). This new issue also includes a special section … Continue reading
An Evening with Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez & Ire’ne Lara Silva 7:00 pm
An Evening with Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez & Ire’ne Lara Silva
May 2 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
An Evening with Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez & Ire’ne Lara Silva
Join us for a reading with writers Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez and Ire’ne Lara Silva. Santiago will be introducing One Day I’ll Tell You the Things I’ve Seen, his new short story collection that explores Chicano/a and migrant identity. Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez is also the author … Continue reading
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An Evening with Noel Crook & Kirk Wilson 7:00 pm
An Evening with Noel Crook & Kirk Wilson
May 6 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
An Evening with Noel Crook & Kirk Wilson
Join us for a reading with poets Noel Crook and Kirk Wilson. Noel will be introducing her new collection, Salt Moon (Southern Illinois University Press). Noel Crook is the author of Salt Moon (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the Crab Orchard … Continue reading
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Hothouse Literary Journal Premiere 2:00 pm
Hothouse Literary Journal Premiere
May 9 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Hothouse Literary Journal Premiere
Be the first to get a FREE copy of this year’s Hothouse Literary Journal! As the official literary journal of UT’s Undergraduate English Department, Hothouse is a collection of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction written by UT English majors and Creative … Continue reading
10
Mother’s Day Reading with Revolution Writing Workshop 2:00 pm
Mother’s Day Reading with Revolution Writing Workshop
May 10 @ 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Mother's Day Reading with Revolution Writing Workshop
This all-women reading features writers from the Revolution Writing Workshop led by Abe Louise Young. Join us for poetry and prose about mothering, queer and straight parenting, being mothered and unmothered, sex, Mother Earth and more! Featuring Abe Louise Young, … Continue reading
Austin Writers Roulette 4:00 pm
Austin Writers Roulette
May 10 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Austin Writers Roulette
Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested … Continue reading
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Raw Paw Reading Series 7:00 pm
Raw Paw Reading Series
May 13 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Raw Paw Reading Series
Join us for the Raw Paw reading series. This month’s readers are Ebony Stewart, Tony Cartlidge, and Laura Guli. Ebony Stewart is the only three-time Slam Champion in Austin, Texas. She has shared stages with Buddy Wakefield and the late Amiri … Continue reading
14
Novel Night with Richard Kendrick & Gary Hobbs 7:00 pm
Novel Night with Richard Kendrick & Gary Hobbs
May 14 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Novel Night with Richard Kendrick & Gary Hobbs
Join us for the fifth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll then have an … Continue reading
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An Afternoon with Angela Genusa & Stephen McLaughlin 2:00 pm
An Afternoon with Angela Genusa & Stephen McLaughlin
May 31 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
An Afternoon with Angela Genusa & Stephen McLaughlin
Join us for an afternoon with conceptual poets Angela Genusa and Stephen McLaughlin. Conceptual poetry is an early 21st century literary movement, self-described by its practitioners as an act of “uncreative writing.” In conceptual poetry, appropriation is often used as a … Continue reading
May
9
Sat
Hothouse Literary Journal Premiere
May 9 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Be the first to get a FREE copy of this year’s Hothouse Literary Journal! As the official literary journal of UT’s Undergraduate English Department, Hothouse is a collection of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction written by UT English majors and Creative Writing students. Join us for readings by the authors and feel free to take a copy of the journal with you! This is a literary event you won’t want to miss!

Hothouse

May
10
Sun
Mother’s Day Reading with Revolution Writing Workshop
May 10 @ 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

This all-women reading features writers from the Revolution Writing Workshop led by Abe Louise Young. Join us for poetry and prose about mothering, queer and straight parenting, being mothered and unmothered, sex, Mother Earth and more!

Featuring Abe Louise Young, Adrienne Anemone, Angeliska Polachek, Carol Gilson, Carrie Kenny, Drema Dial, Emily Jane Steinberg, Jamie Harris, Katie Matlack, Margaret Halpin, Surabhi Kukke, and Vivian Newdick.

Mothers Day

Austin Writers Roulette
May 10 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!

This month’s theme is “Forgotten Queens” and the featured artists are: EL GUAPO, MAGIC JACK ATX, BIRDMAN 313, PATRICIA FISKE, ELIJAH MCLAUGHLIN, ALLYSON WHIPPLE, DANIEL DAVILA, LILA MCCALL, TERESA  Y. ROBERSON & THOM THE WORLD POET.

Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

AWR

May
13
Wed
Raw Paw Reading Series
May 13 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Join us for the Raw Paw reading series. This month’s readers are Ebony Stewart, Tony Cartlidge, and Laura Guli.

Ebony Stewart is the only three-time Slam Champion in Austin, Texas. She has shared stages with Buddy Wakefield and the late Amiri Baraka. Her books are The Queen’s Glory & The Pussy’s Box and Love Letters To Balled Fists. She used to be a sexual health teacher; now, she’s a full time touring artist, writing because she has to and eating cupcakes for fun. Texas raised, “the South is in her.”

Tony Cartlidge is a former marketing and communications writer from Liverpool, England, currently living in exile in Central Texas. At the age of forty, Tony realized he had become only intermittently employable and returned to school where he turned his attention to creative fiction, having shown some talent while writing local news stories and corporate press releases. He approaches the art of writing with the verve and élan of a rat at a cheese typewriter. He hopes one day to fool a publisher into picking up one of his crumbs. Tony shares his Round Rock home with some fish, three dogs, and one wife.

Laura Guli is a poet-psychologist who creates and resides in Austin. Her chapbook, A Fiery Grace, was a finalist in the 2009 Finishing Line Press New Women’s Voices chapbook competition. Her poetry has been published in a number of literary journals, including Kalliope and Lilliput Review. Laura grew up on the east coast and has been writing poetry since age 11. Her poetry is inspired by nature, culture, relationship, and personal musings.

Mind Maze 4 cover art

May
14
Thu
Novel Night with Richard Kendrick & Gary Hobbs
May 14 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for the fifth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll then have an open mic for writers who have signed up to read from their unpublished short stories or novels. And finally, we’ll have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: there will be snacks!

Novel Night

This month Richard Kendrick will read from Déjà Vu and Gary Hobbs will read from Access to Capital.


Deja VuRichard Kendrick spent more than a decade living and traveling in Africa and Asia. He has worked as a teacher, an editor, a publisher, directed several short films, and presented avant-garde jazz and classical music on FM radio for more than six years. Rick Russo describes Richard’s debut novel, Déjà Vu, as “a rare book that combines modernist formal experimentation with excellent post-modernist content and prose.”


Access to Capital

Gary Hobbs has spent more than three decades in a variety of businesses, including real estate finance. His first novel, Access to Capital, is set in the 1980s as government policy drives the consolidation of banks, the southwest economy collapses from declining oil prices, and the roles for women are changing. One of the first reviewers stated “If you lived through this time in the financial industry or even if you didn’t, this book will reach out and pull you in as a real page-turner.”

May
31
Sun
An Afternoon with Angela Genusa & Stephen McLaughlin
May 31 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Join us for an afternoon with conceptual poets Angela Genusa and Stephen McLaughlin.

Conceptual poetry is an early 21st century literary movement, self-described by its practitioners as an act of “uncreative writing.” In conceptual poetry, appropriation is often used as a means to create new work, focused more on the initial concept rather than the final product of the poem. In its extreme form, such works are process-oriented and non-expressive.


AngelaAngela Genusa is a writer and artist, formerly of Austin, Texas. She is the author of THRONE (publisher TBA, 2015), No Expert (publisher TBA, 2015); Twentysix Gasoline Station Prices (TBA, 2015); Composition (Gauss PDF, 2014), Twentysix Wikipedia Articles (PediaPress, 2013), Musée du Service des Objets Trouvés (PediaPress, 2013), and Spam Bibliography (Troll Thread, 2013), among others. Her writing and art has been published in Action Yes Quarterly, The Claudius AppMcSweeney’sThe Continental Review, Printed Web #2, West Wind Review, and WORK, among others. Her work has been featured in Jacket2, Frieze Magazine, and The New Yorker, and has been exhibited in SLOPES Gallery in Melbourne, Australia. Her work has been anthologized in &NOW Awards Vol. 3 (Northwestern University Press) and Best American Experimental Writing 2014. She is a member of Collective Task: Cycle 4, an international group of artists and writers with over 35 participants. Some excerpts of her two of her forthcoming books are published in Printed Web #3.


Stephen

Stephen McLaughlin is a PhD student at the School of Information at UT Austin and a senior editor at the PennSound poetry archive. His work has appeared in Jacket2, Gauss PDF, The Volta Blog, and Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing. Steve hosts the podcast “Into the Field,” a series of interviews with poets.

Jun
3
Wed
Summer Reading by Writers from S. Kirk Walsh’s Fiction Workshop
Jun 3 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Please join us for a celebratory reading by the writers of S. Kirk Walsh’s nine-month Fiction Writing Workshop (Sept-May). Short excerpts from novels and stories will be read.

Participating writers include Dena Afrasiabi, Kalli Angel, Nicole Beckley, Jack Kaulfus, Amy Lowrey, Katherine Moore, Victoria Rossi, Rose Smith, Ashley Whitaker, Kirk Wilson, and Karen Valby. This accomplished group of writers features published fiction and nonfiction writers, book critics, and MFA graduates. For the past nine months, they have participated in an intensive fiction workshop, drafting and revising novels and short stories throughout the year. Come celebrate their wonderful work and distinctive voices with this end-of-the-workshop reading.

Refreshments and sweets will be served.

Summer Reading

Jun
4
Thu
An Evening with Chip Dameron & Robert Okaji
Jun 4 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for an evening with poets Chip Dameron and Robert Okaji. We’ll be celebrating the release of Chip’s new collection, Waiting for an Etcher.

Chip DChip Dameron is the author of seven collections of poetry and a travel book. His poems and essays on contemporary writers have appeared in such periodicals as Mississippi Review, Southwestern American Literature, San Pedro River Review, Puerto del Sol, Texas Quarterly, and many other journals and anthologies, as well as publications in Canada, Ireland, Nigeria, India, China, Thailand, and New Zealand. Dameron has co-edited two literary magazines, Thicket and Chachalaca Poetry Review, and served on the editorial board of four others. A two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize in poetry and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he lives and writes in Brownsville, Texas.


Robert ORobert Okaji lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, two dogs and some books. His work has appeared in Boston Review, Clade Song, Four Ties Lit Review, Extract(s) and Prime Number Magazine, among others, and his 2015 chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform, was Dink Press’s initial offering in its National Poetry Month series.

Jun
7
Sun
An Afternoon with Sandra Storey & Frank Pool
Jun 7 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Join us for an afternoon with Sandra Storey and Frank Pool. We’ll be celebrating the release of Sandra’s recent poetry collection, Every State Has Its Own Light.

Sandra SSandra Storey’s first full-length collection, Every State Has Its Own Light, a finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Award, was published by the Word Poetry imprint of WordTech Communications in 2014. Her poems have been published in various literary magazines, including the New York Quarterly, Friction (UK), THEMA and New Millennium Writings. Storey was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand and lived in Southeast Asia from 1968 to 1972. Formerly editor and publisher of two Boston neighborhood newspapers, she is now a newspaper columnist. She wrote poetry from 1980 to 1988 and resumed in 2004. She has been a featured reader at many Boston-area venues.


FrankFrank Pool has published poetry, reviews, and literary criticism in a variety of venues. He writes a weekly column on language and other topics for his hometown newspaper, the Longview News-Journal. He edited several issues of the Youth Anthology for the Austin Independent Poetry Festival. He enjoys reading poetry aloud, both his own and others’. He was the chairman of the board of directors for the Austin International Poetry Festival for five years. A retired teacher, he has recently returned to writing and publishing poems.

Jun
10
Wed
Raw Paw Reading
Jun 10 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for a Raw Paw reading, featuring Elizabeth Bayou-Grace Lewis, Charlotte Gullick, and Nathan Brown.

Mind Maze 4 cover art

Jun
11
Thu
Novel Night with Christopher Brown & Kelly Hitchcock
Jun 11 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for the sixth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll then have an open mic for writers who have signed up to read from their unpublished short stories or novels. And finally, we’ll have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: there will be snacks!

Novel Night

This month Christopher Brown will read from his short story in the Rayguns Over Texas anthology and Kelly Hitchcock will read from Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook.


