Malvern Books

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

Austin Writers Roulette is an uncensored, theme-inspired spoken word and storytelling event. It features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who 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 “Romance & Other Patriarchal Fantasies.” Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

Join us for a reading from visiting poet Bruce Willard, who will be sharing work from his most recent collection, Violent Blues (Four Way Books). Bruce will be joined by poet Joe Brundidge.

Violent Blues is a blues-harp album of words, a soundtrack of loss, introspection and renewal—one man’s search for intimacy and enduring music. Its poems are rooted in the natural world and tethered by concrete experience.

Bruce Willard’s poems have appeared in 5 A.M., African American Review, Agni online, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Salamander, NPR’s Writer’s Almanac, and numerous other publications. His first collection of poems, Holding Ground, was published by Four Way Books in 2013. Willard is a graduate of Middlebury College and holds a MFA from Bennington College’s Writing Seminars program. He spends his time in Maine, Colorado, and California. In addition to his work as a poet, Willard currently runs 32 Bar Blues and oversees several other clothing businesses.

Joe Brundidge is an author, host, and public speaker living in Austin, Texas. He has hosted a number of open mics for almost 20 years to include his own show, “Spoken&Heard” at Kick Butt Coffee. He also served as the Director of the Austin International Poetry Festival for three years, from 2012-2015. He is currently co-host of KOOP 91.7fm’s “Writing On The Air.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join us for an afternoon with poets Ginny Wiehardt, Julie Poole, and Drea Brown.

Ginny Wiehardt’s chapbook Migration won the 2016 Gold Line Press Poetry Chapbook Contest. Her poetry has appeared in literary journals including Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Bellingham Review, Southern Humanities Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Willow Springs. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the Michener Center for Writers and has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook and Jentel. Originally from Texas, she now lives in New York, NY with her family.

Julie Poole is a poetry MFA candidate in the New Writers’ Project at the University of Texas. She received a BA from Columbia University. Currently living in Austin, she runs writing workshops for people with dementia, as a teaching artist for the Austin Public Library. She is the co-founder and editor of a poetry publication called BRIDGE, which can be found at Malvern Books and independent bookstores elsewhere. 

Drea Brown’s work has appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, such as Southern Indiana Review and Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, and winner of the 2014 Gold Line chapbook contest, her chapbook dear girl: a reckoning was published in 2015. Drea is currently a PhD candidate in African and African Diaspora Studies at UT Austin.

Get your cones ready for another round of Malvern Books’ FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld and Schandra Madha and featuring young women writers from the Austin community. This month we’ll be celebrating the best kind of love there is: the love of your girl gang! And our I Screamers are FT Kola, Katrina Goudey, and Laura Kraay.

And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream & Sweet Ritual?

~7pm – Ice cream & Open Mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us.

~The featured reading begins after the open mic and will be followed by even more ice cream.

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

Join us in celebrating the launch of G F Harper’s first full-length book of poetry, Savage Yard. With readings from G F Harper, Jenna Martin Opperman, and Jim Trainer.

In Savage Yard, G F Harper (above) employs a poetic prose that explores the bewilderment of the human condition. The work is brutally unromantic with glints of hope; often driven by a distinctive dark humor. Harper’s work contemplates common world themes such as roads, travels, and transformation. The images are crisp and ready to be enjoyed.

G F Harper is a writer, painter, and curator for the poetry collective, Chicon Street Poets, based in Austin, Texas. Harper attended Saint Edward’s University for a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature with a specialization in Creative Writing, minor in Psychology. Harper also has an Associate of Arts in English from Austin Community College. His work has been published in La Bloga: On-line Floricanto (2016, California), Raw Paw: Alien (2015, Austin, Texas), Dark Lady Poetry (2012, Los Angeles, California), Refined Savage Poetry Review (2008, USA), Farmhouse Magazine (2009, NYC, NY). Savage Yard is his first full-length book of poetry. Harper currently resides in Austin, Texas. He enjoys painting, traveling, and hiking in his spare time.

Jenna Martin Opperman has a BA in English Literature from The University of Texas at Austin and an MFA in Poetry from New England College. Despite being published in a wide variety of poetry journals and magazines, she prefers the thrill and terror of performing before a live audience. She works and plays with the printed word every day as an English teacher, as the owner of Red Planet Audiobooks, and as the co-founder of INF Press. Her poetry comes from a place of ferocity, of playfulness, of emotional urgency, and of hope. She loves whisky, revelation, and naps.

All in the wind, Jim Trainer’s third full-length collection of poetry and prose, is out now through Yellow Lark Press. Trainer lives in Austin, performing as a singer songwriter and serving as curator of Going For The Throat, a weekly publication of cynicism, outrage, correspondence and romance.  

Join us for a FREE monthly reading series, Malvern’s Multi-Verse, in which we explore the infinite possible (multi)verses of Austin’s boundless poetic universe!

Held on the fourth Tuesday of every month, Malvern’s Multi-Verse features readings from guest poets, plus a Q & A session. Space-time might be flat and stretch out infinitely, but Malvern’s Multi-Verse is well-rounded, lasts for about an hour, and includes free cookies! Yes indeed, it’s the best of all possible worlds…

This month we learn more about Pen2Paper, a disability-focused creative writing competition. Pen2Paper gives writers with disabilities a forum where they can share their work and brings awareness to disability issues through the arts. Pen2Paper also challenges all Texans of all ages to think, rethink, and express their stories, perspectives, fears, and discoveries about disability.

The Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest calls upon established writers, novice writers, and writers who don’t yet know they ARE writers to enter pieces of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and graphic narratives to the competition. Each year, entries are evaluated by a panel of volunteer judges, and prizes are awarded to the top entries in each category. Winners and selected honorable mentions are posted to Pen2Paper’s website. Local and state sponsors and volunteers help make the competition possible by contributing their time, expertise, products, services, and energy.

Join us for a night of poetry to celebrate the kick-off of Mathias Svalina’s Dream Delivery Service in Austin. With the Dream Delivery Service, Svalina takes subscribers and writes dreams for them every day for a month. The dreams consist of brief prose-poems or flash-fiction. For subscribers in Austin, Svalina will bike around before dawn and deliver dreams every day from 3/5-4/5, leaving them on subscriber’s front doors. For subscribers out of town he will mail the dreams every day. In 2016 and 2017 Svalina is traveling around the country doing the Dream Delivery Service in various cities: Denver, Richmond, Tucson, Marfa, Austin, Chicago, and maybe more. 

Welcome to Malvern Books’ Club: Reading Classics from New York Review Books, hosted (on most occasions) by Malvern’s own curmudgeon-in-chief, Dr. Joe. Everyone is invited to join us for what we’re sure will be a series of irreverent and insightful conversations.

Our March selection is The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes. First published in 1963, The Expendable Man upends the conventions of the wrong-man narrative to deliver a story that engages readers even as it implicates them in the greatest of all American crimes.

The Expendable Man is one of the great trick novels of crime fiction. Yet to call it that is to belittle it. Its trick is no clever, superimposed bit of literary legerdemain: it is integral to the whole conception of the book. . . . A fine achievement. —H.R.F. Keating, Crime and Mystery: The 100 Best Books

The NYRB Classics series started in 1999 with the publication of A High Wind in Jamaica and by the end of this year over 400 titles will be in print—so we have plenty of excellent reading material to choose from. The series includes nineteenth-century and experimental novels, reportage and belles lettres, established classics and cult favorites, and literature high, low, unsuspected, and unheard of. Literature in translation also constitutes a major part of the NYRB Classics series, including new translations of canonical figures such as Euripides, Aeschylus, Dante, Balzac, Nietzsche, and Chekhov, as well as fresh translations of Stefan Zweig, Robert Walser, Alberto Moravia, and Curzio Malaparte, among others.

How it works:

Stop by Malvern Books to sign up and you’ll receive a 10% discount off the title! Read the book and then come to the meeting prepared with either a question or specific passage to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you on March 4th.

Join us for another installment of Novel Night, 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. And we’ll also have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles. Also worth noting: we’re offering 20% OFF ALL FICTION TITLES during Novel Night (from 6pm till closing).

This month’s Novel Night features Brittani Sonnenberg and Adeena Reitberger. Brittani will read from her novel Home Leave, which filmmaker Wim Wenders called “a captivating tour de force that follows a nomadic family across generations and continents.” Adeena will share with us some of her short fiction.

Brittani Sonnenberg (above left) is the author of the novel Home Leave, selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice. She was raised across three continents and has worked as a journalist in Germany, China, and throughout Southeast Asia. A graduate of Harvard, she received her MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan. Her fiction has been published in The O. Henry Prize Stories as well as Ploughshares, Short Fiction, and Asymptote. Her nonfiction has appeared in Time, Associated Press, Hairpin, and NPR Berlin. She is a freelance editor and writer for Tribeza Magazine and a visiting creative writing instructor and thesis advisor at Hong Kong University’s MFA Program.

Adeena Reitberger (above right) is a writer, editor, and teacher in Austin, Texas. Her stories and essays have been published in magazines like Mississippi Review, Cimarron Review, Nimrod International Journal, Black Warrior Review, Sierra Nevada Review, NANO Fiction, and elsewhere, and her essay “Here Is Always Somewhere Else” was listed as a notable in Best American Essays. She is the coeditor of American Short Fiction, an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Austin Community College, and an advisory board member of Conflict of Interest.

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

Austin Writers Roulette is an uncensored, theme-inspired spoken word and storytelling event. It features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who 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 “Survival 101.” Our featured performers include: YESHUA UDELLE, DONNA DECHEN BIRDWELL, HOPE RUIZ, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, BRIAN GROSZ, and THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’re already familiar with our NYRB Classics Bookclub, in which we read and discuss classic works of fiction… now we’d like to invite you to join The Other Book Club, a brand-new reading group for those of you interested in exploring works from the “Other” section of our store.

Our recently expanded “Other” collection includes ever so eclectic essays, plays, creative non-fiction, memoirs and more. Featuring books like Patrick Leigh Fermor’s travels through the Greek islands and the political tracts of Simone Weil—and let’s not forget Oskar Panizza’s blasphemous essay on the history of the pig!—our non-fiction section is as unusual as the rest of our store.

Our first book will be Patti Smith’s Woolgathering, a small and sublime memoir of her childhood and a moving exploration of her beginnings as an artist.

