Malvern Books

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books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll then have an open mic for writers who have signed up to read from their unpublished short stories or novels.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!

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 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 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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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).

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.

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!

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

Maria 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?

Patrice 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.

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

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 Finch, Jellyfish, 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.

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 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 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.

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.

Harold 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.

Josh 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.

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

Joanna 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.

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.

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.

Kathleen 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.

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

The 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.

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.

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

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.

The 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.

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.

Two 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.

Fiston 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.

Roland 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.

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

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!

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.

Troy 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).

Drew 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.

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! *

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!)

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.

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

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

Reginald 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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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 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).

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

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.

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

The 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.

Other 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.

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 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 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.

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.

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 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.

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!

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 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 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.

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.

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 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. 

Ute 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.

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.

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.

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’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.

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.

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.

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 (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.

Join us for a reading from poet Glenn Hardin.

Glenn 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.

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 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.

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.

For 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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

Emil 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).

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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, Pitchfork, Stolen 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 Guernica, This 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.

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 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.

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

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 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.

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!

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 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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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!

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.

Scott 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.

Dwaines 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.

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.

Join us for an evening with award-winning writer Toni Sala, who will be reading from The Boys, an “altogether brilliant” novel that centers around the sudden deaths of two young men in a provincial town in the Catalonian countryside.

Live music from award-winning folksinger Tish Hinojosa will begin at 7pm.

Toni Sala is the author of over a dozen novels and works of nonfiction. In 2005 he was awarded the National Literature Prize by the Catalan government, and he has also received many other honors for his writing. He lives in Barcelona.

Mara Faye Lethem’s translations have appeared in The Best American Non-Required Reading, Granta, The Paris Review, Words Without Borders, and McSweeney’s. She is the translator of Papers in the Wind by Eduardo Sacheri, Wonderful World by Javier Calvo, and others. She lives in Barcelona.

The once-bucolic Catalonian village of Vidreres has been ravaged by a harsh recession, and now two of its young men have died in a horrible car crash. As the town attends the funeral, a banker named Ernest heads to the tree where they died, trying to make sense of the tragedy. There he meets a brutish trucker, who in between Internet hookups and trips to prostitutes has taken a liking to Iona, the fiancée of one of the dead boys. Iona might be just what he needs to fix his tawdry life, but she’s mixed up with an artist who makes frightening projects. Masterfully conjuring the voices of each of these four characters, Toni Sala entwines their lives and their feelings of guilt, fear, and rage over an unspeakable loss.

Long known as one of Spain’s most powerful authors, Toni Sala is at his mischievous best here, delivering a sinister, fast-moving tale laced with intricate meditations on everything from social networks to Spain’s economic collapse to the mysterious end that awaits us all. The Boys is a startlingly honest vision of the things we’ll do in order to feel a little less alone in this world.

WINNER OF THE 2014 PREMIS DE LA CRÍTICA, CATALONIA’S MOST PRESTIGIOUS LITERARY AWARD

“The Boys is a stark tale of confused people trapped in a wrinkle in time, rendered with painful sensitivity and gut-wrenching bleakness. No surprise that Toni Sala has been praised as one of Catalan’s most important writers.” —Counterpunch

“A compelling existential mystery . . . a sort of Catalan answer to Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter, with a closing as haunting as a tale by Poe. Altogether brilliant.” —Kirkus, starred review

“Sala is a master of meditation, and the excitement and intrigue are never sacrificed despite digressive passages on Internet alienation, art, violence, phrases of grief, the Spanish recession, and love. One hopes this tremendous novel, already an award-winner overseas, will receive the attention it deserves here.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

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

Authors featured include:

· Anna Castle writes the Francis Bacon mysteries and the Lost Hat, Texas mysteries.
· Adrian R. Hale writes the contemporary romance Drift Heat.
· Sarah Atlas writes the erotic romance All the Beautiful Lies.

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.