Christopher BrownChristopher Brown writes science fiction and criticism in Austin, where he also practices technology law. He was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 2013 for Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, the anthology he co-edited with Eduardo Jiménez Mayo. His stories and essays frequently focus on issues at the nexus of technology, politics, and economics. Notable recent work has appeared in The Baffler, the MIT Technology Review anthology Twelve Tomorrows, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, 25 Minutos en el Futuro: Nueva Ciencia Ficcion Norteamericana, Castálida, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and Rayguns Over Texas.


Kelly

Kelly I. Hitchcock is an up-and-coming writer in the Austin, Texas area. She is author of various poems about the randomness of life, several short stories, random creative nonfiction works, and the coming-of-age novel The Redheaded Stepchild. She is world-renowned among a readership of five people and growing. Raised by a single father in the small town of Buffalo, Missouri, Kelly has fond memories of cash-strapped life in the Ozarks that strongly influence her writing and way of life. When she’s not writing API documentation for money or writing poetry and fiction for unmoney, Kelly enjoys catering to the whims of a high maintenance rescue dog, frequenting Austin’s many concert venues with her husband, and breaking things (in no particular order). She is an avid volunteer and fundraiser for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Jun
14
Sun
Austin Writers Roulette
Jun 14 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!

This month’s theme is “Train Wreck Adventures.” All aboard to hear the adventures of ROBERT BAYLESS, EL GUAPO, STEPHANIE WEBB, JASON HODGE, DONNA DECHEN BIRDWELL, BROOKE LANCASTER, LILA MCCALL, ALLYSON WHIPPLE, & TERESA Y. ROBERSON.

Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

AWR

Jun
16
Tue
Bloomsday at Malvern Books
Jun 16 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

It’s Bloomsday! Join us for a celebration of the life of writer James Joyce. Featuring live Irish music from Aidan, readings from Ulysses with an introduction by Joyce aficionado Peter Q, the moderator of the Finnegans Wake Reading Group, plus spirited discussion (audience participation welcome!)… and suitably Irish snacks.

Bloomsday

Bloomsday, named for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses, is observed around the world on June 16th, as this is the date during which the events of Ulysses are relived (16th June, 1904). Fun fact: Joyce apparently picked June 16th as it was the date of his first date with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle.

Jun
26
Fri
I Scream Social
Jun 26 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Get your cones ready for Malvern Books’ newest FREE summer reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld & Schandra Madha.

Featuring young women poets from the Austin community, this month’s I Screamers are Maggie Ilersich, Shelby Newsom, & Alana Torrez. Following the reading, there will be a (mic-less) open mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us. And there will be ice cream. Duh.

Can’t make it this time around? No worries. I Scream Social is every fourth Friday all summer long.

I Scream

Jul
1
Wed
David Thornberry Book Launch
Jul 1 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

David TJoin us in celebrating the launch of David Thornberry’s new poetry collection, Climb Down. Featuring readings from David Thornberry and W. Joe Hoppe.

David Thornberry is a painter and poet, alternating between the two art forms. He continues to make, publish and show art, both literary and visual, in the Austin area.

Climb Down

Jul
9
Thu
Novel Night with Mark Davis & Phil Hewitt
Jul 9 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for the seventh event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll then have an open mic for writers who have signed up to read from their unpublished short stories or novels. And finally, we’ll have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: there will be snacks!

Novel Night

This month Mark Davis will be sharing his late father’s work and reading from Midnight Road and talking a bit about his life and work. Phil Hewitt will be reading from his first novel, The Mariscal Canyon Dead.


Mark Davis was born and raised in Texas, and studied at the University of Texas at Austin and Stanford University. For the last 20 years, he has worked as a business consultant. He is the co-author, with Richard Torrenzano, of Digital Assassination: Protecting Your Reputation, Brand, or Business Against Online Attacks (St. Martin’s Press, 2011). His op-eds have appeared in publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal to The Washington Post. Mark recently completed two epic science fiction novels, Darwin’s Arrow and Bruno’s Relic, now out on Kindle and Kindle Select. But tonight, he turns his focus to his father, Jada Davis, who wrote several noir and coming of age novels in the 1950s.


Phil is the same kind of Texan that Sam Houston and David Crockett were—from Tennessee. He grew up in Memphis (he actually met Elvis) and came to Austin to complete a Ph.D. in history. A year later he took a summer job at the Institute of Texan Cultures, the state’s exhibit at HemisFair. He is a teacher, a former magazine owner, museum consultant, and former truck driver. Phil is currently working on the second and third books in the series: The Head in the Laundromat and Santa Elena Floater: Confederate Gold and Carlotta Silver. He lives in Austin, where he gardens (poorly), fishes (avid but mostly inept) and kayaks when he can get time. And he has recently taken up learning to play the piano.

Jul
11
Sat
Walter Basho Book Launch
Jul 11 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of Walter Basho’s first novel, Old Green World. With readings from Walter Basho, Paige Britt, and Susan Schorn.

WalterWalter Basho grew up in Kentucky and attended Transylvania University in Lexington before moving to Austin, Texas in the 1990s to attend graduate school in English. His master’s thesis focused on queer writers associated with the West Coast “New Narrative” movement, while his dissertation, Fiction Networks, explored the structures of story universes from DC Comics to Star Wars. Like his scholarly work, Basho’s fiction sits between popular genre fiction and literary exploration, and uses story as a vehicle to work through larger questions of culture, narrative theory, perception, sexuality and gender. He has practiced Buddhism for nearly ten years, and his fiction is strongly influenced by the day-to-day experiences of his practice. Inspired by the new access to publication and distribution available to self-publishers, Basho set a goal to self-publish fiction at a level of quality on par with commercial presses, and assembled a talented team of editors and designers to contribute to the production of Old Green World. While in graduate school, he was swept up in the first of many Austin technology booms, and took on work as a software engineer for an education start-up. He continues to develop educational software today, and lives in Austin with his husband.


PaigePaige Britt grew up in a small town in Texas with her nose in a book and her head in the clouds moodling. She studied journalism in college and theology in graduate school, but never stopped reading children’s books for life’s most important lessons. She now lives in a slightly larger town but can often still be found either reading or staring out the window, making up stories about things that aren’t there. Her first book, The Lost Track of Time, was released in 2015 from Scholastic Press.


SusanSusan Schorn is a writer, martial artist, and self defense advocate. She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and two children, and trains and teaches at Sun Dragon Martial Arts and Self Defense. She writes “Bitchslap: A Column About Women and Fighting” for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Her first book, Smile at Strangers: Lessons in the Art of Living Fearlessly, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in May 2013. (Photo at right by Larissa Rogers.)

Jul
12
Sun
Austin Writers Roulette
Jul 12 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!

This month’s theme is “Cosmic Casino.” Our cosmic line up of players is: GEOVANI ZAMBRANA, BIRDMAN 313, ALLYSON WHIPPLE, LILA MCCALL, STEPHANIE WEBB, TERESA Y. ROBERSON & THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

AWR

Jul
24
Fri
I Scream Social
Jul 24 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Get your cones ready for the second edition of Malvern Books’ FREE summer reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld and Schandra Madha.

Featuring young women poets from the Austin community, this month’s I Screamers are A.R. Rogers, Aza Pace, and Natalie Ruiz. Following the reading, there will be a (mic-less) open mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us. And there will be ice cream. Duh.

Can’t make it this time around? No worries. I Scream Social is every fourth Friday all summer long.

I Scream

Jul
31
Fri
An Evening with Grant Cross & Stephanie Goehring
Jul 31 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for a reading from poets Grant Cross and Stephanie Goehring.


GrantGrant Cross writes haiku / to make sense of the madness / He loves swimming best / writes to stay alive / works only when he has to / wiggles & wiggles


StephanieStephanie Goehring is co-author, with Jeff Griffin, of the chapbook I Miss You Very Much (Slim Princess Holdings) and author of the chapbook This Room Has a Ghost (dancing girl press). A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she lives in Austin, Texas.

Aug
9
Sun
Austin Writers Roulette
Aug 9 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!

This month’s theme is “Show & Tale,” just in time for back-to-school season for the 18+ crowd! The line-up of featured artists is: Birdman 313, Aimee Mackovic, Donna Dechen Birdwell, Robert Bayless, Teresa Y. Roberson, and Thom The World Poet. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

AWR

Aug
13
Thu
Novel Night with Donna Birdwell & Steven Metze
Aug 13 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for the eighth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll then have an open mic for writers who have signed up to read from their unpublished short stories or novels. And finally, we’ll have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: there will be snacks!

Novel Night

This month Donna Birdwell will be reading from her new novel, Way of the Serpent, and Steven Metze will be reading from The Zombie Monologues.


Donna BDonna Dechen Birdwell is an anthropologist whose curiosity about what makes human beings tick propelled her to travel widely, listening to the stories of many different cultures and eventually coming up with a few of her own. As a writer, her intention is to take readers on a lively adventure and leave them with something to think about. Donna is an artist, poet, and photographer as well as a novelist. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Southern Methodist University and previously taught at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. She now writes, paints, and photographs in Austin.


Steven MSteven E. Metze is the author of The Zombie Monologues, as well as numerous role-playing-game and miniatures war game rulebooks and sourcebooks, including Über RPG Steampunk. He is a member of Mensa and the Writer’s League of Texas. He graduated from West Point and continues to serve with over 26 years of military service, including 10 years as a military journalist, and also has an MFA in Film and Video production. He is currently publishing a serial web comic at www.godsoftheaether.com based on his steampunk novel, Gods of the Aether.

Aug
15
Sat
David Parsons Book Launch
Aug 15 @ 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of David Parsons’ new poetry collection, Reaching for Longer Water. We’ll also enjoy live music from jazz guitarist Margaret Slovak.

David ParsonsDavid M. Parsons, 2011 Texas State Poet Laureate, is a recipient of many honors, including an NEH Dante Fellowship to SUNY Geneseo, the French-American Legation Poetry Prize, and the Baskerville Publisher’s Prize from TCU for an outstanding poem published in their literary journal, descant. He holds eight writing awards from Lone Star College System and was inducted into The Texas Institute of Letters in 2009.

Parsons grew up in Austin, graduating from Stephen F. Austin High School. After which, he joined the United States Marine Corps Reserve, where he served as a Squad Leader in a rifle company and later as a Recon-Scout Boat Team Leader. He attended The University of Texas and Texas State University, where he holds a BBA. After several years in business, advertising, teaching Marketing and coaching basketball and baseball at Bellaire High School, Parsons received his MA from the University of Houston’s Graduate Creative Writing Program. He teaches Creative Writing and Racquetball/Handball at Lone Star College-Montgomery. Parsons has four grown children and lives with wife Nancy, an award-winning Artist and Graphic Designer in Conroe, Texas.

Aug
27
Thu
Ten Years After: Remembering Katrina
Aug 27 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

It’s now a decade since category-three Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, claiming the lives of over 1800 people and displacing more than one million of the region’s residents. To commemorate the anniversary, join us for a conversation between NPR correspondent John Burnett (pictured below), who was on the ground in New Orleans during the hurricane, and Tom Zigal, whose novel Many Rivers to Cross is set during Katrina. John and Tom will discuss Katrina and the aftermath, as well as answer any audience questions. And John will also put on his harmonica player’s hat and end the evening with a rousing blues session featuring Tom’s brother Frank Zigal on guitar.

John & Katrina

As a roving NPR correspondent based in Austin, Texas, John Burnett’s beat stretches across the U.S., and, sometimes, around the world. Currently, he is serving as Southwest Correspondent for the National Desk, focusing on the issues and people of the Southwest United States, providing investigative reports and traveling the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. His special reporting projects have included New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, and many reports on the Drug War in the Americas. His reports are heard regularly on NPR’s award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. Prior to coming to NPR, Burnett was based in Guatemala City for United Press International covering the Central America civil wars. From 1979-1983, he was a general assignment reporter for various Texas newspapers.


Tom ZTom Zigal has been publishing short stories, reviews, and essays for forty years. He is the author of three popular crime novels featuring Kurt Muller as the sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, and he has published two award-winning 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 and the 2014 Fiction Award from the Philosophical Society of Texas. He attended high school in Louisiana, lived in New Orleans from 1989-93, and has a special fondness for the city.