Capturing moments of her adult life, Smith pares down her prose to a state of vivid impressionism, so enigmatic that even ordinary acts take on spiritual weight. —The Guardian

How it works:

Stop by Malvern Books to sign up and you’ll receive a 10% discount off the title! Read the book and then come to the meeting prepared with either a question or specific passage to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you on Saturday, March 18th, at 12pm for the inaugural meeting of The Other Book Club.

Please join us at Malvern Books for Fantastical Fictions, an odd-monthly event focusing on the literary fantastic across genres and cultures. This month host Rebecca Schwarz will discuss the novel Chocky by pioneering science-fiction master John Wyndham.

Worth noting: if you buy Chocky for the discussion, you’ll get 10% off the list price!

In Chocky, Wyndham takes on an enigma as strange as anything found in his classic works The Day of the Triffids or The Chrysalids—the mind of a child. It’s not terribly unusual for a boy to have an imaginary friend, but Matthew’s parents have to agree that his—nicknamed Chocky—is anything but ordinary. Why, Chocky demands to know, are there twenty-four hours in a day? Why are there two sexes? Why can’t Matthew solve his math homework using a logical system like binary code? When the questions Chocky asks become too advanced and, frankly, too odd for Matthew’s teachers to answer, his parents start to wonder if Chocky might be something far stranger than a figment of their son’s imagination.

Chocky, the last novel Wyndham published during his life, is a playful investigation of what being human is all about, delving into such matters as child-rearing, marriage, learning, artistic inspiration—and it ends with a surprising and impassioned plea for better human stewardship of the earth.

John Wyndham (1903–1969) was the pen name used by the British science-fiction writer John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris. He began writing for money in 1925, mostly for American periodicals. After working as a government official and corporal operator in the army during World War II, he began writing science-fiction novels. His many works include The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken, The Midwich Cuckoos, Trouble with Lichen, Web, and The Chrysalids (NYRB Classics).

Get your cones ready for another round of Malvern Books’ FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld and Schandra Madha and featuring young women writers from the Austin community. This month’s I Screamers are Heather Lefebvre, Diana Khoi Nguyen, and Julie Kantor.

And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream & Sweet Ritual?

~7pm – Ice cream & Open Mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us.

~The featured reading begins after the open mic and will be followed by even more ice cream.

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

Join us in celebrating the recent release of new titles from poets Miriam Bird Greenberg and Donika Kelly. Miriam will be reading from In the Volcano’s Mouth, which won the 2015 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize; Donika will read from her debut collection, Bestiary, which was selected by Nikky Finney for the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award.

Miriam Bird Greenberg‘s In the Volcano’s Mouth (University of Pittsburgh 2016) won the 2015 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize and was written with the support of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and the Poetry Foundation. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow, she teaches creative writing and ESL in the San Francisco Bay Area, though she has also crossed the continent aboard freight trains, as a hitchhiker, and by bicycle. She is currently at work on an expansive/unwieldy ethnographic poetry project documenting asylum seekers and economic migrants living in Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions.

Donika Kelly’s debut collection, Bestiary (Graywolf Press 2016), was selected by Nikky Finney for the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award. She holds an MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, and in 2013, she received a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University, where she specialized in American literature and film studies. Donika is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and a 2004 June Fellow of the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. Her poems have appeared in various journals including West Branch, Indiana Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and others. Donika is an Assistant Professor at St. Bonaventure University, where she teaches creative writing.

You’re invited to join us for the inaugural Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series! Bob Ayres, Nan Cuba, BettySoo, and W. W. McNeal (left to right, below) will share their artistic works based on the theme of “Flight.”

Founded in 2010 by Peg Alford Pursell, Why There Are Words is an award-winning literary reading series that takes place every second Thursday in the San Francisco Bay Area, and beginning in 2017, will take place at 5 more national locations: New York City, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland, and Austin. Each reading event presents a range of writers, including those who have published books and those who haven’t. All writers share the criterion of excellence. The guiding idea behind the series is that good work is timeless and needs to be heard regardless of marketing or commercial concerns. If you’re interested in reading, please see the information about participating on this page.

A native of San Antonio, Bob Ayres has lived in Austin since 1985. An alum of the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, he has published poems in numerous magazines, journals and anthologies. His chapbook, Shadow of Wings, was published in 2012 by Main Street Rag Press. His essay “The Devices and Desires of Our Own Hearts: Reflections on Blessing and Curse in the Psalms of Ascent” appeared in Poets on the Psalms, published by Trinity University Press. He was the winner of the 2013 Littoral Press Broadside Contest. Bob served on the founding board of Gemini Ink in San Antonio, and he has served as a volunteer with Poetry at Round Top since its inception fifteen years ago. When he’s not writing or reading poems, Bob might be managing his family’s ranch on Barton Creek in southwest Travis count, or supporting the work of private land conservation as a member of the national board of the Land Trust Alliance. Or, he might be watching birds.

Nan Cuba is the author of Body and Bread (Engine Books, 2013), winner of the PEN Southwest Award in Fiction and the Texas Institute of Letters Steven Turner Award for Best Work of First Fiction; it was also listed as one of “Ten Titles to Pick Up Now” in O, Oprah’s Magazine, was a “Summer Books” choice from Huffington Post, and the San Antonio Express-News called it one of the “Best Books of 2013.”  Cuba co-edited Art at our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers and Artists (Trinity University Press, 2008), and published other work in such places as Antioch Review, Harvard Review, Columbia, and Chicago Tribune’s Printer’s Row. Her story, “Watching Alice Watch,” was one of the Million Writers Award Notable Stories (storySouth), and “When Horses Fly” won the George Nixon Creative Writing Award for Best Prose from the Conference of College Teachers of English. As an investigative journalist, she reported on the causes of extraordinary violence in LIFE, Third Coast, and D Magazine. She has received a Dobie Paisano Fellowship, an artist residency at Fundación Valparaiso in Spain, and was a finalist for theHumanities Texas Award for Individual Achievement. She is the founder and executive director emeritus of Gemini Ink, a nonprofit literary center, and teaches in the MA/MFA Program in Literature, Creative Writing, and Social Justice at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, where she is writer-in-residence. 

In the past ten years, BettySoo zigzagged her way across the North American and European continents dozens of times. The Austin American-Statesman says BettySoo has “exceptionally well-arranged songs, as easily equal in precision to, say, Patty Griffin or Alison Krauss…a confidence that speaks volumes,” and KUT praises her “beautiful, heart-wrenching songs that are also edgy and unwavering.” Her albums include: Let Me Love You, Never the Pretty Girl, Heat Sin Water Skin, Tiny Little Secrets, and When We’re Gone. Previous albums have garnered successively greater and numerous positive reviews. BettySoo’s last album, Heat Sin Water Skin, received a great deal of radio airplay, including spins at influential Non-Comm/Triple A stations WFUV, KUT, WXPN, KGSR, KDRP and SiriusXM’s The Loft. 

W. W. McNeal is a retired trial lawyer and a sixth-generation Texan. He lives on a Caldwell County ranch in Central Texas that has been in his family since 1850. The 436 acre spread backing up to the San Marcos River was purchased from the first grantees and the original 1850 deed to the property is locked securely in a desk that belonged to his great grandfather. He grew up on the ranch he lives on now, an only child fascinated by Texas lore and the natural environment that surrounded him. Plum Creek is not only a piece of Texas historical fiction but an homage to the area in which Bill came of age. A student at the University of Texas at the same time that J. Frank Dobie and Walter Prescott Webb were teaching there, McNeal’s inherent love of Texas and respect for early settlers and Texas Rangers gained focus. Throughout the years, he continued to study and envision what Texas life was like in the years after the civil war. Plum Creek is the product of those many hours of research and imagination.

Join us for a FREE monthly reading series, Malvern’s Multi-Verse, in which we explore the infinite possible (multi)verses of Austin’s boundless poetic universe!

Malvern’s Multi-Verse features readings from guest poets, plus a Q & A session. Space-time might be flat and stretch out infinitely, but Malvern’s Multi-Verse is well-rounded, lasts for about an hour, and includes free cookies! Yes indeed, it’s the best of all possible worlds…

This month’s guest is local poet Nick Courtright.

Nick Courtright is the author of Let There Be Light, called “a continual surprise and a revelation” by Naomi Shihab Nye, and Punchline, a National Poetry Series finalist. He is Co-Executive Editor and book designer for Gold Wake Press, and the founder and Executive Editor of Atmosphere Press. His poetry has appeared in many literary journals, including The Southern Review, Kenyon Review Online, Boston Review, and The Iowa Review, among numerous others, and essays and other prose of his have been published by such places as The Huffington Post, The Best American Poetry, Gothamist, and SPIN Magazine. At the University of Texas he is currently studying the epistemological implications of Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.”

Join us in celebrating the launch of local poetry press INF Press. Poets Jenna Martin Opperman and Andrea Eames will be reading from their newly released poetry collections, the initial offerings of INF Press.

Jenna Martin Opperman has a BA in English Literature from The University of Texas at Austin and an MFA in Poetry from New England College. Despite being published in a wide variety of poetry journals and magazines, she prefers the thrill and terror of performing before a live audience. She works and plays with the printed word every day as an English teacher, as the owner of Red Planet Audiobooks, and as the co-founder of INF Press. Her poetry comes from a place of ferocity, of playfulness, of emotional urgency, and of hope. She loves whisky, revelation, and naps.

Praise for Shattering is Gradual by Jenna Martin Opperman:

This highly-polished, cerebral collection spans years of writing, and is an achievement both elegant and emotional. Love, heartbreak and self-realization are major themes, described with wry, often funny, always balanced poignancy.

Andrea Eames is a poet and novelist living in Austin after eight years in New Zealand and seventeen in Zimbabwe. She has released two critically acclaimed novels so far, both published by Harvill Secker (an imprint of Penguin Random House UK) and set in Zimbabwe: The Cry of the Go-Away Bird (2011) and The White Shadow (2012). The White Shadow was shortlisted for the 2012 Dylan Thomas Prize. Her first poetry collection, The Making of Stones, was released in March 2016 and her second, New Monsters, was released in February 2017. Andrea aims to be vulnerable, vivid, and honest in her poetry and prose.

Praise for New Monsters by Andrea Eames:

New Monsters is not for the timid. A study in the feminine as much as the poet, Eames’ new collection is fearless, revealing women in our full, unfettered beauty. Within these pages, we are ravenous and angry, raw and polished, simultaneously ourselves and our search for something larger—much like the collection itself.