Anna Castle writes the Francis Bacon mysteries and the Lost Hat, Texas mysteries. She has earned a series of degrees—BA in the Classics, MS in Computer Science, and a PhD in Linguistics—and has had a corresponding series of careers, including waitressing, software engineering, grammar-writing, assistant professor, and archivist. Writing fiction combines her lifelong love of stories and learning. She physically resides in Austin, Texas and mentally counts herself a queen of infinite space.

Adrian R. Hale is a whirlwind of energy and optimism, just as ready to tell you about her books as she is to invite you over for cookies. She is a big dreamer and believes in chasing them down with speed and enthusiasm, much like the characters she writes. You can find her cycling around Austin, running trails, baking gourmet cupcakes, beautifying people for weddings and photo shoots, and traveling all over the country in pursuit of those interests. Once upon a time, Adrian went to college thinking she would be a journalist but dropped out to go to beauty school. Later she wrote a novel about a hair and makeup artist, so things have definitely come full circle!

Sarah Atlas doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t know how to read. She filled her childhood with books and started spinning stories at an early age, writing her first novel with a friend in seventh grade. Her earliest forays into erotica started in college. All the Beautiful Lies, a mainstream erotica, is her first published novel. Sarah lives with her family in Austin, Texas.

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. W. Joe’s guest this month is Abe Louise Young.

Abe Louise Young is an independent writer, educator and social justice activist. Her work has won a Grolier Poetry Prize, the Hawai’i Review’s Nell Altizer Award, a Narrative Magazine Story Prize, and the Academy of American Poets Prize. Her writing is forthcoming or has appeared in The Nation, WITNESS, New Letters, Feminist Wire and many other journals. She’s the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Heaven to Me (Headmistress Press) and Ammonite (Magnolia Press Collective).

A lifelong social justice advocate, she’s also the author/editor of numerous guides, including Queer Youth Advice for Educators: How to Respect and Protect Your LGBTQ Students; Hip Deep: Opinion, Essays, and Vision from American Teenagers; and an archive of oral histories with Hurricane Katrina survivors, Alive in Truth: The New Orleans Disaster Oral History Project. She is currently at work on a storytelling project about human rights abuses in Texas jails, and a memoir.

Young earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James Michener Fellow, and holds a BA from Smith College.

Get your cones ready for a special Galentine’s Edition 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 *KATHERINE NOBLE, JULIE POOLE, & SAM KARAS.*

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.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Bruce McCandless’ latest novel, The Black Book of Cyrenaica, a historical horror story involving a supernatural terror that besieges an expedition to save American sailors imprisoned in Tripoli.

We’ll also enjoy live music from two talented musicians, with Jason McKenzie on percussion and Roberto Riggio playing the oud.

Bruce McCandless is an Austin-based writer whose previous credits include Sour Lake, Color War, and what some believe to be the best novel ever written about the University of Texas, The Krottkey Chronicles. McCandless’s Ninth Planet Press (Motto: “Strange Things for Good People”) is an Austin-based independent micro-publisher that uses locally sourced art, design, and web talent to create a uniquely Texan brand of speculative fiction.

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 writer Marshall Ryan Maresca to our stage.

Marshall Ryan Maresca is a fantasy and science-fiction writer, as well as a playwright, living in South Austin with his wife and son. He is the author of the Maradaine Novels: The Thorn of Dentonhill, A Murder of Mages, and The Alchemy of Chaos. His work also appeared in Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction and Rick Klaw’s anthology Rayguns Over Texas. He also has had several short plays produced.

Join us for a reading with acclaimed poets Chip Dameron and Larry D. Thomas, who will be sharing their recent collections with us.

Chip 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.

Larry D. Thomas, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, served as the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate. He has published several award-winning collections of poetry, and his poems have appeared in numerous national journals, including the Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Callaloo, Chattahoochee Review, Christian Science Monitor, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Journal of the American Medical Association, Louisiana Literature, Poet Lore, Puerto del Sol, Review Americana, Right Hand Pointing, San Pedro River Review, Southwest Review, Southwestern American Literature, Texas Review, Town Creek Poetry, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems, the most comprehensive and definitive collection of his poetry to date, was issued by Texas Review Press. Among his many honors/awards are two Texas Review Poetry Prizes, two Western Heritage Awards (Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma), the Violet Crown Book Award (Writers’ League of Texas), nomination for the 2007 Poets’ Prize (Nicholas Roerich Museum), and eight Pushcart Prize nominations.