Aug
28
Fri
I Scream Social
Aug 28 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Get your cones ready for the third edition of Malvern Books’ FREE summer reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld and Schandra Madha.

Featuring young women poets and fiction writers from the Austin community, this month’s I Screamers are Griselda Castillo, Schandra Madha, and Annar Veröld. Following the reading, there will be a (mic-less) open mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us. And there will be ice cream. Duh.

I Scream

Aug
30
Sun
UT Austin Writing Faculty Reading
Aug 30 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Join us for a reading with UT Austin faculty members. Readers include Elizabeth McCracken, Deb Olin Unferth, Lisa Olstein, and James Magnuson (left to right below).

UT Austin faculty

Elizabeth McCracken is the author of five books, most recently Thunderstruck & Other Stories.

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of three books. Her fourth is forthcoming from Graywolf.

Lisa Olstein is the author of three poetry collections from Copper Canyon Press: Radio Crackling, Radio Gone, winner of the Hayden Carruth Award; Lost Alphabet, a Library Journal best book of the year; and Little Stranger, a Lannan Literary Selection. She teaches in the MFA programs at UT Austin.

James Magnuson is the author of nine novels, including Famous Writers I Have Known, Ghost Dancing, and Windfall. 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.

Sep
10
Thu
Novel Night with Maria Elena Sandovici & Patrice Sarath
Sep 10 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for the ninth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll then have an open mic for writers who have signed up to read from their unpublished short stories or novels. And finally, we’ll have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: there will be snacks!

Novel Night

This month Maria Elena Sandovici and Patrice Sarath will be sharing their fiction with us.

Maria ElenaMaria Elena Sandovici was born in Bucharest, a city she loves, and can never stay away from too long. In the pursuit of international adventures, she left Romania to attend college, then graduate school, in the United States. Her first novel, Dogs with Bagels, is loosely inspired by her own detours as a young foreign woman navigating the emotional potholes and financial pitfalls of Manhattan. Her second novel, Stray Dogs and Lonely Beaches, addresses the need to flee from one’s problems and seek new adventures in a remote corner of paradise. But can one really get away? She is also the author of the blog Have Watercolors Will Travel, an artist, a dog owner, and a person, much like her characters, still looking for a place in the world to call home. Having fled the pricey real estate and cruel winters of New York, she lives in Galveston, Texas, wears sandals in February, walks her dog on sunny beaches, and travels frequently to Romania, Spain, and many other places, which all prompt the unavoidable question: Should I maybe stay here for good?


PatricePatrice Sarath is an author and editor living in Austin, Texas. Her novels include the fantasy series, Books of the Gordath (Gordath Wood, Red Gold Bridge, and The Crow God’s Girl) and the romance The Unexpected Miss Bennet. She has been published by Penguin in the US and Robert Hale Ltd. in the UK. She is also the author of numerous short stories that have appeared in several magazines and anthologies, including Weird Tales, Black Gate, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, and many others. Her short story “A Prayer for Captain La Hire” was included in Year’s Best Fantasy of 2003 compiled by David Hartwell and Katherine Cramer. Her story “Pigs and Feaches,” originally published in Apex Digest, was reprinted in 2013 in Best Tales of the Apocalypse by Permuted Press. Patrice is an avid horsewoman. She also enjoys bike-riding, rollerblading, and hiking the woods and trails outside Austin. She can often be found writing at her neighborhood coffee house.

Sep
12
Sat
An Evening with Emily Bludworth de Barrios, Tyler Gobble & Ben Kopel
Sep 12 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for an entertaining evening with writers Emily Bludworth de Barrios, Tyler Gobble, and Ben Kopel (pictured left to right).

Emily, Tyler, Ben

Emily Bludworth de Barrios is the author of Splendor, a book of poems from H_NGM_N Books, and Extraordinary Power, a chapbook from Factory Hollow Press. Her poems have most recently appeared in Sixth FinchJellyfish, and New Delta Review. She received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.


Tyler Gobble is the host of Everything Is Bigger, a reading series in Austin, Texas. He is currently a poetry fellow at the Michener Center for Writers. He has plopped out a chunk of chapbooks, and his first full-length collection, MORE WRECK MORE WRECK, is available from Coconut Books. He likes disc golf, sleeveless shirts, porches, and bacon.


Ben Kopel currently lives in Austin, Texas where he acts as the Director of Language Arts for Skybridge Academy, teaching literature and creative writing to Middle and High School students. He is the author of VICTORY from H_NGM_N Books, and he is currently working on a new full-length collection, possibly titled Sutras of Love & Hate. In his spare time he is planning a wedding and writing about music for FLOOD.

Sep
13
Sun
An Afternoon with Fani Papageorgiou
Sep 13 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Join us for an afternoon with acclaimed poet Fani Papageorgiou, who will be reading from her latest collection, Not So Ill with You & Me. Fani will be joined on our stage by poets Taisia Kitaiskaia and Kurt Heinzelman (left to right, below).

Fani and Co

Fani Papageorgiou studied History of Science at Harvard and Law at the University of Edinburgh. Her collection of poems, When You Said No, Did You Mean Never?, received the Hong Kong Poetry Prize and was translated into Spanish. Her second book, Not So Ill with You & Me, was published in the UK in May of this year. Her book reviews have appeared in the Economist, the Times Literary Supplement, and FT Weekend.

Taisia Kitaiskaia’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pleiades, jubilat, Guernica, The Missouri Review, Juked, Gulf Coast, West Branch, Phantom Limb, Fence, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Best New Poets 2015 anthology, and her manuscript, “Hello My Unspeakable Name,” was a finalist for the 2015 Southern Voices Poetry Prize and the 2015 Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Poetry Competition. Recipient of a Michener Center for Writers fellowship, she is the current managing editor of Bat City Review.

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. 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).

Austin Writers Roulette
Sep 13 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!

This month’s theme is “Spark of Madness.” The lineup of mad poets is: MAGIC JACK ATX, BIRDMAN 313, EL GUAPO, GEOVANI ZAMBRANA, STEPHANIE WEBB, MICHAEL KENNON, DONNA DECHEN BIRDWELL, TERESA Y. ROBERSON and THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

AWR

Sep
18
Fri
Harold Whit Williams Book Launch with Josh Boyd
Sep 18 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of Lost in the Telling, the first full-length poetry collection from poet and musician Harold Whit Williams. Harold will be joined on our stage by fellow poet Josh Boyd.

HaroldHarold Whit Williams is guitarist for the critically acclaimed rock band Cotton Mather. He is also a prize-winning poet and recipient of the 2014 Mississippi Review Poetry Prize. He was featured poet in the 2014 University of North Texas Kraken Reading Series, and his collection, Backmasking, was winner of the 2013 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize from Texas Review Press. He lives in Austin, Texas.


JoshJosh Boyd is a poet residing in Austin. He started working as a spoken word artist in 2001 at the age of 17 and has performed all over the US as well as in Mexico, Spain, and Morocco. His first collection of poetry, Catacomb Confetti, was released through Write Bloody Publishing in 2010. He is currently working on an album featuring his new poetry, slated for release later this year.

Sep
19
Sat
An Evening with Joanna Klink & Joseph Campana
Sep 19 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for an evening with award-winning poets Joanna Klink and Joseph Campana.

JoannaJoanna Klink is the author of four books of poetry: They Are Sleeping, Circadian, Raptus, and Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy (Penguin, 2015). Her poems have appeared in many anthologies, most recently The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry and Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation. She has received awards and fellowships from The Rona Jaffe Foundation, Jeannette Haien Ballard, Civitella Ranieri, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Missoula and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at The University of Montana.

Joe Joseph Campana is a poet, arts writer, and scholar of Renaissance literature. He is the author of two collections of poetry, The Book of Faces (Graywolf, 2005) and Natural Selections (2012), which received the Iowa Poetry Prize. His poems appear in Slate, Kenyon Review, Poetry, Conjunctions, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. Current projects include a collection of poems entitled The Book of Life. He teaches Renaissance literature and creative writing at Rice University.

Sep
20
Sun
An Afternoon with Kathleen Winter & Jenny Browne
Sep 20 @ 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Join us for a reading from award-winning poets Kathleen Winter and Jenny Browne. The afternoon will also feature live music from two members of the Mojo-Folk band The Love Sprockets.


KathleenKathleen Winter, recipient of the Fall 2015 Dobie Paisano fellowship from UT Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters, is the author of Nostalgia for the Criminal Past (Elixir Press), winner of the Antivenom Poetry Prize and the 2013 Texas Institute of Letters Bob Bush Memorial Award for a first book of poems. Her chapbook Invisible Pictures was published by Finishing Line Press. Winter was awarded writing fellowships by the James Merrill House; the Brown Foundation at the Dora Maar House, Ménerbes, France; Cill Rialaig Retreat, Ireland; Vermont Studio Center and the Prague Summer Program. She was a winner of the City of Phoenix Seventh Avenue Streetscape Public Art Project competition, as well as the 2014  Rochelle Ratner Memorial Prize from Marsh Hawk Press. Winter’s poems have appeared in Tin House, AGNI, Poetry London, Gulf Coast, The New Republic, The Cincinnati Review and other journals and anthologies. Winter graduated with honors from the University of California, Davis, School of Law, and holds an MA in English Literature from Boston College and BA in English from the University of Texas at Austin.


JennyJenny 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.


Love SprocketsThe Love Sprockets are a Mojo-Folk band from Austin, Texas. In 2013 a couple named Jahnavi and Addison rode their bicycles from Vermont to Texas, making music along the way. When they got there, they met Aaron Watson (Upright Bass) and Pete Van Dyck (Drums, Vocals). Now they play high energy, all-original songs that blend a variety of styles, ranging from foot stompin’ Bluegrass, rip-roarin’ Americana, heart-throbbing Soul, spirit-swelling Gospel, whiskey-drinkin’ Blues, and nap-in-the-sunshine Folk.

Sep
25
Fri
I Scream Social
Sep 25 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Get your cones ready for the fourth edition of Malvern Books’ FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld and Schandra Madha.

Featuring young women poets and fiction writers from the Austin community, this month’s I Screamers are Allyson Whipple and Tu-Uyen Nguyen. They’re both I Scream originals and regular open mic-ers, so we’re beyond excited to feature them.

Following the reading, there will be a (mic-less) open mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us. And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream? And the photo booth? Oh yeah, it’s gonna be good.

Can’t make it this time around? No worries. I Scream Social is every fourth Friday ’til the end of time.

I Scream

Sep
27
Sun
The Freedom to Read Foundation’s Read Out for Banned Books
Sep 27 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Join us in celebrating Banned Books Week with The Freedom to Read Foundation!

Banned Books

This event will feature a “read out,” with special guests, including Tish Hinojosa, Sarah Bird, and Mark Smith (Director of the Texas State Library and Archives), reading from their favorite banned books. Audience members are also welcome to read. Attendance is free, but donations to The Freedom to Read Foundation will be gratefully accepted.

Freedom To ReadThe Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF) is a non-profit legal and educational organization that was founded in 1969 to protect and defend the First Amendment to the Constitution and support the right of libraries to collect—and individuals to access—information. The Foundation is devoted to the principle that the solution to offensive speech is more speech, and the suppression of speech on the grounds that it gives offense to some infringes on the rights of all to a free, open and robust marketplace of ideas.

Sep
30
Wed
Fiston Mwanza Mujila & Roland Glasser In Conversation
Sep 30 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for an evening with Congolese writer Fiston Mwanza Mujila, author of Tram 83, and the novel’s translator Roland Glasser. Fiston will read in French, Roland in English. They will discuss the novel and answer questions from the audience. We’ll also enjoy live jazz music from saxophonist Chris Hall.

Tram 83Two friends, one a budding writer home from Europe, the other an ambitious racketeer, meet in the only nightclub, the Tram 83, in a war-torn city-state in secession, surrounded by profit-seekers of all languages and nationalities. Tram 83 plunges the reader into the modern African gold rush as cynical as it is comic and colorfully exotic, using jazz rhythms to weave a tale of human relationships in a world that has become a global village. Tram 83 is Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s first novel. It has won numerous literary prizes in France and Austria, and has been translated into six languages.