Welcome to Malvern Books’ Club: Reading Classics from New York Review Books, hosted (on most occasions) by Malvern’s own curmudgeon-in-chief, Dr. Joe. Everyone is invited to join us for what we’re sure will be a series of irreverent and insightful conversations.

Our April selection is Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner. In Lolly Willowes, Warner’s first novel, she tells of an aging spinster’s struggle to break way from her controlling family—a classic story that she treats with cool feminist intelligence, while adding a dimension of the supernatural and strange.

Sylvia Townsend Warner’s brilliantly varied and self-possessed literary production never quite won her the flaming place in the heavens of repute that she deserved. . . . This is the witty, eerie, tender but firm life history of a middle-class Englishwoman who politely declines to make the expected connection with the opposite sex and becomes a witch instead. —John Updike

The NYRB Classics series started in 1999 with the publication of A High Wind in Jamaica and by the end of this year over 400 titles will be in print—so we have plenty of excellent reading material to choose from. The series includes nineteenth-century and experimental novels, reportage and belles lettres, established classics and cult favorites, and literature high, low, unsuspected, and unheard of. Literature in translation also constitutes a major part of the NYRB Classics series, including new translations of canonical figures such as Euripides, Aeschylus, Dante, Balzac, Nietzsche, and Chekhov, as well as fresh translations of Stefan Zweig, Robert Walser, Alberto Moravia, and Curzio Malaparte, among others.

How it works:

Stop by Malvern Books to sign up and you’ll receive a 10% discount off the title! Read the book and then come to the meeting prepared with either a question or specific passage to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you on April 1st.

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

This month, as well as our Open Mic, we have a special guest, Austin artist and author David Borden. We’ll be celebrating the release of And Yet We Rise, David’s graphic novel on life as a caregiver to a significantly disabled child. Meditative, humorous, and raw, And Yet We Rise dares to dive into the hidden world of parenting a medically fragile child with significant, multiple disabilities. This graphic novel explores the beauty and heartbreak with frankness and humanity.

David Borden is an artist and award winning writer living in Austin, Texas with his wife and daughter. He’s held various jobs in education: director of art programming at a non-profit for persons with disabilities, ESL and GED instructor, and college administrator. Once, long ago, he even sold everything and moved to Morocco for five years. He is often described as unconventional, irreverent, and indomitable. His daughter Savannah taught him to laugh loudly, face every day with courage, and dare to dream.

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

Join us in celebrating the launch of Michael Anania’s poetry collection, Continuous Showings.

With Anania’s familiar, quick movement from perception to the precise but often kinetic image and his extraordinary musicality, Continuous Showings explores a wide range of continuities, from the persistence of tribal culture and language in Mexico to the experience of a fifties movie with Sinatra and Doris Day, from Newton’s alchemical encounter with the New World to the coincidence of science and Dadaism in Paris in 1922, from lute music to jazz.  The collection’s final section, the award-winning “Omaha Appendices,” returns to the setting of Anania’s early poetry and fiction to examine the tragicomedy of Italian-American life in the Midwest.

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) and Heat Lines (2006). His work 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. He has received a number of awards and fellowships, including the Charles Angoff Award and the Aniello Lauri Award for poems in this collection.
Anania was poetry editor of Audit, a quarterly, founder and co-editor of Audit/Poetry, poetry and literary editor of The Swallow Press, poetry editor of Partisan Review and a contributing editor to Tri-Quarterly and has served as an advisory editor to a number of other magazines and presses. He is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a member of the faculty in writing at Northwestern University. He also taught at SUNY at Buffalo and the University of Chicago. He lives in Austin, Texas, and on Lake Michigan.

Join us for a night with Austin’s Typewriter Rodeo! Rodeo members David Fruchter and Sean Petrie will write full-length poems for us on-the-spot, on vintage typewriters, based on whatever prompts the Malvern audience provides. And our Curmudgeon in Chief Joe Bratcher will also interview the Rodeo crew about their ad-lib artistry. Come along for a fun night of extemporaneous poetry… and be prepared with a suggestion or two!

You can read more about Typewriter Rodeo here.

We’re thrilled to be hosting a series of readings as part of the 25th annual Austin International Poetry Festival.

12:00 – 1:30: Workshop facilitated by Joaquin Zihuatanejo (State Feature)
1:45 – 3:15: Workshop facilitated by Robert Lee Brewer (National Feature)
3:30 – 4:45: Poetry of the Times Read hosted by Griselda Castillo

See the Austin International Poetry Festival website for the full schedule of readings.

Join us for another installment of Novel Night, 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. And we’ll also have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles. Also worth noting: we’re offering 20% OFF ALL FICTION TITLES during Novel Night (from 6pm till closing).

This month we have something rather special: a SciFi/Fantasy/Speculative fiction-themed reading with two very talented writers, Ron Seybold and S.R. Bond. Ron will be reading from his debut novel, Viral Times. S.R. will share an excerpt from The Lost Witch, book one of The Lost Universe trilogy.

Ron Seybold directs the Writer’s Workshop in Austin, a place for workshopping books and weekly creativity groups for writers which has published its anthology Small Packages. A two-time finalist in Writer’s League of Texas manuscript contests, he’s reported over the radio, acted in Austin melodramas, and walks his standard poodle Tess Harding a little less often than she’d like. A teaching volunteer at the Austin Bat Cave literacy program in schools, he coaches writers, edits books, and plays a part in helping authors from inspiration to publication. 

S.R. Bond is a sci-fi/fantasy writer and dog trainer located in the hill country near Austin. She has always been an avid bookworm, the kid who read books at recess instead of playing on the jungle gym. Creating stories has been a part of her life since she could form coherent sentences. She spends her free time feeding her TV addiction and hanging out with her dog, an Australian shepherd mix named Percy (more formally known as Perseus the Destroyer).

We’re thrilled to be hosting a series of readings as part of the 25th annual Austin International Poetry Festival.

12:00 – 2:15: Voice of Empathy Read hosted by Hal C. Clark
2:30 – 4:45: City Read at Malvern Books hosted by Sandi Horton

See the Austin International Poetry Festival website for the full schedule of readings.

Join us in celebrating the launch of new books from poets Andrew Wessels, James Meetze, and Kelli Anne Noftle, with readings from Andrew, James, and Kelli, plus special guest John Fry. Andrew will be reading from A Turkish Dictionary; James will read from Phantom Hour; and Kelli will read from Adam Cannot Be Adam.

Andrew Wessels currently splits his time between Los Angeles and Istanbul, where he teaches at Koç University. He has previously lived in Houston, Cambridge, and Las Vegas. He has held fellowships from Poets & Writers and the Black Mountain Institute. His first book is A Turkish Dictionary from 1913 Press. Semi Circle, a chapbook of his translations of the Turkish poet Nurduran Duman, was published by Goodmorning Menagerie in 2016. His poems and translations can be found in VOLT, Witness, Tammy Journal, Faultline, and Colorado Review, among others. He is the NOS Series editor at Les Figues Press and a founding editor of The Offending Adam.

James Meetze [Metz] is the author of three books, including Phantom Hour and Dayglo, which was selected by Terrance Hayes for the 2010 Sawtooth Poetry Prize, both published by Ahsahta Press. He is editor, with Simon Pettet, of Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems by James Schuyler (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010). James lives in San Diego, where he is a professor of creative writing and film studies at Ashford University. 

Kelli Anne Noftle is a poet, musician, and business manager who currently lives in San Diego with her husband and their 50-year-old Sulcata tortoise, Bong Rip. Her first collection of poems, I Was There For Your Somniloquy, was selected by Rae Armantrout for the 2010 Omnidawn Book Prize. Her new book of poems, Adam Cannot Be Adam, is now out from Omnidawn Publishing.

John Fry is the author of the chapbook silt will swirl (NewBorder, 2012). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, West Branch, Water~Stone Review, and The Laurel Review, among others. He is a graduate of the MFA program at Texas State University. He serves as a poetry editor for Newfound Journal, and he is an assistant instructor and PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin.

Austin Writers Roulette is an uncensored, theme-inspired spoken word and storytelling event. It features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who 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 “Pretense Is Underrated.” Our featured artists include: DONNA DECHEN BIRDWELL, JUSTIN BOOTH, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, & THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

Join us for a meeting of the Boomertime Book Club! This month they will be reading I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai.

The Boomertime Book Club aims to read all types of books, fiction and nonfiction. We select the book to be read at a meeting and then discuss it at the next meeting. We meet monthly. We limit attendance at each meeting to  no more than twelve in order to encourage participation by all. Attendance is first come, first served. We encourage guests and encourage new membership within the Meetup Boomertime social group. For more information, please email Greg Smith at greg02390239@gmail.com.

Boomertime is a Meetup group for babyboomers (ages 50+). Its purpose is to provide opportunities for Austin adults to have fun and meet new people. Boomertime is a group where individuals can make friends and can plan events around their special interests for all to participate in. Boomers dance, hike, read, talk, laugh, and engage in many more activities.

In celebration of Caits Meissner’s new poetry collection, Let It Die Hungry, join us for a reading with Caits, plus special guests Ebony Stewart and Amanda Johnston.

In this world where so many things are uncertain, shaky, volatile, Let It Die Hungry does not offer easy solutions, but builds upon the idea that to affect change, one must look inward and learn from the infinities of the self before pointing our human tentacles outward. It is an inspiration for what a book can do and I argue there needs to be more literature like this, now more than ever. Literature that calls the world out, holds it in the light, and demands the reader do the work too. Oh, and did I mention the artwork? It’s pretty dope too. —M.K. Rainey, 3:AM Magazine

New York City-based Caits Meissner (center, above) is the author of the multidisciplinary poetry book Let It Die Hungry, and The Letter All Your Friends Have Written You, co-written with poet Tishon Woolcock. Her award-winning work has been widely published in journals and anthologies. Caits serves as Writer-in-Residence at Bronx Academy of Letters, facilitates classes at the transgender unit of Manhattan Detention Center and is part-time faculty at The New School University and CUNY. Her current projects include writing with ReEmergent Theatre, a company in collaboration with people emerging from prison, and you can find her touring her new book in public venues, as well as prisons across America. She is completing her MFA at City College of New York.

Ebony Stewart (left, above) is an international touring artist, poet, writer, occasional slammer. Been on some teams. Coached a lot of teams. Won a bunch of awards. Been featured in a bunch of articles, journals, and magazines. Ate a lot of cupcakes. She. Her. Woman. So black she be magic. Ebony Stewart aka The Gully Princess, story of the black girl winning.