Join us for the fifteenth 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!

This month’s readers will be Joe Giordano and Joseph Pluta.

Joe Giordano was born in Brooklyn. His stories have appeared in more than seventy magazines including Bartleby Snopes, decomP, and Shenandoah. Birds of Passage was published by Harvard Square Editions in October 2015. The novel recalls the Italian immigration experience at the turn of the twentieth-century when New York’s streets were paved with violence and disappointment. Here’s what Kirkus said about Birds of Passage. “This riveting debut novel by Giordano charts the passage of two young Italian men to early twentieth century New York, as they strive to make their mark in the New World…. Part thriller, part love story, part coming-of-age narrative, this book’s appeal reaches successfully beyond the often restrictive confines of its genre. A refreshing rethink of the archetypal mafia novel.”

Joseph Pluta has published 23 books, over 100 short stories, and more than 70 articles in professional academic journals. In addition to his written work, he has served on the faculties of universities in California, Florida, Texas, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Throughout his career, he has consistently been recognized for outstanding teaching. His diverse experiences include Editor of a magazine, host of a radio show, founder and director of a University Honors Program, member of the Board of Directors of the Writers’ League of Texas, and consultant to both foreign governments and American small businesses. Joe grew up in New Buffalo, Michigan and still enjoys traveling throughout the state and Canada. He is retired and currently resides in Austin, Texas.

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 “Arbitrary & Nonsensical.” Spring Break is the perfect time to laugh and awe at the entertaining illogicalness of it all! The line up of featured artists is: UDELLE ROBINSON, CODY COPELAND, BRIAN GROSZ, CAROLYN LINDELL, KENT GROSSWILER, TERESA Y. ROBERSON and THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

Get your cones ready for 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 readers are Kendra Fortmeyer, Melanie Westerberg, and Janalyn Guo. And we’ll also have live music from Jessie Torrisi of The Please Please Me.

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.

Austin Community Salutes Springtime and the Belle of Amherst. Hosted by W. Joe Hoppe and Brett Reeves.

In this crowd-sourced, participation-based event, we will resurrect the poems of Emily Dickinson, hauling them out of the schools and into the streets. This is church for people who don’t go to church. We will read aloud, sing aloud, and expound aloud, using Ms. D’s poems as our starting point. Participants draw poem numbers from a hat, or may choose their favorite Dickinson poem. When your number’s up, you stand and read.

Sponsored by Brett Reeves Educator and Malvern Books.

Join us for a reading with poets Emily Pérez and Ryan Sharp.

Emily Pérez is the author of the book House of Sugar, House of Stone, as well as the chapbook Backyard Migration Route, which explores her Mexican-American heritage and her childhood in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. She holds degrees from Stanford and the University of Houston, where she was poetry editor for Gulf Coast and taught with Writers in the Schools. Her poems have appeared in journals including Crab Orchard Review, Calyx, Borderlands, and DIAGRAM. She is a high school dean and English teacher in Denver where she lives with her husband and sons.

Ryan Sharp holds an MFA in Writing from Pacific University and is currently pursuing his PhD in poetry and poetics at the University of Texas. His poetry and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals including Berkeley Poetry Review, Callaloo, DIALOGIST, The Ilanot Review, and PANK. He lives in Austin, TX, where he serves as the editor for Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and as the Writers’ Studio Coordinator at Huston-Tillotson University.

Join four Austin indie authors as they read selections from their works and discuss how they made the leap to indie publishing. This event features Jami Crumpton, Steve Statham, Aurelia Maria Casey, and Michael Bunker (left to right, below).

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 four authors for sale at the event.