FistonFiston Mwanza Mujila was born in 1981 in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, where he went to a Catholic school before studying Literature and Human Sciences at Lubumbashi University. He now lives in Graz, Austria and is pursuing a PhD in Romance Languages & Literatures. His writing has been awarded with numerous prizes, including the Gold Medal at the 6th Jeux de la Francophonie in Beirut, as well as the Best Text for Theater (“Preis für das beste Stück”) at the State Theater in Mainz, Austria in 2010. His poems, prose works, and plays are reactions to the political turbulence that has come in the wake of the independence of the Congo and its effect on day-to-day life. As he describes in one of his poems, his texts describe a “geography of hunger”: a hunger for peace, freedom, and bread. His texts have been published in the original French and in translation in many journals and anthologies in several European countries, and he has been performing at readings and festivals since 2002.


RolandRoland Glasser translates literary and genre fiction from French, as well as art, travel, and assorted non-fiction. He studied theater, cinema, and art history in the UK and France, and has worked extensively in the performing arts, chiefly as a lighting designer. He is a French Voices award winner and serves on the Committee of the UK Translators Association. Having lived in Paris for many years, he is currently based in London.


Chris Hall started playing the saxophone when he was in 7th grade and taught himself the clarinet the summer before high school. By his senior year, he’d made the Colorado All-State Symphony and All-State Concert Band, both on clarinet, and was a part of the National Youth Choir that performed at Carnegie Hall in New York. Following high school, he joined the Army Band where he played all kinds of instruments with the 323rd Army MEDCOM Band stationed at Ft. Sam Houston. He currently works full-time in web development, while also playing saxophone with La Vida Buena (Salsa Band in Austin), The Tailpipes (Oldies Band in San Antonio), The Inverters (Ska Band in Austin), Kerosene Drifters (Rock/Blues/Country Band in San Antonio), and, of course, the Chris Hall Trio.


This book tour has been arranged with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.

Oct
7
Wed
A Communal Celebration of “Howl”: A Service of Semi-Religious Significance
Oct 7 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

October 7, 2015 marks the 60th anniversary of the first reading of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” To honor the occasion, Malvern Books is hosting a crowd-sourced performance of the poem, featuring people from all over Austin. The event emphasizes the religious nature of the piece, combining elements of worship from various spiritual traditions into one magical night of community.

For more info and to sign up to read, email: whoppe@austincc.edu

HOWL

Oct
8
Thu
Novel Night with Troy James Weaver & Drew Hayes
Oct 8 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for the tenth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll then have an open mic for writers who have signed up to read from their unpublished short stories or novels. And finally, we’ll have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: there will be snacks!

Novel Night

This month Troy is visiting us from Kansas to share his new book of short fiction, Wichita Stories, and Drew will be reading from UnDeath and Taxes, the continuing saga of a vampire accountant.


TroyTroy James Weaver was born, raised, and remains in Wichita, Kansas. His work has been in Hobart, Everyday Genius, The LitHub, Atticus Review, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. His first book, Witchita Stories, was published by Future Tense Books in 2015. He is also the author of Visions (Broken River Press).


DrewDrew Hayes is an author from Texas who has written several books and found the gumption to publish a few (so far). He graduated from Texas Tech with a B.A. in English, because evidently he’s not familiar with what the term “employable” means. Drew has been called one of the most profound, prolific, and talented authors of his generation, but a table full of drunks will say almost anything when offered a round of free shots. Drew feels kind of like a D-bag writing about himself in the third person like this. He does appreciate that you’re still reading, though. Drew would like to sit down and have a beer with you. Or a cocktail. He’s not here to judge your preferences. Drew is terrible at being serious, and has no real idea what a snippet biography is meant to convey anyway. Drew thinks you are awesome just the way you are. That part, he meant. Drew is off to go high-five random people, because who doesn’t love a good high-five? No one, that’s who.

Oct
10
Sat
Malvern Books’ 2nd Anniversary Celebration
Oct 10 @ 2:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Opening day seems like it was only yesterday, but in fact Malvern Books turns TWO this week. And we’re celebrating our second anniversary in fine style, with music, readings, and cake. Come on down and join the party!

 * Also worth noting: there will be 25 % off everything in the store all day! *

2nd Anniversary

At 2pm, you’re invited to join us for a communal reading of Kenneth Koch’s epic 104-stanza poem “When the Sun Tries to Go On” (from The Hasty Papers)… come and read a verse or two, and enjoy some birthday cake as your reward.

At 6pm, we’ll enjoy live music from Americana roots duo Mark Viator & Susan Maxey.

And at 7pm, we’ll rock out further with a little Poetry Karaoke. (It’s easy: you roll a lettered die and then select from our shelves 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!)

Oct
11
Sun
Austin Writers Roulette
Oct 11 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!

This month’s theme is “Things Under the Bed.” The lineup of intrepid artists is: SARAH KENNON, JONELL NELSON, TERESA Y. ROBERSON & THOM THE WORLD POET. An open mic, especially for Halloween tales, will follow! Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

AWR

Oct
13
Tue
Raw Paw Presents: Alien Zine Reading
Oct 13 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for a reading featuring writers from Raw Paw’s new Alien zine. With David Jewell, Josh Boyd, and special guests!

Alien Zine

Oct
20
Tue
An Evening with Reginald Gibbons & Michael Anania
Oct 20 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for a reading with poets Reginald Gibbons and Michael Anania.

ReginaldReginald Gibbons is the author of nine books of poems, most recently Creatures of a Day (Finalist for the National Book Award) and Slow Trains Overhead: Chicago Poems and Stories. His novel Sweetbitter is set in Texas in the early years of the 20th century. He has also published translations of Spanish and Mexican poetry, and of Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Bacchae. His newest book is How Poems Think (University of Chicago Press), a book for poets and readers of poetry which Rosanna Warren calls “a hymn of praise to the spell-casting powers of patterned language.”


Michael AMichael Anania is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. His published work includes twelve collections of poetry, among them Selected Poems (l994), In Natural Light (1999), Once Again, Flowered (2001) and Heat Lines (2006). A new collection, Continuous Showings, is due out this year. His poetry is widely anthologized and has been translated into Italian, German, French, Spanish and Czech. He has also published a novel, The Red Menace, and a collection of essays, In Plain Sight. Anania was poetry editor of Audit, a quarterly, founder and co-editor of Audit/Poetry, poetry editor of Partisan Review, a contributing editor to Tri-Quarterly, and poetry and literary editor of The Swallow Press. He also served as a panelist for the NEA, the NEH and the Illinois Arts Council. Anania has taught at SUNY at Buffalo, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago, and is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He lives in Austin, Texas and on Lake Michigan.

Oct
21
Wed
Patrick Ryan Frank Book Launch
Oct 21 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the Austin launch of Patrick Ryan Frank’s latest poetry collection, The Opposite of People (Four Way Books).

Patrick

Patrick Ryan Frank is the author of the poetry collections The Opposite of People and How the Losers Love What’s Lost, which won the 2010 Intro Prize from Four Way Books. He studied poetry at Northwestern University, Boston University, and the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. He was recently a Fulbright Fellow to Iceland, and he currently lives in Austin, Texas.

Oct
22
Thu
Susan Signe Morrison Book Launch
Oct 22 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the release of Susan Signe Morrison’s new novel, Grendel’s Mother: The Saga of the Wyrd-Wife. We’ll also enjoy live music from award-winning musician Sarah McSweeney.

Susan

Living in Austin, Texas, Susan Signe Morrison writes on topics lurking in the margins of history, ranging from recently uncovered diaries of a teenaged girl in World War II to medieval women pilgrims, excrement in the Middle Ages, and waste. Susan Morrison is Professor of English at Texas State University. She grew up in New Jersey by the Great Swamp, a National Wildlife Refuge with terrain not unlike that of Grendel’s Mother’s mere in Beowulf.

Grendel’s Mother: The Saga of the Wyrd-Wife is a feminist revision of the Old English epic, Beowulf. In it, we see the many passages of her life: the brine-baby who floated mysteriously to shore; the hall-queen presiding over the triumphant building of the golden hall Heorot and victim of sexual and political betrayal; the exiled mere-wife, who ekes out a marginal life by an uncanny bog as a healer and contends with the menacing Beowulf; and the seer, who prophesizes what will occur to her adopted people. We learn how the invasion by brutal men is not a fairy tale, but a disaster doomed to cycle relentlessly through human history. Only the surviving women can sing poignant laments, preserve a glittering culture, and provide hope for the future.


Sarah McSweeney grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, performing on stage in many venues and in various ensembles, and winning statewide competitions at the age of 14. She has opened for popular artists like Colbie Caillat, Michelle Branch, and BB King, as well as recorded original material with Grammy award-winning producer Ruslan Sirota (known for his work with Dianne Warren, Josh Groban, and Ne-yo ) and Brian Standefer, cellist for well-known Austin recording artist and musician Alexandro Escovedo. Sarah travels and sings internationally but can also be heard in local venues in Austin and the Hill Country area. She most recently has created her own genre of music, OPERA MANTRA, combining her extensive background in classical music with a love for mantras.

Oct
23
Fri
I Scream Social
Oct 23 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

HALLOWEEN EDITION: Get your spook on with us at this month’s I Scream. Come in costume, and you could win some awesome prizes. Not that you need an excuse to wear costumes in October, am I right?

Get your cones ready for another installment of Malvern Books’ newest FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld & Schandra Madha.

Featuring young women poets and fiction writers from the Austin community, this month’s I Screamers are Layne Ransom, Stephanie Goehring, and Abbey Mei Otis. They’re all rock stars, and we’re thrilled to be featuring them.

Following the reading, there will be a (mic-less) open mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us.

And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream? And the photo booth? Oh yeah, it’s gonna be good. Can’t make it this time around? No worries. I Scream Social is every fourth Friday ’til the end of time.

I Scream

Oct
25
Sun
E. Kristin Anderson Book Launch
Oct 25 @ 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of E. Kristin Anderson’s new chapbook, Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press). Kristin will be joined by writers M. Mack, Stacey Balkun, Erika Jo Brown, Ava Love Hanna, BJ Love, Liz Belile and Nettie Reynolds.

Kristin and book cover

E. Kristin Anderson is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author who grew up in Westbrook, Maine and is a graduate of Connecticut College. She has a fancy diploma that says “B.A. in Classics,” which makes her sound smart but has not helped her get any jobs in Ancient Rome. Kristin is the co-editor of Dear Teen Me, an anthology based on the popular website and her YA memoir The Summer of Unraveling is forthcoming in 2017 from ELJ Publications. Her poetry has been published worldwide in many magazines and anthologies and she is the author of four chapbooks: A Jab of Deep Urgency (Finishing Line Press); A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks); Pray Pray Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press); and Acoustic Battery Life (forthcoming from ELJ Publications). She is an online editor at Hunger Mountain and a poetry editor at Found Poetry Review. Once upon a time she worked at The New Yorker. She now lives in Austin, Texas, where she is currently working on a full-length collection of erasure poems from women’s and teen magazines.

Oct
27
Tue
An Evening with Jasmina Tešanović & Bruce Sterling
Oct 27 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for an evening with writers Jasmina Tešanović and Bruce Sterling.

Jasmina and Bruce

Jasmina Tešanović is a writer, journalist, musician, film director, feminist, and political activist (Women in Black; CodePink). In 1978 she promoted the first feminist conference in Eastern Europe, “Drug-ca Zena” (Belgrade). With Slavica Stojanovic she created the first feminist publishing house in the Balkans, Feminist 94, which lasted for ten years. She is the author of “Diary of a Political Idiot” (translated in twelve languages), a real-time war diary written during the 1999 conflict in Kosovo. Since then she has been publishing her works on blogs and other media, always connected to the Internet.

Bruce Sterling is a novelist and journalist. While acting as “Visionary in Residence” at Art Center College of Design in 2008, he wrote “Shaping Things,” one of the first books about the Internet of Things. In 2008 he was the curator of the Share Festival in Turin, on the theme of Italian digital manufacturing. He was one of the original columnists for Make magazine and wrote the cover story for the first issue of WIRED. Bruce Sterling lives in Turin, Belgrade, and Austin.

Oct
30
Fri
Chaitali Sen Book Launch
Oct 30 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of Chaitali Sen’s debut novel, The Pathless Sky. Addison Rice of mojo-folk band The Love Sprockets will get the evening off to a great start with live music.

Chaitali Sen

Chaitali Sen was born in India and raised in the northeastern United States. She is the author of The Pathless Sky, published by Europa Editions, and her short stories, reviews, and essays have appeared in New England Review, New Ohio Review, Colorado Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other journals. She lives with her family in Austin, Texas, where she is also an elementary school teacher.