Amanda Johnston (right, above) earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. Her poetry and interviews have appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them Kinfolks Quarterly, Muzzle, Pluck! and the anthologies Small Batch, di-ver-city and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South. The recipient of multiple Artist Enrichment grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Christina Sergeyevna Award from the Austin International Poetry Festival, she is a member of the Affrilachian Poets and a Cave Canem graduate fellow. Johnston is a Stonecoast MFA faculty member, a co-founder of Black Poets Speak Out, and founding executive director of Torch Literary Arts.

Join us for something rather special: Austin Community College’s Creative Writing Department will be introducing us to the two winners of their 2015 Balcones Prize: writer Margaret Malone, whose debut short story collection People Like You won the Fiction Prize; and Michael Wiegers, editor of What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford, which won the Poetry Prize.

In Margaret Malone’s debut story collection, characters in the thick of everyday experience absent of epiphanies, are caught off-guard or cast adrift by personal impulses even while wide awake to their own imperfections. Final judge John Blair called the book ‘a masterfully minimalist collection of lives lived poorly but with the best of intentions. Her stories are powerful, sad, and plain-spoken, and this debut collection takes the normative-yet-desperate circuits of the day-to-day that Bobbie Anne Mason and Frederick Barthelme brought to the forefront of American short fiction and makes them both new again and powerfully affecting. These are marvelous and worthy stories, and very much deserving of recognition.’

Malone’s writing has appeared in The Missouri Review, Oregon Humanities Magazine, Coal City Review, Propeller Quarterly, The Timberline Review, Swink, Nailed and latimes.com. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission and Literary Arts, two Regional Arts & Culture Council Project Grants, and residencies at The Sitka Center and Soapstone. Malone has a degree in Philosophy from Humboldt State University and has taught creative writing as a visiting artist at Pacific Northwest College of Art. She lives with her husband filmmaker Brian Padian and two children in Portland, where she co-hosts the artist and literary gathering SHARE. (Photo by Sabina Poole.)

Michael Wiegers is poetry editor of Narrative Magazine and executive editor of Copper Canyon Press. His previous titles include This Art, The Poet’s Child and Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (co-edited with Monica de la Torre).

Join us in celebrating the launch of Schadenfreude, A Love Story by Rebecca Schuman. We’ll enjoy readings from Rebecca and Susan Signe Morrison.

Schadenfreude is the story of a teenage Jewish intellectual who falls in love—in love with a boy (who breaks her heart), a language (that’s nearly impossible to master), a culture (that’s nihilistic, but punctual), and a landscape (that’s breathtaking when there’s not a wall in the way). At once a snapshot of a young woman finding herself, and a country slowly starting to stitch itself back together after nearly a century of war (both hot and cold), Schadenfreude, A Love Story is an exhilarating, hilarious, and yes, maybe even heartfelt memoir proving that sometimes the truest loves play hard to get.

Rebecca Schuman is a St. Louis-based writer and translator who contributes regularly to The Awl, The Hairpin, Slate, the Atlantic, and other publications. She holds an MFA in fiction writing from The New School and a PhD in German from the University of California-Irvine. SCHADENFREUDE, A LOVE STORY is her first work of commercial nonfiction.

Living in Austin, Texas and Professor of English at Texas State University, Susan Signe Morrison lived in Germany during the 1980s and taught in the former East Germany. Her Stasi file has some unusual (and false) assertions. She will read selections from her published works on historical and legendary Germanic women.

You’re already familiar with our NYRB Classics Bookclub, in which we read and discuss classic works of fiction… now we’d like to invite you to join The Other Book Club, a reading group for those of you interested in exploring works from the “Other” section of our store.

Our recently expanded “Other” collection includes ever so eclectic essays, plays, creative non-fiction, memoirs and more. Featuring books like Patrick Leigh Fermor’s travels through the Greek islands and the political tracts of Simone Weil—and let’s not forget Oskar Panizza’s blasphemous essay on the history of the pig!—our non-fiction section is as unusual as the rest of our store.

April’s book will be Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, a collection of short lyric essays that explore personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love.

Bluets reaches far beyond the constraints of its subject, resulting in a series of delicately associative numbered paragraphs investigating a broken romantic relationship, a friend’s chronic nerve pain, the writing process itself, and the deceptive elements of perception and color. The result not only defies easy categorization, but also leans toward Walter Benjamin’s famous declaration that all great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one. —Rob Schlegel, Jacket

How it works:

Stop by Malvern Books to sign up and you’ll receive a 10% discount off the title! Read the book and then come to the meeting prepared with either a question or specific passage to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you on Saturday, April 15th, at 12pm!

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

Join us in celebrating the launch of Tomás Q. Morín’s new poetry collection, Patient Zero (Copper Canyon Press). With readings from Tomás and Elena Passarello.

Tomás Q. Morín’s Patient Zero is full of life and its undeniable hungers. Claws, fins, mouths, and feathers populate a fanciful world: a man in a crowded market becomes a tree of butterflies, a mountain gives a feline yawn, grocery bags contain “milk for bones — salt for blood.” Meanwhile at the edge of the fantastic, realism beckons: the buzzard stalks the tortoise, heartbreak sickens the living, and each beginning contains an end.

Tomás Q. Morín is the author of Patient Zero and A Larger Country. He translated Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu and with Mari L’Esperance co-edited Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine. He teaches at Texas State University and in the low residency MFA program of Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Elena Passarello is the author of two collections of essays, Let Me Clear My Throat and Animals Strike Curious Poses. Her essays on performance, pop, culture, and the natural world have recently appeared in Oxford American, Virginia Quarterly Review, Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. The recipient of the 2015 Whiting Award in nonfiction, she teaches at Oregon State University.

Join us as Massachusetts-based author Yarrow Paisley makes his Texas debut with a reading from his first full-length collection of narrations, I, No Other. Paisley’s absurdist narratives are somewhat in the spirit of, and absolutely as contrast to, the work of Rimbaud. Their pain is as vital as their delight. Joining Yarrow will be Austin-based writer Felix Morgan. 

Yarrow Paisley is an exciting new author in the field of literary speculative fiction, because his stories have fascinating originality, disturbing atmosphere and captivating strangeness. —RisingShadow

Yarrow Paisley’s first full-length collection, I, No Other is a cerebral defibrillator you forgot had been implanted until it routinely—and unexpectedly—shocks you back to life. They may hurt at times, the jolts of these agitations, but it is a vital hurt. With a cast of narrators on the brink of discovery in all its forms, I, No Other collects Yarrow Paisley’s most exquisite absurdist interludes.

Felix Morgan is an online dating consultant, professor, and journalist writing for publications including The Austin Chronicle, Birth. Movies. Death, The American Genius, and Nuclear Salad. She has an almost doctoral degree from Texas Tech University where she specialized in research on people’s relationships with fictional characters. Her fiction and poetry has been published by Lucky Dark, Awst Press, and Tallow Eider Quarterly. She lives in Austin with her two warrior-princess-ninja-superhero daughters and some other wild animals.

In tandem with a workshop they’re leading at the Fusebox Festival on Sunday, April 16th, Ayden LeRoux and Abraham Burickson offer a reading from their book Odyssey Works: Transformative Experiences for an Audience of One (Princeton Architectural Press). Odyssey Works infiltrates the life of one person at a time to create a custom-tailored, life-altering performance. It may last for one day or a few months and consists of experiences that blur the boundaries of life and art. The book uses a performance for Rick Moody, author of The Ice Storm, to discuss the broader ideas of their creative and collaborative work. Ayden and Abraham will read from portions of the book and discuss the ideas within, along with holding a question and answer session with the audience.

Ayden LeRoux is an artist, writer, critic, and educator. She is the author of Odyssey Works: Transformative Experiences for an Audience of One, published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2016, and Isolation and Amazement, published by Samsara Press in 2012. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from Public Books, Cosmonauts Avenue, Theo Westenberger Estate, Works & Conversations, and Emergent Art Space. She is a regular contributor to Glasstire. LeRoux’s photography, performance, installation, and video work often incorporates text and has been exhibited in China, Cuba, Greece, and throughout the United States. She has had solo exhibitions at IDIO Gallery and Flux Factory in New York. She was an artist in residence at the ACE Hotel, Flux Factory, and with the Alaskan Parks and Recreation Department. LeRoux collaborates frequently and is the Assistant Director of Odyssey Works, an interdisciplinary performance group that studies the life of one individual and makes immersive, durational experiences for that person. Odyssey Works has been featured by Newsweek, the New York Times, ArtInfo, BOMB, Hyperallergic, the Marina Abramovic Institute, Vulture, NPR’s Studio 360, Fast Company, and San Francisco Magazine. She has been a Visiting Artist, lectured, and led workshops at the Brooklyn Museum, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Fordham University, and Battersea Centre for the Arts, among others. 

Abraham Burickson is the Co-founder and Artistic Director of Odyssey Works. Burickson was trained in architecture; his work spans writing, design, and performance.

This event is co-sponsored by the Michener Center for Writers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join us for an evening with poets Cathy Eisenhower, Shubh Schiesser, and Gloria Amescua.

Cathy Eisenhower is a recent transplant to Austin, TX, and is the author of Language of the Dog-heads (Phylum 2001), clearing without reversal (Edge 2008), would with and (Roof 2009), and distance decay (Ugly Duckling 2015). She co-curated the In Your Ear Reading Series for several years in Washington, DC, and her work has appeared in The Recluse, Aufgabe, West Wind Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and Fence.

Shubh Bala Schiesser’s poems have appeared in the Texas Poetry Calendar, Di-Verse-City Anthology, The Borderlands Texas Poetry Review, Ardent Poetry in the Arts, Austin Poetry Society, Forest Fest Anthology, Lamesa, The Enigmatist, Blue Hole, Galaxy of Verse, the Austin Chronicle, San Antonio High Way, Big River Poetry Review, Illay’s Honey, Drash Pit, and Muse India, among others. Her chapbook, Sacred River: Poems from India, was published by Sociosights Press, Austin in 2016.

Gloria Amescua, CantoMundo fellow and Hedgebrook alumna, has been published in various journals and anthologies, including Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems, Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: Tejanas in Literature and Art, and The Crafty Poet II. She has won the Austin Poetry Society and Christina Sergeyevna Awards. Gloria also received the 2016 New Voices Award Honor for her picture book manuscript in verse, Luz Jiménez, No Ordinary Girl.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Deborah Clearman’s short story collection, Concepción and the Baby Brokers (Rain Mountain Press), which features nine thematically linked stories set largely in Guatemala. Deborah will be joined by writer Scott Semegran.