Born and raised Texas girl, Jami Crumpton, is an award-winning author as well as a wife, mother, and an actress/comedian. When Love Leads You Home is her debut inspirational romance. Jami has three adult children and lives north of Houston with her husband of 26 years.

Steve Statham is the author of six novels and two short story collections. He has had 12 non-fiction books published on automotive subjects, and was the editor of a classic car magazine for many years.

Aurelia Maria Casey is an author, fashion designer, and engineer, because she loves transforming ideas from imagination to reality. She writes epic fantasy, urban fantasy, science fiction, realist fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. She firmly believes that story can change the world and wants to make the real world a little safer, a little more open-minded, with each story she imagines.

Michael Bunker is a USA Today Bestselling author, off-gridder, husband, and father of four children. He lives with his family in a “plain” community in Central Texas, where he reads and writes books… and occasionally tilts at windmills. In November of 2015, Variety announced that Michael had sold a film/TV option for his bestselling novel Pennsylvania to Jorgensen Pictures. JP is currently developing Pennsylvania for production into a feature film or television series. Michael is writing the first draft of the screenplay. Michael’s latest (and best-rated) novel is Brother, Frankenstein, which was released in late April of 2015.

We’re thrilled to be hosting a series of readings as part of the 24th annual Austin International Poetry Festival.

See the Austin International Poetry Festival website for the schedule of readings (TBA).

We’re thrilled to be hosting a series of readings as part of the 24th annual Austin International Poetry Festival.

See the Austin International Poetry Festival website for the schedule of readings (TBA).

Join us for a reading/performance from Austin playwright and debut novelist Kirk Lynn.

Kirk will present a reenactment of selected scenes from his fantastic debut novel, Rules for Werewolves, which is written entirely in dialogue. This event will feature, among other things, a choral reading, group prayers (prayer requests welcome!), saxophone music, and an audience Q & A.

Kirk Lynn has a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue and a sixth sense for finding the exact point at which absurdity mutates into heartbreak—or vice versa. Rules for Werewolves is a dark, delirious, innovative riot of a novel; a grand blast of chaos across the front lawns of America, and a truly outstanding debut.
—Justin Taylor, author of Flings and The Gospel of Anarchy

Kirk Lynn is one of six coproducing artistic directors of Rude Mechanicals theater collective. He is the head of the Playwriting and Directing Area in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin, and received his MFA from the Michener Center for Writers. Lynn lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, the poet Carrie Fountain, and their children.

We’re thrilled to be hosting a series of readings as part of the 24th annual Austin International Poetry Festival.

See the Austin International Poetry Festival website for the schedule of readings (TBA).

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 “Best Sincerest Lie.” Our lineup of featured artists is: BIRDMAN 313, JENNIFER PREISS, ROBERT BAYLESS, DONNA DECHEN BIRDWELL, NORI HUBERT, CHERI VAUSE, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, and THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

Join us for an evening with Indonesian author and journalist Leila S. Chudori. Leila will be sharing her historical novel Home (recipient of the 2012 Khatulistiwa Literary Award, Indonesia’s most prestigious literary prize), which explores the lives of Indonesian exiles from the 1965 anti-Communist massacre to the overthrow of Suharto in 1998.

Leila S. Chudori (Jakarta, 1962) is Indonesia’s most prominent and outspoken female author and journalist. She has worked at the renowned Indonesian news magazine TEMPO since 1989, where she is now Senior Editor. A scholarship recipient, she completed university studies at Trent University in Canada and returned to Indonesia in 1988. Chudori started publishing as a child at the age of twelve in children’s magazines, and she is the author of several anthologies of short stories, novels, TV & film scripts, Chudori is considered one of Indonesia’s boldest storytellers.

Join us for the sixteenth 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 also 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: we’re offering 20% OFF ALL FICTION TITLES during Novel Night (from 6pm till closing).

This month’s readers will be Liv Hadden and John Herndon. Liv will be reading from her debut novel, In the Mind of Revenge, a thriller set in the near future, while John will share his new novel, One Too Many, about a retired armed robber who just can’t seem to stay away from trouble.