Nov
3
Tue
An Evening with Colin Halloran & Mark Harden
Nov 3 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for an evening with poets Colin Halloran and Mark Harden (pictured left and right, below).

Colin and Mark

An internationally published writer, artist, and adjunct professor of English, Colin Halloran’s 2012 debut collection, memoir-in-verse Shortly Thereafter, recounts his experiences serving on the front lines of Afghanistan and the impact those experiences had on his return to civilian life. It won the 2012 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award and was a Massachusetts Must-Read Book of 2013. In addition to teaching, Halloran leads workshops and lectures on the relationship between writing and conflict, in particular working with veterans with PTSD, a group that includes himself. His acclaimed second collection, Icarian Flux, explores his life with PTSD through experimental narrative and form, metaphor, and persona. It has been called “a remarkable book,” by Pablo Medina, while Richard Hoffman notes that the collection is comprised of “poems of great vitality and passion.” He lives in Boston and is currently working on an exhibition of paintings that explore the veteran suicide epidemic.

Mark E. Harden is a retired U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 whose service to his country spanned four decades. Since 2000, as a manager of Veterans Affairs and adjunct faculty at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas, Harden has had the honor and privilege of working with veterans from WWII to the ongoing war in Afghanistan. His poems have been published in the Rio Review, Red River Review, Windhover Journal, and Old Mountain Press Anthologies. He currently lives in Georgetown, Texas.

Nov
4
Wed
Dalton Day Book Launch
Nov 4 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of Dalton Day’s first full-length poetry collection, Actual Cloud. Dalton will be joined on our stage by Malvern favorites Layne Ransom and Sam Sax.

Dalton Day

Dalton Day is a trembling, literal dog-person, Pushcart nominee, & MFA candidate in The New Writers Project at UT Austin. He is the author of the poetry collection Actual Cloud, as well as the chapbooks FAKE KNIFE and the forthcoming To Breathe I’m Too Thin. His poems have been featured in PANK, Hobart, Columbia Poetry Review & Alien Mouth, among others. Currently, he is an editor for FreezeRay Poetry & Souvenir Lit.

Layne Ransom continues to exist. She has an online chapbook out on H_NGM_N and is a poetry MFA candidate in the New Writers Project. She is an aspiring moon princess and loves Sting’s solo career. Those are probably related somehow.

Sam Sax is an NEA Fellow and a Fellow at The Michener Center for Writers where he’s the associate poetry editor at Bat City Review. He’s the two time Bay Area Unified Grand Slam Champion and author of the chapbooks, A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters (Button Poetry 2014) and sad boy / detective (Winner of the Black Lawrence’s 2014 Black River Chapbook Prize).

Nov
6
Fri
William Virgil Davis Book Launch
Nov 6 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of William Virgil Davis’s new collection, Dismantlements of Silence: Poems Selected and New (Texas Review Press).

W V Davis

William Virgil Davis’s most recent book of poetry is Dismantlements of Silence: Poems Selected and New (2015). He has published five other books of poetry: The Bones Poems; Landscape and Journey, which won the New Criterion Poetry Prize and the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Poetry; Winter Light; The Dark Hours, which won the Calliope Press Chapbook Prize; and One Way to Reconstruct the Scene, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His poems have appeared in most of the major periodicals, here and abroad, including Agenda, The Atlantic Monthly, The Gettysburg Review, The Georgia Review, The Harvard Review, The Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review The Nation, The New Criterion, PN Review, Poetry, The Sewanee Review, Southwest Review, The Southern Review, and TriQuarterly, among many others. He is past President of the Texas Institute of Letters and Professor Emeritus of English and Writer-in-Residence at Baylor University.

Nov
7
Sat
Borderlands: Issue 43 Launch Party
Nov 7 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Join us for a reading and exhibit to celebrate the launch of the latest issue of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review!

J MoodyThe keynote poet is Jonathan Moody, author of the award-winning Olympic Butter Gold (Northwestern University Press, 2015), exploring his coming-of-age experience during the evolution of American hip-hop culture. Reviewer Sequoia Maner touts Moody’s work as “funny, daring and imaginative.” The new issue also highlights an in-depth, thoughtful and candid interview of Moody by editor Ryan Sharp.


Borderlands 43Other readers include: Ariana Brown, Robert Lunday, Jonelle Seitz, Ally Young, and Vanessa Zimmer-Powell. And in conjunction with our launch, featured artist Sabine Zimmer will talk about her art series on display Nov. 2 to Nov. 16 at Malvern Books. Zimmer’s artwork includes the iconic Route 66—a contemporary view of the Southwest against the backdrop of ancient lands.

Pablo Miguel Martínez Book Launch with Liliana Valenzuela
Nov 7 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of Pablo Miguel Martínez’s new collection of poems, CUENT@ (Finishing Line Press). With readings from Pablo Miguel Martínez and Liliana Valenzuela, and live music from Katie Solo.

Pablo

Pablo Miguel Martínez’s collection of poems, Brazos, Carry Me (Kórima Press), received the 2013 PEN Southwest Book Award for Poetry. Martínez’s work has appeared in journals, newspapers, and anthologies, including Americas Review, Best Gay Poetry 2008, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, El Paso Times, Gay and Lesbian Review, Harpur Palate, Inkwell, North American Review, Pilgrimage, San Antonio Express-News and This Assignment Is So Gay. Martínez has been a recipient of the Robert L.B. Tobin Award for Artistic Excellence, the Oscar Wilde Award, and the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize. His literary work has received support from the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation and the Artist Foundation of San Antonio. Martínez is a Co-Founder of CantoMundo, a national retreat-workshop for Latina/o poets. He is Executive Director of San Anto Cultural Arts in San Antonio, Texas.

Liliana V.Liliana Valenzuela is an award-winning poet, literary translator, essayist, and journalist. She is the author of the poetry collection Codex of Journeys: Bendito camino (Mouthfeel Press, 2012). Her translation of ¿Has visto a María? (Have you Seen Marie?) by Sandra Cisneros was published by Knopf in 2012, and she is currently translating Cisneros’ upcoming essay collection A House of My Own. Valenzuela is the Spanish language translator of works by Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, Denise Chávez, Nina Marie Martínez, Ana Castillo, Richard Rodríguez, Rudolfo Anaya, Cristina García, Gloria Anzaldúa, and many other writers. A member of the Macondo Writers Workshop and an inaugural fellow of CantoMundo, she works as a reporter for ¡ahora sí!, the Spanish publication of the Austin American-Statesman.

Nov
8
Sun
Austin Writers Roulette
Nov 8 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!

This month’s theme is “Bumper Sticker Philosophy.” The line up of bumper sticker philosophers features: MAGIC JACK ATX, BIRDMAN 313, EL GUAPO, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, and THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

AWR

Nov
11
Wed
Timeless, Infinite Light presents The Sleeping Together Tour
Nov 11 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Poets and Timeless, Infinite Light cofounders Emji Spero and Joel Gregory are touring the south with The Sleeping Together Tour. Malvern Books is delighted to be hosting their Austin reading, where they’ll be joined by local poets Mónica Teresa Ortiz and Kimberly Alidio.

Timeless, Infinite Light 
Timeless, Infinite Light
 is an Oakland-based small press that publishes contemporary writing with a tendency toward the experimental, radical, and mystical. We are committed to promoting critical poetic work by emerging and established writers, and we prioritize authors whose identities are often excluded from the literary mainstream. We believe in the radical potential of collaborative, hybrid, and embodied writing, and promote work that resists structures of oppression, both in form and content. This preference for challenging work extends to the design and structure of the books we produce.

Emji Spero is an Oakland-­based artist exploring the intersections of writing, book art, installation and performance. They are a co-founder of Timeless, Infinite Light, Material Print Machine, and Omni Commons. Their book, almost any shit will do, uses found language, word-replacement and erasure to strange the familiar and and map the boundaries of collective engagement. Spero is currently working on Exhaustion, a dry lyric essay that documents the affective weight of accumulated subthreshold violences.

Joel Gregory is a poet and visual artist living in Oakland, California. He is a dropout of the Evergreen State College and the New School. He is a co­-founder at Timeless, Infinite Light. His poetry can be found in Boog City, 580 Split, and Open House, and his visual art can be found on Instagram @niteselfie. He is currently working on Connection, a voyeristic book-length manuscript, in which he collages language from Craigslist missed connections into poems and reposts them in search of the absent object of desire.

Kimberly Alidio is the author of solitude being alien (dancing girl press, 2013) and the forthcoming full-length poetry collection, After projects the resound (Black Radish Books, 2016). Recent and forthcoming work appears in La Vague, Matter, smoking glue gun, and the Center for Art and Thought’s Racecraft exhibition. Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, she lives in Austin.

Mónica Teresa Ortiz was born and raised in Texas. Her work has appeared in Pilgrimage Magazine, Borderlands, the Texas Observer, Black Girl Dangerous, and elsewhere. A two-time Andres Montoya Letras Latinas Poetry Prize finalist, Ortiz is the poetry editor for Raspa Magazine, a queer Latino literary art journal.

Nov
12
Thu
Novel Night with Jim Sanderson & Dale Bridges
Nov 12 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for the eleventh event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll then have an open mic for writers who have signed up to read from their unpublished short stories or novels. And finally, we’ll have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: there will be snacks!

Novel Night

This month’s readers will be Jim Sanderson and Dale Bridges. Jim will be sharing his most recent novel, Hill Country Property, and Dale will be reading from his short fiction.


Jim SandersonJim Sanderson has published three collections of short stories: Semi-Private Rooms (1994); Faded Love (Ink Brush Press, 2010), and Trashy Behavior (Lamar University Press, 2013). He has published seven novels, including: El Camino del Rio (University of New Mexico Press, 1998), Safe Delivery (University of New Mexico Press, 2000); La Mordida (University of New Mexico Press, 2002); Nevin’s History: A Novel of Texas (Texas Tech University Press, 2004); Dolph’s Team (Ink Brush Press, 2011); and Nothing Left to Lose (TCU Press, 2014). And he has published an essay collection, A West Texas Soapbox (1998). He is presently serving as the chair of the English and Modern Language Department for Lamar University.


Dale BridgesDale Bridges is a fiction writer, essayist, and freelance journalist. His writing has been featured in more than thirty publications, including The Rumpus, The Masters Review, and Barrelhouse Magazine. For several years, Dale was the A&E editor at an alternative newspaper called Boulder Weekly, where he wrote an award-winning humor column titled That’s Irrelevant. He has also won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for his feature writing, narrative nonfiction, and cultural criticism. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize on several occasions, and his essays and short stories have been anthologized. He lives in Austin with his wife and two cats. He is currently working on his first novel.

Nov
13
Fri
It’s All About Shoes Book Launch
Nov 13 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the Austin launch of It’s All About Shoes, a collection of essays, poems and stories about women and their unusual relationship to shoes, edited by Pamela L. Laskin (with co-editors Lyn Di Iorio and Karen Clark). Pamela will share excerpts from the anthology, and will be joined by writers Judith Austin Mills and Ute Carson, who will read from their recent works.

It's All About Shoes

Pamela L. Laskin (above right) is a lecturer in the CCNY/CUNY English Department, where she directs the Poetry Outreach Center. Her poetry chapbooks include Grand Central Station (Millennium Poetry Prize); Remembering Fireflies; Secrets of Sheets; Ghosts, Goblins, Gods and Geodes; Van Gogh’s Ear; Daring Daughters/Defiant Dreams; The Plagiarist; and The Bonsai Curator. Her Young Adult novel Visitation Rites was published in 2012. Homer the Little Stray Cat is her most recent children’s book. A memoir, My Life in Shoes, came out in 2011. Of her many published short stories, two include YA stories, one in Young Miss and the other in Sassy. She edited two other anthologies: The Heroic Young Woman (2006), a book of original feminist fairy tales, and Life on the Moon: My Best Friend’s Secrets, a collection of young adult fiction.