This collection brings to life characters struggling with universal emotions and dilemmas in a place unfamiliar to most Americans. From the close-knit community of Todos Santos to the teeming danger of Guatemala City, to a meat-packing plant in Michigan and the gardens of Washington DC, Deborah Clearman shows us the human cost of international adoption, drug trafficking, and immigration. With searing humanity, Clearman exposes the consequences of American exceptionalism, and the daily magic and peril that inform and shape ordinary lives.

Deborah Clearman is the author of a novel Todos Santos, from Black Lawrence Press. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals. She is the former Program Director for NY Writers Coalition, and she teaches creative writing in such nontraditional venues as senior centers, public housing projects, and the jail for women on Rikers Island. She lives in New York City and Guatemala.

Scott Semegran lives in Austin, Texas. 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.

Join us for a FREE monthly reading series, Malvern’s Multi-Verse, in which we explore the infinite possible (multi)verses of Austin’s boundless poetic universe!

Malvern’s Multi-Verse features readings from guest poets, plus a Q & A session. Space-time might be flat and stretch out infinitely, but Malvern’s Multi-Verse is well-rounded, lasts for about an hour, and includes free cookies! Yes indeed, it’s the best of all possible worlds…

This month’s guests are David Jewell (pictured at left) and Ric Lance Scow Williams (right). We’ll be celebrating the launch of the second volume of their Last Word/First Word endeavor, a collaborative effort involving years of emailing poems back and forth, nearly every day, using the last word of the sender’s poem to start the poem to be sent back.

David Jewell is a poet, storyteller, author, actor and stream of consciousness visionary imagineer who chronicles the 21st century mind and its many idiosyncrasies. He and his writing have appeared in two Richard Linklater movies, Before Sunrise and Waking Life, and he’s shared shows with Laurie Anderson and Leon Redbone. His books are time bombs already detonating in another generation and hIs bio says he was “born in blank and lives in and.”

Richard “Ric” Lance Scow Williams was an associate editor for The Austin Chronicle from 1988-2012. In 2007, his 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.” He lives in Glorieta, New Mexico, with his wife, astrologer Helga Scow Williams, and two cats, Bat and Mouse. His latest books are Helga (2015) and Jealousy Cured: Cancer & Other Invisible Matters (2016), both from Bite Press. His collaborations with David Jewell are Last Word/First Word: Volume 1 (2015,) and their latest 52 Pickup: Last Word/First Word: Volume 2 (2017), both also from Bite Press.

Join us for an evening with myth-maker and storyteller William Kuko, who will share a personal narrative mixed with history and myth to create a sacred place.

William Kuko (ウィリアム・空狐) is an inhabitant of the Pacific Northwest. Most of his time is spent in the Seattle metro area; he is an hermit and recluse by nature, even in the metropolis. Often Mr. Kuko disappears into the Cascade Mountains for great lengths of time. He is a most extraordinary student of poetry, history and all things biologic. Most importantly, William Kuko is a myth-maker and a storyteller: he makes all that was old and forgotten new again.

Get your cones ready for another round of Malvern Books’ FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld and Schandra Madha and featuring young women writers from the Austin community. April’s I Screamers are Jenny Keto, Tiffany Mendoza, and Liz Moskowitz.

This month is extra special because in honor of National Poetry Month, Malvern Books is offering 20% OFF ALL POETRY, including large volume collections, chapbooks, poetry anthologies, and already deeply discounted $5 poetry books.

And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream & Sweet Ritual?

~7pm – Ice cream & Open Mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us.

~The featured reading begins after the open mic and will be followed by even more ice cream.

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

Join us for an evening with poets Brad Richard, W. Joe Hoppe, and Abe Louise Young (left to right, below).

Brad Richard chairs the creative writing program at Lusher Charter School in New Orleans. 2015 Louisiana Artist of the Year, and poetry winner in the 2002 Poets & Writers Writers Exchange competition, Brad is the author of three collections of poems, Habitations, Motion Studies (winner of the 2010 Washington Prize) and Butcher’s Sugar, and two chapbooks, The Men in the Dark and Curtain Optional. His poems and reviews have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Okey-Panky, Unlikely Stories, Guernica, American Letters & Commentary, and other journals. Mr. Richard is co-director of the southeast Louisiana affiliate of the Scholastic Writing Awards and of The New Orleans New Writers Literary Festival. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Surdna Foundation, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

W. Joe Hoppe’s poems have appeared in Analecta, Borderlands, Cider Press Review, Di*Verse*Cities, Nerve Cowboy, Utter, and The Blanton Museum of Art’s Poetry Project. His poems have been anthologized in Stand Up Poetry, How to be This Man, gumballpoetry.com, and Beatest State in the Union. Joe’s one-of-a-kind poetry video, “$5200 MSTA,” has been shown at the Dallas Video Festival, San Antonio Underground Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, and VideoEx in Zurich, Switzerland. His books include a collection of short stories, Harmon Place (1991) from Primal Press, a poetry collection, Galvanized (2007), from Dalton Publishing, and a second poetry collection, Diamond Plate (2012), from Obsolete Press. Hoppe is the Poet Lariat of Austin’s intellectual variety show The Dionysium. He has hosted numerous poetry events at Austin’s Malvern Books, including interviews of local poets, a reading and discussion of Emily Dickinson, a communal performance of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl celebrating its 60th anniversary, and an annual memorial reading for the late, great Austin poet Albert Huffstickler. He is currently finishing up a four-year effort to get a customized ’51 Plymouth Cranbrook roadworthy for a trip down Route 66 in the summer of 2017. Hoppe is an Associate Professor in English and Creative Writing at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas.

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. 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.

After 100 days the poets of Austin stand up and resist unjust practices and policies. The format will be fast, as we’d love to hear from many perspectives in this safe place reading. Outlaw Poet Justin Booth will host some of Austin’s best including W. Joe Hoppe, Joe Brundidge, Richard Acevado, Favian Harper, David Julian, Nikki Bruns, Rebecca Raphael, Stephany Morrissey, Brett Reeves, and Lyman Grant.

Join us for a reading from acclaimed poets Steve McCaffery and Karen Mac Cormack. Steve will read from Dark Ladies, an explosive meditation on death and laughter cast as both a Menippean masque and a user’s guide to the tragi-comic. Karen will read from various works, including Implexures.

Steve McCaffery has been twice nominated for the Governor General’s Award and is twice recipient of the Gertrude Stein Prize for Innovative Writing. He is the author of over 40 books and chapbooks of poetry and criticism. An ample selection of his poetic explorations in numerous forms can be savoured in the two volumes of Seven Pages Missing (Coach House Press). As well as Panotpicon, Tatterdemalion (Veer Books UK), Alice in Plunderland (Book Thug), Revanches (Xexoxial), and Parsival (Rook). His book-object-concept A Little Manual of Treason was commissioned for the 2011 Shajah Biennale in the United Arab Emirates. A founding member of the sound poetry ensemble Four Horsmen, TRG (Toronto Research Group) and the College of Canadian Pataphysics and long-time resident of Toronto, he is now David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters at the University at Buffalo.

Karen Mac Cormack (born Luanshya, Zambia, 1956) is a contemporary experimental poet. She holds dual British/Canadian citizenship, and lived for many years in Toronto; more recently, she moved to Buffalo, New York, when her husband, the poet Steve McCaffery, was hired by SUNY-Buffalo for the David Gray Chair. Mac Cormack is the author of Straw Cupid (1987), Quirks & Quillets (1991), Marine Snow (1995), The Tongue Moves Talk (1997), At Issue (2001), Vanity Release (2003) and Implexures (part one, 2003; full-length publication, 2009), as well as a collaboration with the British poet Alan Halsey, Fit to Print (2003). Though she was not directly part of the Language movement, her work shows many affinities with it, in its use of disjunctiveness at a within-sentence and between-sentence level, and in her interest in the interrogation of cultural norms and ideologies through the skeptical reworking of “found” materials and genres. In Fit to Print, for instance, the poems mimic and distort the format and themes of a typical daily newspaper, while in At Issue the poems are quarried from the pages of women’s fashion and beauty magazines. The prose pieces in the recent project Implexures are somewhat atypical in their use of biographical and autobiographical materials, especially a series of letters written from a variety of Mediterranean locations by an unnamed female traveller (possibly to be identified with the author, possibly not).

Join us in celebrating the launch of a new issue of Echo Literary Magazine.

Echo Literary Magazine is a publication of the University of Texas at Austin’s Liberal Arts Honors Program. It showcases the work of UT undergraduates from all majors and programs. Echo accepts submissions of poetry, prose, and visual art, including photography.

Join us in celebrating the release of the Spring 2017 edition of Austin Community College’s journal, The Rio Review, which showcases poetry, prose, and artworks by students. During the event, students featured in this issue will share their fiction, nonfiction, and poetry with us.

Please join us at Malvern Books for Fantastical Fictions, an odd-monthly event focusing on the literary fantastic across genres and cultures. This month host Rebecca Schwarz will discuss the novel FARDWOR, RUSSIA! by Russian journalist and activist Oleg Kashin.

Worth noting: if you buy FARDWOR, RUSSIA! for the discussion, you’ll get 10% off the list price!

The forces of science, human error, and power run amok collide in this wildly inventive, funny, and razor-sharp political satire about Putin’s Russia, from one of the country’s most fearless journalists.

When a scientist experimenting on humans in a sanatorium near Moscow gives a growth serum to a dwarf oil mogul, the newly heightened businessman runs off with the experimenter’s wife, and a series of mysterious deaths and crimes commences. Wonderfully strange and ringing with the echoes of real-life events, this political parable fused with science fiction has an uncanny resonance with today’s Russia under Putin.

In 2010, two months after he’d delivered the manuscript of this book to his publishers, Oleg Kashin was beaten to within an inch of his life in an attack with ties to the highest levels of government. While absurdly funny on its face, FARDWOR, RUSSIA! A Fantastical Tale of Life Under Putin is deadly serious in its implications. Kashin’s experience exemplifies why so few authors dare to criticize the state—and his book is a testament of the power of literature to break the bonds of power, corruption, and enforced silence.