Debut novelist Liv Hadden has her roots in Burlington, Vermont and has lived in upstate New York and Oklahoma, where she went to college at the University of Oklahoma, and earned her degree in Environmental Sustainability Planning & Management. She now resides in Austin, Texas with her husband and two dogs, Madison and Samuel, and is an active member of the Writer’s League of Texas.

John Herndon is a poet, novelist and filmmaker who lives in Austin. One Too Many is his first novel. He has published five books of poetry. Frame Switch, a feature-length found-footage thriller based on his screenplay, is in festival release. He teaches writing and literature at Austin Community College.

Join us for an evening featuring poetry by Tupelo Press 30-30 Project and Conference Participants: Christine Beck, Katy Chrisler, D.G. Geis, Robert Okaji, Pamela Paek, and Ronnie K. Stephens.

Christine Beck was named the fifth Poet Laureate of West Hartford in May of 2015. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree from Southern Connecticut State University and is the author of Blinding Light (Grayson Books, 2013) and I’m Dating Myself (Dancing Girl Press, 2015). Her second chapbook, Stirred, Not Shaken, is forthcoming from Five Oaks Press. She teaches poetry, creative writing and literature at The University of Hartford, Southern Connecticut State University, and in private workshops. She is a former president of the Connecticut Poetry Society and currently directs its monthly series at which poets moderate a discussion about a well-known poet at the Hartford Public Library. She is also a board member of Riverwood Poetry Series, which presents poetry and panel discussions about social justice issues.

Katy Chrisler received her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has held residencies with Land Arts of the American West and 100 West Corsicana. Recent work of hers has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Octopus Magazine, The Volta, and The Seattle Review. She currently lives and works in Austin, Texas.

D.G. Geis lives in Houston, Texas. He has an undergraduate degree in English Literature from the University of Houston and a graduate degree in philosophy from California State University. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in 491 Magazine, Lost Coast, Blue Bonnet Review, A Quiet Courage, SoftBlow International Poetry Journal, Blinders, Burningword Literary Journal, Crosswinds, Scarlet Leaf, and Sweet Tree, among others. He will be featured in a forthcoming Tupelo Press chapbook anthologizing nine new poets and is winner of Blue Bonnet Review’s Fall 2015 Poetry Contest. He is editor-at-large of Tamsen.

Robert Okaji lives in Austin with his wife, two dogs and some books. He is the author of the chapbook If Your Matter Could Reform (Dink Press), and a micro-chapbook, You Break What Falls (Origami Poems Project). His work has appeared in Boston Review, Hermeneutic Chaos, Mockingheart Review, Eclectica and elsewhere.

Pamela Paek is an educational research who acts, performs stand-up, and is adored by her 14-year old Goffin’s cockatoo, Chilly. Her poetry has been published in the Squaw Valley Review, GAMBA Zine, Aileron, Lynx Eye, and Apocalypse. She has her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in educational psychology, and a BA in both creative writing and applied mathematics from the University of California, San Diego.

Ronnie K. Stephens is a full-time English teacher. He has identical twins and a brand new baby that take up all the space in his chest. He is currently pursuing an MFA from Wilkes University. His first collection, Universe in the Key of Matryoshka, was published by Timber Mouse Publishing in 2014. His second collection will be released later this year.

d. ellis phelps, poet-novelist and painter, is the author of Making Room for George (Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press, forthcoming, 2016) and of the blog, formidable woman: toward a culture of gentleness. Her poetry, art, and essays appear online and in print, most recently in the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project, Energy Magazine, Poet’s Billow (Bermuda Triangle Prize, 2015), and elsewhere.  She holds a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Join us in celebrating the Texas Association of Authors’ fifth annual Book Awards Contest.

We’ll have readings and book signings from Texas authors, including:

Kenneth Bennight – Crime Fiction
L E Kinzie – Fiction & Poetry
Cathy Clay – Spiritual
L M Nelson – Romance