Judith Judith Austin Mills grew up surrounded by music and literature, an upbringing that she says “makes rhythm and rhyme natural friends” to her poetry. Family moves during childhood deepened her appreciation of adventure and contrast. Northern states provided indelible memories of seasonal change, but settling in Texas made her “dig deep to see beauty in any landscape.” Just released in October 2015, Those Bones at Goliad, a Texas Revolution novel, is a sequel to her 2011 historical novel How Far Tomorrow. In 2013, between the two novels, she published Accidental Joy: a streak of poetry, containing 101 psalms of poetry. Her short stories and poems have appeared in diverse publications, including the Texas Poetry Calendar. The fiction manuscript Tripping Home won a Writers’ League of Texas competition in 2001. Mills earned an undergraduate degree and later her M.A. in English with a Creative Writing concentration at the University of Texas and has been writing fiction and poetry ever since. With a career as a teacher, frequently in the French classroom, she is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor of English at Austin Community College. 


UteUte Maria Elisabeth Gräfin von Hardenberg-Carson was born on the Baltic Coast in Köslin, Pomerania, shortly after the beginning of World War II. As Russian forces swept toward central Europe, her family fled westward to what became West Germany, where she went to school and attended the Universities of Hamburg and Mainz. Immigrating to America in 1962, she completed her masters at the University of Rochester, becoming a college instructor of German Language and Literature, and Women’s Studies. A writer from youth, Carson’s first story was published in 1977. For the past 26 years she has continuously published stories and essays in journals, magazines, and books. In 2011 she published Just a Few Feathers, a book of poems. Her latest contributions include “Gypsy Spirit” in Falling in Love Again – Love the Second Time Around, and “A Mantra” in Arts and Letters Magazine. Colt Tailing, finalist for the 2003 Peter Taylor Book Award, is Carson’s first novel; In Transit her second. She is currently at work on a third, Letters to a Dying Friend. Carson has traveled the world and has lived in Germany, France, Scotland, New York, Vermont, and Florida. She now resides in Texas, with her husband. They have three daughters, five grandchildren, two horses, and a number of cats.

Nov
14
Sat
Creative Minds of Texas Authors: Day One
Nov 14 @ 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Earlier this year, Texas Association of Authors, C-Spot Magazine, and EBG247 teamed up to create a short story contest for Texas Authors. After receiving numerous entries, the judges awarded top-three places in a wide range of genres. Join us for a fun two-day event during which some of the winners of this year’s contest will share their stories. Today’s readers will be:

Diana Finfrock Farrar
Marla Dean
Tamara Hartl
Allan Kimball
Juan Manuel Casas

The book Short Stories by Texas Authors will be available for sale during the event, with proceeds benefiting a variety of reading programs administrated by DearTexas.info. In addition, those authors with published books will also have them available for sale during their reading time.

Texas Association of Authors

Nov
15
Sun
Creative Minds of Texas Authors: Day Two
Nov 15 @ 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Earlier this year, Texas Association of Authors, C-Spot Magazine, and EBG247 teamed up to create a short story contest for Texas Authors. After receiving numerous entries, the judges awarded top-three places in a wide range of genres. Join us for a fun two-day event during which some of the winners of this year’s contest will share their stories. Today’s readers will be:

Bert Bebe
Marjorie Brody
B Alan Bourgeois

The book Short Stories by Texas Authors will be available for sale during the event, with proceeds benefiting a variety of reading programs administrated by DearTexas.info. In addition, those authors with published books will also have them available for sale during their reading time.

Texas Association of Authors

Nov
18
Wed
W. Joe’s Poetry Corner with Carrie Fountain
Nov 18 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

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’s guest is Carrie Fountain.

Carrie Fountain

Carrie Fountain’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House, and Poetry, among others. Her debut collection, Burn Lake, was a National Poetry Series winner and was published in 2010 by Penguin. Her second collection, Instant Winner, was published by Penguin in 2014. Born and raised in Mesilla, New Mexico, Fountain received her MFA as a fellow at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Currently writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University, she lives in Austin with her husband, playwright Kirk Lynn, and their children.

Nov
20
Fri
Best of Pterodáctilo: Bilingual Poetry Reading
Nov 20 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join the editors at Revista Pterodáctilo, a journal of Latin American literature, arts, and culture, for their semesterly Poetry and Ptamales Party, featuring readings by different poets from the UT community. They will also be releasing their Best of Pterodáctilo publication, a print addition recapping the last four years of work by Pterodáctilo bloggers.

PTERO

Nov
22
Sun
Fantastical Fictions with Howard Waldrop
Nov 22 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Please join us at Malvern Books for Fantastical Fictions, an odd-monthly event focusing on the literary fantastic across genres and cultures hosted by Rebecca Schwarz and Chris Brown. We plan to bring together writers and readers of fantastic literature in Austin by featuring published writers reading from new works and from examples of fantastic literature available on our shelves. Discussion, Q&A sessions, and open mic for works in progress will follow the readings.

In January, we’ll move to our regular format, meeting on Wednesday, January 6th. Please email us to sign up for our Fantastical Fictions email list if you’d like to receive news about our upcoming fantastic literature events, as well as announcements about new works of fantastic literature in the store.

Poster

Our first event is a very special one: on Sunday, November 22nd at 2pm we’re thrilled to welcome award-winning Austin-based science fiction writer Howard Waldrop to our stage. Howard will read from his work, followed by an interview and discussion with his long-time friend, award-winning novelist Bradley Denton.

Howard Waldrop

Howard Waldrop (pictured above) is a renowned science fiction author whose stories combine elements such as alternate history, American popular culture, the American South, old movies, classical mythology, and rock ‘n’ roll music. His highly original books include the novels Them Bones and A Dozen Tough Jobs, and the collections Howard Who?, All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, and Going Home Again. Several of his stories have been nominated for awards; “The Ugly Chickens”—about the extinction of the dodo—won a Nebula Award for best novelette in 1980 and a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction in 1981. Two of his short stories are currently being adapted for television by George R.R. Martin. Though born in Mississippi, Howard Waldrop has spent most of his life in Texas.

Nov
27
Fri
An Evening with Glenn Hardin
Nov 27 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for a reading from poet Glenn Hardin.

Glenn HardinGlenn Hardin published Rejects in 1972 with Steven Harrigan and Monty Jones; Giants in 1977 (Lucille Press); Several “Pamphlets” in the 1980s; Fool Proof in 1990 (Bullet Proof Poetry Press); Stone Bruise in 1993 (Bullet Proof Poetry Press); Mr. Honey Word Goat Muscle in 2008 (Junk Flop Press); and Bad Mustache in 2014 (Interior Noise Press).

He produced and hosted a series of poetry readings at the Old Liberty Lunch on West 2nd Street in 1976, The Greater Texas Poetry Reading at Symphony Square in 1979, and hosted monthly Open Mic readings at Chicago House from 1984-1990. After moving to Bisbee, Arizona in 1991, Glenn worked on the Bisbee Poetry Festival and then hosted many reading series in town. In 2008 he moved to Wimberley, Texas and read regularly at Tantra Coffee House, Ruta Maya, and the Hideaway. In 1977 Giants won the Voertmann Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. In 1990 he won the Performance Competition at the Bisbee Poetry Festival.

Glenn Hardin was born in Oklahoma City in 1937 and the rest is as above; history.

Dec
3
Thu
An Evening with Jason Stoneking
Dec 3 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for an evening with author Jason Stoneking, who will be reading some of the candid, philosophical, and occasionally psychedelic essays from his new book.

Jason Stoneking
Jason Stoneking is an American essayist, poet, and performance artist based primarily in Paris, France. He has authored two volumes of poetry and four collections of essays, and has performed his art and writing internationally for more than twenty years at venues ranging from the main stage at Lollapalooza to the Pont Neuf in Paris and the rooftops of Cairo. His new book, Audience of None, is a collection of candid, provocative, and unconventional essays that churn the stories of his life into an intimate blend of memoir and polemic. Sometimes dark, often funny, and occasionally psychedelic, his forays into DIY philosophy always leave the audience with more questions than answers.

Dec
4
Fri
I Scream Social: Ugly Sweater Party
Dec 4 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

HOLIDAY EDITION: UGLY SWEATER PARTY! Because you probably need an excuse to wear that green pullover covered in jingle bells or that one with the light up menorah. *Bonus points if your holiday sweater has dinosaurs on it.

Get your cones ready for another installment of Malvern Books’ newest FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld & Schandra Madha.

Featuring young women poets and fiction writers from the Austin community, this month’s I Screamers are Blake Lee Pate, Taisia Kitaiskaia, and Ji Yoon Lee. They’re all rock stars, and we’re thrilled to be featuring them.

Following the reading, there will be a (mic-less) open mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us. And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream? And the photo booth? Oh yeah, it’s gonna be good.

Can’t make it this time around? No worries. I Scream Social is every fourth Friday ’til the end of time.

I Scream December

Dec
5
Sat
Texas Poetry Calendar Reading
Dec 5 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Texas Poetry CalendarFor eighteen years, the Austin reading for the Texas Poetry Calendar has been the culmination of the fall calendar readings for Dos Gatos Press. This year’s reading is hosted by Wade Martin and Allyson Whipple and will feature 17 poets sharing Texas-related work, including their poems from the 2016 Texas Poetry Calendar.

Readers include: Ralph Hausser, Jerry Hamby (the cover artist), Cheney Crow, Katherine Oldmixon, Mary Lynn Stafford, Stan Crawford, Marcelle Kasprowicz, Joanne Holladay, Tina Posner, Shubh Schiesser, Lyman Grant, Julieta Corpus, Sarah Webb, Cindy Huyser, Ben Groner, Mark Van Gelder, Margie McCreless Roe, and Diana Conces.

Dec
6
Sun
Vision + Voice Anthology Release Party
Dec 6 @ 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of the Vision + Voice Anthology. Featuring readings by winning and honorable-mention poets, a poster exhibit, and refreshments!

Vision + Voice is a collaboration between Austin Community College and Austin Independent School District that promotes literacy and creative expression by combining artwork from ACC students with poetry from AISD students.

Vision and Voice

Dec
9
Wed
Timber Mouse Publishing Reading
Dec 9 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for a reading featuring Kevin W. Burke, Rachel Wiley, Ronnie K. Stephens, and Lacey Roop (pictured below, left to right), four talented slam poets from Austin’s Timber Mouse Publishing.

Timber Mouse

Kevin W. Burke was born and raised in the aged suburban stretch, industrial parks, and haunted forests of the Chicago Southland. He has found work in a grocery store, animal shelter, power plants, scaffold yard, coffee shop, windshield warehouse, film studio, bar, classrooms, the back of an ambulance, a fire engine, and the poetry of the homemade flyers, frayed cables, and broken nosed laughter between punk-rock and hip-hop. He likes hugs, Radiolab, “big-fat-dirty-bass”, and making people realize there is electricity in their chests. When he’s not doing poetry things, he is working as a firefighter and resides in South Austin with a wonderful lady and their three big dogs. Here’s some other stuff Kevin’s done: 2011 Austin Poetry Slam Champion, 2011 Austin Poetry Slam Team, 2011
Southwest Shootout Individual Slam Champion, 2011 Texas Grand Slam Poetry Festival Champion, 2012 Austin Poetry Slam Team, 2013 Austin Poetry Slam Team, 2013 Texas Grand Slam Poetry Festival Champion, collaborated with Grammy winning Conspirare, shared stages with fancy people like Derrick Brown, Anis Mojgani, Buddy Wakefield, and Cristin O’keefe Aptowicz. Also, he has upcoming work published in Into Quarterly and Freeze Ray Press.

Rachel Wiley is known for her honest, witty, and sometimes sassy poetry that touches body image, romance, and feminism. From Columbus, Ohio, she attended the Theatre Studies program at Capital University. She tours colleges and slam venues nationwide. Her work has been featured by the Huffington Post, Everyday Feminism, Frigg Magazine, Drunken Boat, and Nailed Magazine. Her first full length poetry collection, Fat Girl Finishing School, was published by Timber Mouse Publishing in October 2014.

Ronnie K. Stephens is a full-time English teacher and the father of identical twins. His poems often explore vulnerability in its many facets. His first collection, Universe in the Key of Matryoshka, was published by Timber Mouse Publishing in 2014. Individual poems have previously appeared in Rattle, Paper Darts, Weave Magazine, DASH, and PANK, among others.