Join us for a celebration hosted by Pterodáctilo, the bilingual journal and blog run by graduate students in UT Austin’s department of Spanish and Portuguese. This bilingual event will feature poetry readings… and tamales!

Readers include Ignacio Carvajal, Nicolas Emilfork, and Jim Trainer, and there will be music from Chulita Vinyl Club.

Welcome to Malvern Books’ Club: Reading Classics from New York Review Books, hosted (on most occasions) by Malvern’s own curmudgeon-in-chief, Dr. Joe. Everyone is invited to join us for what we’re sure will be a series of irreverent and insightful conversations.

Our May selection is The Unknown Masterpiece by Honoré de Balzac, the story of a painter who, depending on one’s perspective, is either an abject failure or a transcendental genius—or both. The story has served as an inspiration to artists as various as Cézanne, Henry James, Picasso, and New Wave director Jacques Rivette. Please note: The Unknown Masterpiece appears, as Balzac intended, with Gambara, a tragic novella about a musician undone by his dreams—we’ll be reading and discussing both works!

The hero of The Unknown Masterpiece, Frenhofer, is one of Balzac’s archetypal artists…. —The Washington Post

The greatest novelist of the nineteenth century and perhaps of all time. —The New York Times

The NYRB Classics series started in 1999 with the publication of A High Wind in Jamaica and by the end of this year over 400 titles will be in print—so we have plenty of excellent reading material to choose from. The series includes nineteenth-century and experimental novels, reportage and belles lettres, established classics and cult favorites, and literature high, low, unsuspected, and unheard of. Literature in translation also constitutes a major part of the NYRB Classics series, including new translations of canonical figures such as Euripides, Aeschylus, Dante, Balzac, Nietzsche, and Chekhov, as well as fresh translations of Stefan Zweig, Robert Walser, Alberto Moravia, and Curzio Malaparte, among others.

How it works:

Stop by Malvern Books to sign up and you’ll receive a 10% discount off the title! Read the book and then come to the meeting prepared with either a question or specific passage to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you on May 6th.

Join us for a reading from poets Charles Alexander (Director of Chax Press), Ash Smith, and Ken Jacobs (left to right, below).

Artist: Poet, Bookmaker, founder/director of Chax Press. Author of 5 full-length books of poetry and 11 brief chapbooks of poetry, editor of one critical work on the state of the book arts in America, author of multiple essays, articles, and reviews. Most recent books of poetry are Pushing Water, published by Cuneiform Press, and the chapbooks Some Sentences Look for Some Periods, a chapbook, and Two Pushing Waters, both from Little Red Leaves Textile Series. Has taught literature and writing at Naropa University, University of Arizona, and elsewhere, and currently is Poet & Designer in Residence at the University of Houston-Victoria, where he directs the MFA Creative Writing Program and manages the UHV Center for the Arts. He is a past recipient of the Arizona Arts Award, and has participated in the TAMAAS Poetry Translation Project in Paris. In January 2016 served as a faculty member for US Poets in Mexico. He lives in Victoria, Texas, with his partner, the painter Cynthia Miller.

Ash Smith is the author of the chapbooks Water Shed (Dos Press), Come Such Frequency (Dusie), and various other publications and ephemera. She was, until recently, a managing editor for the small press and journal Little Red Leaves. She is working on a collection called Pigeon of Tears and tumbles about politics of sound and pop cultural depictions of decapitation at Opened By Customs.

Ken Jacobs is a poet and software developer. He has poems in a number of online and print journals including Sentence and Everyday Genius. He has published two chapbooks, Sooner (Phylum Press,  2009) and Unmet (Primary Writing, 2015). Relegy, a software project he developed for providing a compositional and collaborative tool for ‘writing’ poems, was used to produce content for a performance at the G Street Gallery in Washington DC and is available online at www.deegeep.com.

Come celebrate the release of Analecta 43! We’ll be distributing copies of the journal, chatting about literature and art, eating snacks, and listening to some of the contributors read their work.

Join Hothouse Literary Journal for a reading from its spring publication. There will be copies of the free journal to pick up, a reading from some of the published writers, light refreshments, and conversation. Bring your friends! All are welcome.

Hothouse Literary Journal is the official journal for the UT English Department. They publish poetry, nonfiction, and fiction stories from multiple genres every year.

Join us for a reading from novelists Natalia Sylvester, David Hicks, and Charlotte Gullick (left to right, below). We’ll be celebrating the launch of David’s debut novel, White Plains.

Natalia Sylvester was born in Lima, Peru, and came to the U.S. at age four. She studied Creative Writing at the University of Miami and is a faculty member of the Mile-High MFA program at Regis University. Her articles have appeared in Latina Magazine, Writer’s Digest, The Austin American-Statesman, and NBCLatino. Her debut novel, Chasing the Sun, was named the Best Debut Book of 2014 by Latinidad, and was chosen as a Book of the Month by the National Latino Book Club. Her second novel, Everyone Knows You Go Home, is forthcoming from Little A in 2018.

David Hicks grew up in New York, moved to Colorado in his thirties, and is now a professor at Regis University in Denver, where he co-directs the Mile-High MFA in Creative Writing. He and his wife Cynthia enjoy hiking in the mountains with their dog Rosie and meeting the children, Stephen and Caitlin, for a big breakfast afterwards. David has published many stories in such fine journals as Glimmer Train, Colorado Review, and Saranac Review. White Plains is his first novel, and this is his first-ever visit to Austin.

Charlotte Gullick is a novelist, essayist, editor, educator and Chair of the Creative Writing Department at Austin Community College. She graduated with a MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts in May 2016. Charlotte’s first novel, By Way of Water, was chosen by Jayne Anne Phillips as the Grand Prize winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards Program. Her other awards include a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship for Fiction, a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry, a MacDowell Colony Residency, a Ragdale Residency, Faculty of Year from College of the Redwoods as well as the Evergreen State College 2012 Teacher Excellence Award.

Join us for another installment of Novel Night, 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. And we’ll also have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles. Also worth noting: we’re offering 20% OFF ALL FICTION TITLES during Novel Night (from 6pm till closing).

 This month we have readings from Glen Pourciau and Greg Levin. Glen will be reading from his newly released short story collection, View, and Greg will be sharing excerpts from two of his previous novels, The Exit Man and Sick to Death.

Glen Pourciau’s previous collection, Invite, was published by University of Iowa Press in 2008 and won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Pourciau lives in Plano, Texas.

Greg Levin is an award-winning author of dark contemporary fiction with a comedic tinge. His debut novel sold over 11 copies to his immediate family. Greg had a little more success with his second novel, The Exit Man, which won a 2015 Independent Publishers Award (a.k.a., an “IPPY”) and was recently optioned by Showtime for development into a TV series. Greg’s third novel, Sick to Death, is being hailed by critics everywhere as one of the top three books he has ever written. Author Craig Clevenger (The Contortionist’s Handbook) calls the book “a tour de force dark comedy,” and it just won a 2017 IPPY award. Greg plans on wearing nothing but his two IPPY medals while finishing up his next novel, In Wolves’ Clothing, which he is currently workshopping with none other than the legendary Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, et. al.). The book is due out late summer/early fall 2017.

Join us for the launch of Chen Chen’s debut poetry collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. With readings from Chen Chen, Jennifer Whalen, Tomás Morin, and Katelin Kelly.

What does Millennial poetry look like? One answer might be this wild debut from Chen Chen. He seems to run at the mouth, free-associating wildly, switching between lingo and ‘higher’ forms of diction. Nothing’s out of bounds or off limits, no culture too ‘pop’ to find its place in poetry . . . nor anything too silly to point the way toward serious aims. And yet this is a deeply serious and moving book about Chinese-American experience, young love, poetry, family, and the family one makes amongst friends. —NPR Books

Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and out now from BOA Editions. His work has appeared in two chapbooks and in publications such as Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, and The Best American Poetry. He has been featured on the PBS Newshour and Out.com. A Kundiman and Lambda Literary fellow, he is currently pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University.

Jennifer Whalen’s poems can be found or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Southern Indiana Review, Fugue, New South, Grist, and elsewhere. She was the 2015-2016 L.D. & LaVerne Harrell Clark House writer-in-residence at Texas State University. Residing in San Marcos, Texas, she currently teaches college writing.

Tomás Q. Morín is the author of Patient Zero and A Larger Country. He translated Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu and with Mari L’Esperance co-edited Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine. He teaches at Texas State University and in the low residency MFA program of Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Katelin Kelly was born in Lexington, Kentucky. She migrated to Austin three years ago where she earned her MFA in Poetry at The New Writers Project. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Katelin serves as the Managing Editor for Bat City Review. Her work can be found in Sonora Review, Misadventures Magazine, Wounwapi Literary Journal, and Narrative.

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

This all-women reading features writers from the Revolution Writing Workshop led by Abe Louise Young. Join us for poetry and prose about mothering, queer and straight parenting, being mothered and unmothered, sex, Mother Earth, and more! Readers include: Rebecca Whitehurst, Kandice Farmer, Robin Bradford, Abe Louise Young, Marcela Contreras, Angeliska Polachek, and Jamie Harris.

Austin Writers Roulette is an uncensored, theme-inspired spoken word and storytelling event. It features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who 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 “Othering & Mothering.” The featured artists are: LARRY MAYFIELD, KELLY RUXER, URSULA PIKE, HOPE RUIZ, BRIAN GROSZ (as read by HOPE RUIZ), KATHY REEVES, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, & THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

Join us for a meeting of the Boomertime Book Club! This month they will be reading A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

The Boomertime Book Club aims to read all types of books, fiction and nonfiction. We select the book to be read at a meeting and then discuss it at the next meeting. We meet monthly. We limit attendance at each meeting to  no more than twelve in order to encourage participation by all. Attendance is first come, first served. We encourage guests and encourage new membership within the Meetup Boomertime social group. For more information, please email Greg Smith at greg02390239@gmail.com.

Boomertime is a Meetup group for babyboomers (ages 50+). Its purpose is to provide opportunities for Austin adults to have fun and meet new people. Boomertime is a group where individuals can make friends and can plan events around their special interests for all to participate in. Boomers dance, hike, read, talk, laugh, and engage in many more activities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join us for a reading from poets Chloe Honum, Sasha West, and Jennifer S. Cheng. We’ll be celebrating the launch of Chloe’s new chapbook, Then Winter.