Lacey Roop has a kaleidoscope of work that is sure to make the heart shout, stomp, and stutter. As a slam poet, Lacey has previously placed 6th at the Women of the World Poetry Slam, been a two-time member of the renowned Austin Poetry Slam team, and ranked several times as a top-scoring poet at the Individual World Poetry Slam. Lacey has also opened for the Grammy Award winning band The Wailers, performed her poetry with the Grammy Award winning and transformative musical group Conspirare, and been a featured performer at the sold-out Desert Rocks Musical Festival. Lacey was also featured on PBS’s highly acclaimed show, Roadtrip Nation. Lacey’s work has also been published by A Light, Ascent Aspirations Magazine, and The Sunday Poem. She is also the author of a full-length book of poetry, And Then Came The Flood. In addition to sharing stages with bands, Lacey has performed alongside acclaimed poets such as Derrick Brown, Andrea Gibson, Staceyann Chin, Anis Mojgani, Ebony Stewart, and Lauren Zuniga. As an advocate and ally, Lacey’s work discusses gender & sexuality, marginalized voices, and women-empowerment. Lacey’s work also focuses on soaking up and sharing the hope and magic that exists all around us every day. She writes because it hurts not to, and greets life with a high-five, a pen, and a key that unlocks the bottom of the ocean (really, it does). She also gives the most incredible hugs. Ever.

Dec
10
Thu
Novel Night with Dana Barney & Mark Falkin
Dec 10 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for the twelfth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll then have an open mic for writers who have signed up to read from their unpublished short stories or novels. And finally, we’ll have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: there will be snacks!

Novel Night

This month’s readers will be Dana Barney (below left) and Mark Falkin (below right). Dana will be reading from his novel Flatline, and Mark will be reading from Contract City.

Novel Night

Dana Barney is a Bostonian turned Los Angeleno turned Austinite with a strong proclivity for the absurd and conspiratorial. He has a BA in writing from Bennigton College. He enjoys exploring the underlying, and sometimes inevitable, dark side of every day life. He lives in Austin, TX with his wife and two daughters.


Born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mark Falkin graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and then the University of Oklahoma College of Law. He has lived in Texas for the last twenty years, where he is a literary agent and recovering music attorney, having represented platinum sellers and Grammy winners alike. His 2006 self-published novel, Days of Grace, was optioned for a film and nominated for a literary award, The Needle Award, at POD-dy Mouth blog. Contract City has been nominated for numerous awards, among them the PEN/Bingham, Edgar, Flaherty-Dunnan, Printz, Alex, Morris, and the Oklahoma Book Award and has been adapted into both a screenplay and teleplay. Working on his next book, he lives with his wife and family in Austin, where he reads, coaches recreational soccer, tries to find time to paddle Texas waters, and keeps a sharp eye on his young daughters, snatching hugs here and there. 
 
Dec
13
Sun
Austin Writers Roulette
Dec 13 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!

This month’s theme is “Accidental Orgasms.” Our lineup of featured artists is: ARALYN HUGHES, AMY, TERESA Y. ROBERSON & THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

AWR

Dec
16
Wed
Albert Huffstickler Birthday Celebration
Dec 16 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for a poetry reading and birthday cake to celebrate the late, great poet laureate of Hyde Park: Albert Huffstickler.

Albert HuffsticklerAlbert Huffstickler (December 17, 1927 – February 25, 2002) was born in Laredo, Texas, but he lived in Austin in his later years, and became a local literary legend. You could usually find him in a café in Hyde Park, decked out in suspenders, smoking, drinking coffee, and working on a poem. (Rumor has it he wrote a poem a day, and his impressive publication record—four full-length collections, plus hundreds of poems published in chapbooks and journals—lends veracity to the story.) He was a two-time winner of the Austin Book Awards, and in 1989 the state legislature formally honored him for his contribution to Texas poetry. In May 2013 a new Hyde Park green space at the corner of 38th and Duval Streets was named Huffstickler Green in his honor. Huff was a friend and inspiration to many, and everyone who knew him talks of his kindness, his honesty, and his passionate support for local literature. Austin Community College English professor W. Joe Hoppe, who will be reading tonight, describes his friend and mentor as “a great encourager of poetry.”

Dec
18
Fri
Emil Kresl Book Launch
Dec 18 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of Emil Kresl’s debut novel, On Cedar Hill.

Emil KEmil Kresl was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN, before going off to college in Madison, WI. He paid his way through college tending bar and cleaning up apartments after rent-jumpers. After college he tried a stint working in politics, but opted to return to running a bar where colleagues are loyal, the excitement is frequent, and the stories slightly less absurd.

After Madison, it was off to Hollywood where he learned about screenplays and swimming in the Pacific. Then a couple years later, he went off to Austin, Texas, to see what all the fuss was about. There he found the best swimming water he had ever seen. He also got to work with some of the best storytellers around, found the love of his life, and helped bring into this world a human of astonishing beauty, wisdom, and good humor.

To put food on the table, Emil helps people find happiness and fulfillment by contributing in a meaningful way to the world around them, which is not a bad way to collect a paycheck. In addition to doing all that other stuff like writing, being a dad, and consulting, he studies public policy and community planning, two things that hold the secret to making this world a better place (along with laughter, stories, and swimming).

Dec
27
Sun
J. Scott Brownlee Book Launch
Dec 27 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of J. Scott Brownlee’s first full-length poetry collection, Requiem for Used Ignition Cap (winner of the 2015 Orison Poetry Prize). Scott will be joined by fellow poets John Fry and Susan B.A. Somers-Willett.

J. Scott Brownlee

J. Scott Brownlee is a poet from Llano, Texas. His work appears widely and includes the chapbooks Highway or Belief, which won the 2013 Button Poetry Prize, Ascension, which won the 2014 Robert Phillips Poetry Prize, and On the Occasion of the Last Old Camp Meeting in Llano County, which won the 2015 Tree Light Books Prize. His first full-length collection, Requiem for Used Ignition Cap, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and selected by C. Dale Young as the winner of the 2015 Orison Poetry Prize. Brownlee is a founding member of The Localists, a literary collective that emphasizes place-based writing of personal witness, cultural memory, and the aesthetically marginalized working class. He teaches for Brooklyn Poets as a core faculty member and is a former Writers in the Public Schools Fellow at NYU, where he earned his MFA.

Jan
6
Wed
Fantastical Fictions with Andrew Hilbert
Jan 6 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Please join us at Malvern Books for Fantastical Fictions, an odd-monthly event focusing on the literary fantastic across genres and cultures hosted by Rebecca Schwarz and Chris Brown. We plan to bring together writers and readers of fantastic literature in Austin by featuring published writers reading from new works and from examples of fantastic literature available on our shelves. Discussion, Q&A sessions, and open mic for works in progress will follow the readings.

Please email us to sign up for our Fantastical Fictions email list if you’d like to receive news about our upcoming fantastic literature events, as well as announcements about new works of fantastic literature in the store.

This month we’re thrilled to welcome award-winning Austin-based writer Andrew Hilbert to our stage.

Andrew H.

Andrew Hilbert is a writer living in Austin, Texas. He won the Austin Chronicle’s Best of Austin 2015 Critic’s Pick for an author’s reading. He is the author of the horror novella Death Thing, published by Double Life Press, and three chapbooks. His stories and poems have been published worldwide. He is a cofounder of the small press Weekly Weird Monthly.

Jan
7
Thu
An Evening with Cecily Parks, Kristen Case, Stefania Heim & Marcela Sulak
Jan 7 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for an evening with poets Cecily Parks, Kristen Case, Stefania Heim, and Marcela Sulak. They will be reading from their recent collections: Cecily from O’Nights, Kristen from Little Arias, Stefania from A Table That Goes On for Miles, and Marcela from Decency.

Cecily and Co.

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, was published by Alice James Books in April. She lives in Austin and teaches at Texas State University.

Kristen Case is the author of the critical study American Pragmatism and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe (Camden House, 2011). Her poems have appeared in Chelsea, The Brooklyn Review, Pleiades, Saint Ann’s Review, The Iowa Review, Wave Composition, and Eleven Eleven. Her chapbook, Temple, was published by MIEL in 2014, and her full-length collection, Little Arias, was published in September by New Issues Press. She is Associate Professor at the University of Maine at Farmington.

Stefania Heim is author of the poetry collection, A TABLE THAT GOES ON FOR MILES (Switchback Books, 2014). She is a Poetry Editor at Boston Review and a founding editor of CIRCUMFERENCE: Poetry in Translation. Her poems, translations, and essays have appeared in publications including A Public Space, Aufgabe, Jacket2, The Journal of Narrative Theory, The Literary Review, La Petite Zine, Poetry International, and Pinwheel. In 2015 she was selected as one of the Poetry Society of America’s “New American Poets.” She is currently translating the Italian poems of metaphysical artist Giorgio de Chirico.

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.

Recent Releases

Jan
8
Fri
John Estes & Jennifer Chang at Malvern Books
Jan 8 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Join us for an early-evening reading with poets John Estes and Jennifer Chang.

John and Jennifer

John Estes directs the Creative Writing Program at Malone University in Canton, Ohio and is a visiting faculty member of Ashland University’s Low-Residency MFA. He is author of three volumes of poetry—Kingdom Come (C&R Press, 2011), Stop Motion Still Life (Wordfarm, forthcoming) and Sure Extinction, which won the 2015 Antivenom Prize from Elixir Press—and two chapbooks: Breakfast with Blake at the Laocoön (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and Swerve, which won a National Chapbook Fellowship from the Poetry Society of America.

Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity. Her poems have recently appeared in The American Poetry Review, New England Review, Poetry, and Salt Hill. She has written essays on poetry for Los Angeles Review of Books, The Volta, Blackwell’s Companion to the Harlem Renaissance, and The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. The recipient of fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo, she co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman and is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. 

An Evening with Michael T. Fournier, James Reich & Constance Squires
Jan 8 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for a reading with novelists Michael T. Fournier, James Reich, and Constance Squires (left to right, below).

Michael Fournier and co.

Michael T. Fournier is the author of the novels Swing State (October 2014) and Hidden Wheel (October 2011), both published by Three Rooms Press, as well as Double Nickels On The Dime (April 2007), the 45th installment of Bloomsbury Press’s acclaimed 33 1/3 series. His writing has appeared in the Oxford American, Boston Globe, PitchforkStolen Island, Dusted, Vice, Chunklet, Pennsylvania English, Razorcake and others. He’s publisher and fiction editor of Cabildo Quarterly, a broadsheet literary journal. He and his wife Rebecca live in Western Massachusetts with their cat.

James Reich is the author of the novels MISTAH KURTZ! (Anti-Oedipus Press, March 2016), BOMBSHELL (July 2013), and I, JUDAS (October 2011), published by Soft Skull Press. He is a Creative Writing and Literature faculty member at Santa Fe University of Art and Design. He is a member of PEN American Center, and the International Association of Crime Writers: North America. James is a regular contributor to The Rumpus, Fiction Advocate, Salon.com, The Nervous Breakdown, Bold Type Magazine, Sensitive Skin, International Times, LitroNY, Headzine, Sleeping Fish, and others. James was born in England in 1971, and has been a resident of the US since 2009.

Constance Squires’ first novel, Along the Watchtower (Riverhead) received the 2012 Oklahoma Book Award for Fiction. Wounding Radius and Other Stories, a short story collection, is forthcoming from Queen’s Ferry Press and she has completed a second novel, Live from Medicine Park. Her short stories have appeared in GuernicaThis Land, Shenandoah, The Atlantic Monthly, The Dublin Quarterly, The Rolling Stone 500, Arcadia, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, The Village Voice, Largehearted Boy, World Literature Today, and on the NPR program Snap Judgment. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Jan
9
Sat
Rose Metal Press Family Resemblance Anthology Launch
Jan 9 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the release of Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres (Rose Metal Press), edited by Marcela Sulak and Jacqueline Kolosov. This event will feature readings from Marcela Sulak and contributors Katie Cortese, Joy Ladin, and Julio Ortega. 

Family ResemblanceFamily Resemblance explores hybrid literary genres in depth, providing craft essays and examples of hybrid forms by 43 distinguished authors, including Julie Marie Wade, Takashi Hiraide, Maggie Nelson, Joe Wenderoth, and Etgar Keret. In this study of eight hybrid genres—including lyric essay, epistolary, poetic memoir, prose poetry, performative, short-form nonfiction, flash fiction, and pictures made of words—the family tree of hybridity takes delightful shape, showcasing how cross-genre works blend features from multiple literary parents to create new entities, forms that feel more urgent than ever in today’s increasingly heterogeneous landscape.