Chloe Honum’s first book, The Tulip-Flame (2014), was named a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award and won the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award, the Eric Hoffer Award, and a Texas Institute of Letters Award. Her poems have appeared in publications such as The Paris Review, Poetry, Best New Poets, and Pushcart Prize XL. She was raised in Auckland, New Zealand, and is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at Baylor University.

Sasha West’s first book, Failure and I Bury the Body, won the National Poetry Series and the Texas Institute of Letters First Book of Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review Online, West Branch, The Southern Review, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. Her awards include a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Fellowship, Rice University’s Parks Fellowship, and a Houston Arts Alliance grant. She is on the creative writing faculty at St. Edward’s University in Austin, TX.

Jennifer S. Cheng writes at the intersections of poetry and essay. She is the author of HOUSE A, selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Omnidawn Poetry Book Prize, and Invocation: An Essay (New Michigan Press), an image-text chapbook. Her writing appears in Tin House, AGNI, Mid-American Review, DIAGRAM, The Offing, Entropy, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in Nonfiction from the University of Iowa, MFA in Poetry from San Francisco State University, and fellowships and awards from the U.S. Fulbright program, Kundiman, Bread Loaf, and the Academy of American Poets. Having grown up in Texas, Hong Kong, and Connecticut, she currently lives and teaches in San Francisco.

You’re already familiar with our NYRB Classics Bookclub, in which we read and discuss classic works of fiction… now we’d like to invite you to join The Other Book Club, a reading group for those of you interested in exploring works from the “Other” section of our store.

Our recently expanded “Other” collection includes ever so eclectic essays, plays, creative non-fiction, memoirs and more. Featuring books like Patrick Leigh Fermor’s travels through the Greek islands and the political tracts of Simone Weil—and let’s not forget Oskar Panizza’s blasphemous essay on the history of the pig!—our non-fiction section is as unusual as the rest of our store.

May’s book will be Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview, a collection that includes Bradbury’s last talk, as well as interviews from earlier in his career.

Ray Bradbury was long the most influential sci-fi writer in the world, the poetic and visionary author of such classics as Fahrenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man. But he also lived a fascinating life outside the parameters of sci-fi, and was a masterful raconteur of his own story, as he reveals in this wide-ranging and in-depth final interview.

How it works:

Stop by Malvern Books to sign up and you’ll receive a 10% discount off the title! Read the book and then come to the meeting prepared with either a question or specific passage to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you on Saturday, May 20th, at 12pm!

Join us for a reading to celebrate the launch of the latest issue of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review! This issue’s featured artist is Stephanie Rubiano, whose work is pictured below. The featured poet is Cindy St. John, and Cindy will be joined by Ken Fontenot, Lisa L. Moore, and Travis Tate.

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

This month, as well as our Open Mic, we have a special guest, author and brain injury survivor Joseph Huerta.

Born and raised in Corpus Christi, Joseph Huerta is a graduate of the Plan II Program and the School of Law at the University of Texas, Austin. His memoir, Broken Brain: Surviving a Traumatic Brain Injury, was published in 2014 and chronicled his firsthand experience of his near-fatal brain injury and subsequent recovery. La Roja is Huerta’s debut novel.

La Roja is a suspenseful, coming-of-age narrative set in McAllen, South Texas, along the Mexican border. This captivating novel explores the complexity of this distinct landscape—both its culture, religion, and illicit drug activity—through the unexpected romance of two high school students, Paco and Nancy. The author tells the whimsical story of the couple’s first meeting and subsequent courtship, and later the challenging collision of their beliefs. A recent immigrant who has fled the dangerous drug-trade activities of her extended family in Laredo, Texas, Nancy is a loyal follower of Santa Muerta, the Catholic folk saint. Paco is a dedicated altar server at the Catholic Church and is being groomed by his mentors to enter the seminary after graduation. No surprisingly, these plans take a turn after he meets Nancy.

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

Join us in celebrating the launch of Intent (published by Hedgehog & Fox, an imprint of Warner Literary Group), the debut poetry collection from Austin-based actor and writer Christia Madacsi Hoffman. With readings from Christia, Erica Parfit, Joe Brundidge, and Margaret Burns.

Inspired by a friend’s daily photography series, Christia Madacsi Hoffman set an intention to write a minimum of two lines of verse per day for 365 days. Four years and thousands of lines later, the result is her debut collection of poetry, Intent. Throughout, Hoffman reveals an accessible and insightful poetic voice as she explores the universal themes of place, beauty, youth and family. Her moving reflections remind us there is depth in our everyday experiences and significance in our intentions.

Christia Madacsi Hoffman grew up along the banks of the Mystic River in Mystic, Connecticut. A longtime Austin, Texas resident, Hoffman’s work has appeared in the Texas Observer and the annual anthology of the Austin International Poetry Festival. Through her company, CenterLight Media, Hoffman works as a marketing and editorial writer, graphic designer and actor. Her early career adventures included antique furniture restoration and leading treks in the high Himalaya.

As the daughter of a travel writer, Erica Parfit (above left) learned to love the way words fit together. With the loss of her mother at a young age, she also came to understand the importance of self-expression through writing and music. Following a hiatus in which she became a mom to two boys, Erica returned to the written word as a songwriter, poet, and memoirist. She credits writing with allowing her to maintain a sense of humor and perspective in this wild and wonderful world.

Joe Brundidge (above center) is an author, host, and public speaker living in Austin, Texas. He has hosted a number of open mic events for almost 20 years, including Spoken & Heard at Kick Butt Coffee, an event he curates. He also served as the Director of the Austin International Poetry Festival for three years, from 2012-2015.

Margaret Burns (above right) has an MA in Creative Writing from UT and has been writing short fiction and rapping about her life to unsuspecting children and audiences for a while now. Margaret is a midwife, a yoga teacher, and a mother. Her life mission includes queso.

Join us for a FREE monthly reading series, Malvern’s Multi-Verse, in which we explore the infinite possible (multi)verses of Austin’s boundless poetic universe!

Malvern’s Multi-Verse features readings from guest poets, plus a Q & A session. Space-time might be flat and stretch out infinitely, but Malvern’s Multi-Verse is well-rounded, lasts for about an hour, and includes free cookies! Yes indeed, it’s the best of all possible worlds…

This month’s guest is author, host, and public speaker Joe Brundidge (pictured at right).

Joe Brundidge has hosted a number of open mic events for almost 20 years, including Spoken & Heard at Kick Butt Coffee, an event he curates. He also served as the Director of the Austin International Poetry Festival for three years, from 2012-2015.

Get your cones ready for another round of Malvern Books’ FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld and Schandra Madha and featuring young women writers from the Austin community. May’s readers are Molly Schulman, Lara Prescott, and Veronica Martin.

And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream & Sweet Ritual?

~7pm – Ice cream & Open Mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us.

~The featured reading begins after the open mic and will be followed by even more ice cream.

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

Join us in celebrating the launch of Jessica Reisman’s new novel, Substrate Phantoms.

Substrate Phantoms presents immemorial human acts in variations as strange as any 21st-century reader could imagine, but always in contexts emotionally resonant. I think it an out-and-out breakthrough, with mystical and sociological roots trailing back to Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Indeed, true aficionados of humane hard SF will applaud Ms. Reisman for bequeathing them this beautiful tale of a heretofore uncreated tomorrow. —Michael Bishop, author of A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire

Jessica Reisman’s stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, among them the World Fantasy Award-nominated Cross Plains Universe. Her story “Threads” won the South East Science Fiction Achievement award. Her far future science fiction adventure SUBSTRATE PHANTOMS, from Resurrection House Books, is out in May 2017 and her story “Bourbon, Sugar, Grace” will appear on Tor.com in June 2017.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Naomi Buck Palagi’s first poetry collection, Stone. With readings from Naomi Buck Palagi, Jean Sotos, and Elizabeth Mason.

Naomi Buck Palagi’s first book, Stone, reads as a series of glorious poetic projections, in which the boundaries between self and world are subtly called into question. . . . Buck Palagi deftly weaves landscape into dreamscape, the natural world revealing innumerable facets of the speaker’s inner life, all the while beckoning us “as if we should greet it.” This is a memorable debut from a gifted poet. —Kristina Marie Darling, author of Dark Horse

Naomi Buck Palagi (above left) grew up in the woods of central Kentucky, and has lived throughout the South and Midwest. Her published poetry ranges from traditional to highly experimental, reflecting a wide range of interests and experiences. Her poems have appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, BlazeVOX, Masque and Spectacle, Otoliths, Eleven Eleven, and others. She has two chapbooks, silver roof tantrum (dancing girl press) and Darkness in the Tent (Dusie Kollectiv.) Her first book, Stone, is just out from BlazeVOX Books.

Although Jean Sotos can’t remember a time when she didn’t write to make sense of the world, submitting work is a newer endeavor. She has had acceptances in several online and print zines, and attends many poetry readings in her beloved Chicago—mostly as voyeur.  She is currently working on a chapbook of travel themed poems. This is also an excuse to make monthly trips for the hell of it, which is the best reason of all.

Elizabeth Mason graduated with a Creative Writing degree from Oberlin College, where she focused on both poetry and short fiction. Her short story “Small Creatures” won first prize in Carnegie Mellon’s short fiction contest, and was subsequently published in the university’s Quarterly Review. She has had the honor of working with renowned poets Martín Espada, the late Jack Agüeros, Doug Anderson, and Martha Collins, as well as studying short fiction under PEN Faulkner recipient Sylvia Watanabe. Presently, Elizabeth acts in local theater and regularly performs original poetry, fiction, and songs throughout Austin. She is thrilled to be reading with friend and fellow poet Naomi Buck Palagi in celebration of the release Naomi’s first poetry collection.

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

Participating writers include Dena Afrasiabi, Nicole Beckley, Candace Buford, Elena Carey, Matt Clements, Megan Coxe, Jack Kaulfus, Matt Holmes, Katherine Moore, Alejandro Puyana, Victoria Rossi, Karen Valby, Julie Wernersbach, James Young, and Stefani Zellmer. This talented group of writers features published fiction and nonfiction writers, book critics, and MFA graduates. For the past nine months, they have participated in an intensive fiction workshop, drafting and revising novels and short stories throughout the year. Please join us in celebrating  their inspiring work and distinctive voices with this end-of-the-workshop reading. Refreshments and sweets will be served.

Welcome to Malvern Books’ Club: Reading Classics from New York Review Books, hosted (on most occasions) by Malvern’s own curmudgeon-in-chief, Dr. Joe. Everyone is invited to join us for what we’re sure will be a series of irreverent and insightful conversations.