Jan
10
Sun
An Afternoon with Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar
Jan 10 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Join us for an afternoon with writer Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar, who will be reading from and signing copies of her recent novel, The Migrant Report.

Mohana Rajakumar  Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar is a South Asian American who has lived in Qatar since 2005. Moving to the Arabian Desert was fortuitous in many ways since this is where she met her husband, had two sons, and became a writer. She has since published eight e-books, including a memoir for first time mothers, Mommy But Still Me; a guide for aspiring writers, So You Want to Sell a Million Copies; a short story collection, Coloured and Other Stories; and a novel about women’s friendships, Saving Peace. Her coming of age novel, An Unlikely Goddess, won the SheWrites New Novelist competition in 2011. Her recent books have focused on various aspects of life in Qatar. From Dunes to Dior, named as a Best Indie book in 2013, is a collection of essays related to her experiences as a female South Asian American living in the Arabian Gulf. Love Comes Later was the winner of the Best Indie Book Award for Romance in 2013 and is a literary romance set in Qatar and London. The Dohmestics is an inside look into compound life, the day-to-day dynamics between housemaids and their employers.

Austin Writers Roulette
Jan 10 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!

This month’s theme is “Leap & the Net Appears.” The line up of featured artists includes: STEPHANIE WEBB, CAROLYN LINDELL, ARALYN HUGHES, TERESA Y. ROBERSON & THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

AWR

Jan
14
Thu
Novel Night with Boyd Taylor & Matt Minor
Jan 14 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for the thirteenth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll then have an open mic for writers who have signed up to read from their unpublished short stories or novels. And finally, we’ll have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: there will be snacks!

Novel Night

This month’s readers will be Boyd Taylor and Matt Minor. Boyd will read from his novel The Monkey House, and Matt will read from The Representative.

Boyd

Boyd Taylor is a writer who lives in Austin, Texas. In his prior life, he was a lawyer and corporate manager. The Monkey House is his third book recounting the lives and times of Donnie Ray Cuinn, first as an erstwhile grad student, and then as a lawyer in a small Panhandle town. The earlier books were The Hero of San Jacinto and The Antelope Play.

Matt

Matt Minor presently serves as a Chief of Staff in the Texas House of Representatives. He has worked as a political campaign manager and is a well-regarded public speaker. Matt has authored official state publications, oversees syndicated editorials, is a speechwriter and district radio legislative commentator.

 Prior to his life in state politics Matt was a professional musician and entertainer, his numerous recordings receiving wide critical praise. Matt practices numerous other arts including the craft of poetry; an interest that has brought academic recognition.

 Matt Minor lives with his wife Stacy on their ranch property in Wharton County, Texas. He maintains an apartment in Austin.

Jan
15
Fri
An Evening with Joanna Fuhrman, Yerra Sugarman & Laurie Filipelli
Jan 15 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for a reading with poets Joanna Fuhrman, Yerra Sugarman, and Laurie Filipelli (left to right, below).

Joanna, Yerra, Laurie

Joanna Fuhrman is the author of five books of poetry, including The Year of Yellow Butterflies (Hanging Loose Press 2015) and Pageant (Alice James Books 2009). She is finishing up her tenure as the poetry editor of Ping Pong. Her poems have appeared in various journals including The Believer, Volt, New American Writing and various anthologies, including the Pushcart Prize 2011 and Litscapes (Steerage Press 2015). She teaches poetry writing at Rutgers University, through Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Poets House and in private workshops.

Yerra Sugarman is the author of two poetry collections: Forms of Gone and The Bag of Broken Glass, both published by The Sheep Meadow Press.  She received a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and awards from PEN American Center, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, and The Nation magazine.  She is a PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston.

Laurie Filipelli is the author of a collection of poems, Elseplace, released by BrooklynArts Press in 2013. Her poems and essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming at apt, BOAAT, The Pinch, Redheaded Stepchild, The Rumpus, Salamander, So and So, Superstition Review and Xavier Review. She is the recipient of a Yaddo fellowship and lives in Austin where she works as a writer, editor, and writing coach.

Jan
17
Sun
Bizarro Blowout at Malvern Books
Jan 17 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Leading authors of the bizarro fiction movement converge on Malvern Books to tell tales that will turn brains to muck!

Bizarro

Featuring:

MP Johnson: Wonderland Book Award-winning author of Dungeons & Drag Queens!
Shane McKenzie: Master of gross-out and gore, and author of Muerte Con Carne, the basis for the film El Gigante!
Autumn Christian: Game designer, mind-exploder and author of Ecstatic Inferno.
John Wayne Comunale: Punk rocker in John Wayne Is Dead and author of The Porn Star Retirement Plan!
Gabino Iglesias: On everybody’s Best of 2015 list for being awesome, and for being the author of Zero Saints.

Warning: Bizarro fiction readings are action packed, loud and insane. Not your traditional literary reading.

Jan
22
Fri
I Scream Social
Jan 22 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Get your cones ready for another installment of Malvern Books’ newest FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld & Schandra Madha and featuring young women poets and fiction writers from the Austin community. This month’s I Screamers are Rachel Elliott, Jessica Wolford, and Jade Yamamoto.

Following the reading, there will be a (mic-less) open mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us.

And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream? And the photo booth? Oh yeah, it’s gonna be good. Can’t make it this time around? No worries. I Scream Social is every fourth Friday ’til the end of time.

I Scream

Jan
23
Sat
Indie Authors at Malvern Books
Jan 23 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Join three Austin indie authors as they read selections from their novels and discuss how they made the leap to indie publishing.

Jackie Dana and co.

Authors featured include (from left to right above):

· Kate Baray: reading from Spirelli Paranormal Investigations (urban fantasy)
· M.G. Herron: reading from The Auriga Project (sci-fi thriller)
· Jackie Dana: reading from By Moonrise (historical fantasy)

This event is organized by Write It Already, a local meet-up that encourages people to write—and finish what they start. There will be light refreshments and books by all three authors for sale at the event.

Kate Baray writes urban and paranormal fantasy, frequently with a romantic twist. She writes and lives in Austin, Texas with her pack of pointers and a bloodhound. Kate has worked as an attorney, a manager, a tractor sales person, and a dog trainer, but writing is her passion. When she’s not writing, she volunteers with a search and rescue team, sweeps up hairy dust bunnies, and watches British mysteries.

Matthew Gilbert Herron writes science fiction thriller stories. His first novel, The Auriga Project, was published in 2015. Matt has earned his bread as a river guide, pita roller, and digital project manager. These days, apart from writing fiction, he makes a living as a content strategist consulting with tech startups and creative agencies across the United States. When he’s not bending words to his will, Matt organizes Indie Publishing Austin, a local Meetup for writers and authors. He also likes to climb mountains, throw a frisbee for his Boxer mutt, Elsa, and travel to expand his mind. He graduated from McMaster University in 2009 with a Bachelor of the Arts in English Literature. Now he lives in Austin.

Jackie Dana is an author, freelance copywriter, herbalist and occasional troublemaker living in Austin, TX. In addition to writing, Jackie also is a passionate supporter of other writers and indie publishers. Currently she is the organizer of the author conference BrainstormATX (to be held June 18th, 2016 in Austin) as well as the ongoing Write It Already! meetup.

Jan
28
Thu
W. Joe’s Poetry Corner with Allyson Whipple
Jan 28 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

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’s guest is Allyson Whipple.

Allyson Whipple is a student in the online MFA program at the University of Texas at El Paso. She is co-editor of the Texas Poetry Calendar. Allyson is the author of the chapbook We’re Smaller Than We Think We Are (Finishing Line Press, 2013). Five Oaks Press will publish her second chapbook, Come Into the World Like That, in 2016. Allyson teaches ESL and technical writing at Austin Community College.

Whipple

Feb
6
Sat
Barbara Frances Book Launch
Feb 6 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of Barbara Frances’ new novel, Like I Used to Dance.

Barbara

Barbara Frances has plenty of stories and a life spent acquiring them. Growing up Catholic on a small Texas farm, her childhood ambition was to become a nun. In ninth grade she entered a boarding school in Our Lady of the Lake Convent as an aspirant, the first of several steps before taking vows. The Sisters were disappointed, however, when she passed up the habit for the University of North Texas, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English and Theater Arts. Her professors were similarly disappointed when she passed up a postgraduate degree to become a stewardess for American Airlines. Barbara eventually returned to Texas and settled down. Marriage, children, school teaching and divorce distracted her from storytelling, but one summer she and a friend coauthored a screenplay. The next summer Barbara wrote a screenplay on her own. Others followed, including Two Women, a finalist in the 1990 Austin Screenwriters Festival. Three more were optioned: Silent Crossing, The Anniversary and Sojourner Truth. Barbara left teaching and continued to work on her screenplays. One day a friend’s child found and read Lottie’s Adventure, her script for a children’s movie. At her young fan’s urging, Barbara turned it into a book, published by Positive Imaging, LLC, her husband Bill’s press. For Like I Used to Dance Barbara drew upon childhood memories and “front porch stories.” Her next novel, Shadow’s Way, is a “Southern Gothic tale” about a woman caught in the struggle to keep her beloved plantation home from a scheming archbishop. Barbara and her husband Bill Benitez live in Austin, Texas.

Feb
10
Wed
David Jewell & Ric Lance Scow Williams Book Launch
Feb 10 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of Last Word/First Word: A Poetic Conversation by David Jewell and Ric Lance Scow Williams. The book was a collaborative effort of three years of emailing poems back and forth, nearly every day, and using the last word of the sender’s poem to start the poem to be sent back.

David and Ric

David Jewell (above left) has been living in Austin and doing poetry shows for about thirty years. He has published a few books, done some multi-media shows, opened for Laurie Anderson at the Paramount Theater, appeared in a movie called, Waking Life, and had a poem appear in a movie called Before Sunrise. Both movies were directed by Richard Linklater. Basically, David Jewell is very grateful to be here right now, exploring this mystery of the mysteriousness of everything.

Richard Lance Scow Williams (above right) or Ric as he is commonly known was an associate editor for The Austin Chronicle from 1988-2012. He loved promoting Austin poetry. In 2007, Ric’s the secret book of god was chosen by Robert Bonazzi of the San Antonio Express-News as “The Best Book of Poetry by a Poet Living in Texas.” His work has appeared in sundry locales of the mind and heart. He has a master’s degree in mythological studies/depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. He lives in Glorieta, New Mexico, with his astrologer wife Helga Scow Williams and two cats, Bat and Mouse. His latest books are Helga, from Bite Press and Last Word/First Word: Volume 1, also from Bite Press, which is a collaboration with David Jewell.

Feb
11
Thu
Novel Night with Scott Semegran & Dwaines Lawless
Feb 11 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for the fourteenth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll then have an open mic for writers who have signed up to read from their unpublished short stories or novels. And finally, we’ll have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: there will be snacks!

Novel Night

This month’s readers will be Scott Semegran and Dwaines Lawless. Scott will read from his novel The Meteoric Rise of Simon Burchwood and Dwaines will be reading from Cajun Moon.

Simon BurchwoodScott Semegran lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, four kids, two cats, and one dog. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in English. He is a cartoonist and a writer. He can also bend metal with his mind and run really fast, if chased by a pack of wolves. His comic strips have appeared in the following newspapers: The Austin Student, The Funny Times, The Austin American-Statesman, Rocky Mountain Bullhorn, Seven Days, The University of Texas at Dallas Mercury, and The North Austin Bee. His short stories have appeared in independent publications and literary journals like The Next One Literary Journal from the Texas Tech University Honors College. He is a Kindle bestselling author.

Cajun MoonDwaines Lawless is a Cajun and like all Cajuns, loves telling bayou tales of folk healing and voodoo. A UT/Austin graduate, art educator, teacher of the blind, mother and grandmother, Lawless has written a gumbo tale, spiced with Cajun folklore, secret voodoo rituals and the mystery of dreams, especially the Cajun nightmare, the cochemere. This multicultural suspense is a rare, delightful journey into the mysticism of Cajun folk healing sure to leave you hungry for more. Dwaines currently lives in Austin with her husband, John, and their dog, Gypsy.

Feb
14
Sun
Austin Writers Roulette
Feb 14 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!

This month’s theme is “Sex, Love & Virtual Reality.” Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

AWR