Our June selection is Hill by Jean Giono, a novel set deep in Provence a century ago, where wildness presses in from all sides and humans and the natural world are locked in a life-and-death struggle.

In Hill [Giono] . . . decided to show the peasants of his region of Provence in all their particularity—and also to show the beauty and terror of nature in its raw state, stripped of its classical allusions. —Edmund White, The New York Review of Books

The NYRB Classics series started in 1999 with the publication of A High Wind in Jamaica and by the end of this year over 400 titles will be in print—so we have plenty of excellent reading material to choose from. The series includes nineteenth-century and experimental novels, reportage and belles lettres, established classics and cult favorites, and literature high, low, unsuspected, and unheard of. Literature in translation also constitutes a major part of the NYRB Classics series, including new translations of canonical figures such as Euripides, Aeschylus, Dante, Balzac, Nietzsche, and Chekhov, as well as fresh translations of Stefan Zweig, Robert Walser, Alberto Moravia, and Curzio Malaparte, among others.

How it works:

Stop by Malvern Books to sign up and you’ll receive a 10% discount off the title! Read the book and then come to the meeting prepared with either a question or specific passage to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you on June 3rd.

Join us for a reading from members of Donna M. Johnson’s literary nonfiction workshop. Readers include: Gretchen Phillips, Lize Burr, Lauren Maldin, Beth Remsburg, Robin Storey, Carrie Kenney, Nancy Willbern, and Jennifer Patterson.

Join us for another installment of Novel Night, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. And we’ll also have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles. Also worth noting: we’re offering 20% OFF ALL FICTION TITLES during Novel Night (from 6pm till closing).

 This month we’re delighted to be celebrating our first Pride-themed Novel Night with three guests: Michael Aaron Casares, who will be reading from his debut novel, The Distance To The End (Serasac Press, 2016); Lee Thomas, who will be reading from his crime novel, Down On Your Knees (Lethe Press, 2016); and María Limón, who will read from the story that appeared in the collection Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: Tejanas in Literature and Art (UT Press; 2016).

 Michael Aaron Casares is a writer and publisher. His debut novel, The Distance To The End, was featured in Publisher’s Weekly. He is also author of two collections of poetry, This Reality of Man (2011, LT Press), and Sad Height (2005, Virgogray Press). He has also authored several chapbooks of poetry, and has work published online and in print, the most recent being in the latest edition of Zombie Logic Review and Babbling of the Irrational. Michael edits the online poetry journal, Carcinogenic Poetry, and found the late indie publishing press, Virgogray Press. He lives in Austin, TX.

Lee Thomas is the two-time Lambda Literary Award- and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Stained, The Dust of Wonderland, The German, Torn, Like Light for Flies, and Down on Your Knees, among others. His work has been translated into multiple languages and has been optioned for film. Lee lives in Austin, Texas with his husband, John.

Join us for an evening with acclaimed poets Alice Jones, Cecily Parks, and Kathleen Peirce.

Alice Jones’s books from Alice James Books are The Knot, which won the Beatrice Hawley Award in 1992, and Isthmus, winner of the Jane Kenyon Chapbook Award in 2000. Extreme Directions (The fifty four moves of Tai Chi Sword) was published by Omnidawn Press. Books from Apogee Press are Gorgeous Mourning, which won the 2001 Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America; and Plunge, a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Vault was a finalist for the National Poetry Series.

Poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Volt, Poetry, Verse, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Kenyon Review, Zyzzyva, and in anthologies including Best American Poetry; Blood and Bone: Poems by Doctors; Verse and Universe: Poems about Science; Vespers: Contemporary American Poems of Religion and Spirituality, and The Addison Street Anthology.

Awards include fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the NEA, the First Annual Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, and the Robert H. Winner and Lyric Poetry Awards from the Poetry Society of America. She is a founder and co-editor of Apogee Press.

Cecily Parks is the author of the poetry collections Field Folly Snow (University of Georgia Press, 2008) and O’Nights (Alice James Books, 2015), and editor of the anthology The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2016). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The New Republic, The New Yorker, Orion, and elsewhere. A recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she teaches in the MFA Program at Texas State University.

Kathleen Peirce is the author of four collections of poems, for which she has been awarded The AWP Award for Poetry, The Iowa Prize, and The William Carlos Williams Award. Her work has been supported by the National Foundation for the Arts, The Giles Whiting Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. A member of the graduate faculty with Texas State’s MFA program in Creative Writing since 1993, her fifth collection will be published by New Michigan Press in the fall of 2017.

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

Austin Writers Roulette is an uncensored, theme-inspired spoken word and storytelling event. It features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who 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 “Freedom Reimaged.” The line-up of featured artists is: LARRY MAYFIELD, ALLYSON WHIPPLE, PAUL NORMANDIN, T-BIRD, HOPE RUIZ, STEPHANIE WEBB, TERESA Y. ROBERSON & THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone is welcome to join us for a launch party and concert to kick off the 2017 REVEL Solstice Festival: A Blank Canvas, a 17-event interactive chamber music, visual art, and poetry series. Award-winning poet Carrie Fountain will offer readings of her original work, and the acclaimed Bel Cuore Quartet will perform music from their upcoming CD release, Splashing the Canvas, in an exploration of what inspires us to create, to care for one another, to dream, to build, and to keep hope alive.

The 2017 REVEL Solstice Festival is sponsored in part by Classical 89.5 KMFA, Malvern Books, 4th Tap Brewing Co-Op, and Blackerby Stage & Studio.

You’re invited to join us for the second Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series! This event will feature Jan Reid, M.M. Adjarian, Michael DiLeo, and Christine Albert (left to right, below).

Founded in 2010 by Peg Alford Pursell, Why There Are Words is an award-winning literary reading series that takes place every second Thursday in the San Francisco Bay Area, and beginning in 2017, will take place at 5 more national locations: New York City, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland, and Austin. Each reading event presents a range of writers, including those who have published books and those who haven’t. All writers share the criterion of excellence. The guiding idea behind the series is that good work is timeless and needs to be heard regardless of marketing or commercial concerns. If you’re interested in reading or would like more information, please contact Alison: wtawaustin@gmail.com.

Born in Abilene, Texas in 1945, Jan Reid grew up in Wichita Falls. After graduating from Midwestern University, he took a master’s degree in American studies at the University of Texas in Austin. While working as a reporter for the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung, in 1973 he became one of the lead contributors of the newborn Texas Monthly. Reid has written seven nonfiction books including The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, Let the People In: The Life and Times of Ann Richards, a memoir, The Bullet Meant for Me. Though he is best known for his nonfiction, Reid’s first love has always been fiction. Comanche Sundown, driven by the last Comanche war chief, Quanah Parker, and Bose Ikard, a freed slave cowboy, won the Texas Institute’s fiction of the year for 2010, And now in a dramatic change of themes and settings, his third novel and twelfth book is Sins of the Younger Sons, a ranch-reared Texan’s love story that unfolds amid the exotic history and conflict of the Basque provinces in Spain. In 2013 the Texas Institute of Letters honored Reid with its Lonn Tinkle award for career achievement.

M.M. Adjarian is a critic, essayist, freelance writer and occasional poet. She earned a BA in comparative literature from the University of California and a PhD in the same field from the University of Michigan. She has published her creative work in such journals as the Baltimore Review, Verdad, South 85, Serving House Journal, The Missing Slate, The Mulberry Fork Review, Crack the Spine and Poetry Quarterly. Her other articles and reviews have appeared in Arts + Culture Texas, Bitch Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, and the Dallas Voice. Additionally, she has produced studies for a number of academic journals and compendiums, and one book of literary criticism, Allegories of Desire: Body Nation and Empire in Modern Caribbean Literature by Women (Praeger, 2004). Adjarian also works as an educator. Her most current position is as a faculty member in the Humanities Division at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas. An avid amateur photographer, she enjoys shooting film with vintage and toy cameras.

Michael DiLeo has lived in Austin since 1994 and has taught English and creative writing at the Austin Waldorf High School since 2001. He has an MFA from the Warren Wilson Writers Program in North Carolina and has written for magazines such as Texas Monthly, Mother Jones, where he also worked as an editor, Rolling Stone, and American Way. He has co-authored two non-fiction books, Two Californias and Headwaters: Tales of the Wilderness. His writing has been awarded the Lowell Thomas Travel Writing prize, and the Dallas Press Club Katie award, and his essay on deer hunting and his relationship with his father-in-law for       Texas Monthly was anthologized in Best American Sportswriting of 2001. He is currently completing a novel and working on a collection of linked short stories.

After almost four decades making her living as a singer/songwriter, Austin, Texas-based musician Christine Albert has evolved into an artist whose philanthropic work is at the core of who she is. In 2005 Christine founded Swan Songs, an Austin area non-profit that fulfills musical last wishes by organizing private concerts for individuals with a terminal illness.  Christine guides the organization as Founder/President Emeritus and primary spokesperson. Christine still takes the stage both as a solo artist and as one half of the powerful folk/Americana duo Albert and Gage, in which she co-stars with husband and musician extraordinaire Chris Gage—bringing an energetic mix of originals, covers by Texas songwriter friends and show-stopping Edith Piaf chansons (yes, in French!) to audiences across Texas, the US and overseas. As Albert and Gage, Chris and Christine have released six CDs since teaming up in 1997. Processing the experience of losing over a dozen close friends and family members in the last several years, Christine was inspired to create her 6th solo CD—Everything’s Beautiful Now—a collection of songs that explore the transformation and growth that can come from loss. Christine has appeared on the nationally-syndicated PBS series Austin City Limits. She was awarded “Female Vocalist of the Year” by the Kerrville Folk Festival Music Awards, “Superstar of Austin Music” for her community service work and co-founded The Austin Songwriters Group. She currently hosts “Mystery Monday” songwriter series at El Mercado’s Backstage. 3rd Coast Music noted that Christine has “one of the best and purest female voices in Austin.” She is a life-long musician who is transforming her experience and passion into philanthropic work and initiatives that serve the larger community.

Get your cones ready for the 2nd anniversary of Malvern Books’ FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld & Schandra Madha.

When we first started the I Scream Social, our vision was that a small group of young women writers from Austin would come together for just one summer to share what they’d been working on while eating some free ice cream. But that one summer turned into two years and that small group turned into an incredible, diverse community of artists from across the country breaking all the moulds of what the written and spoken word can do. And the ice cream just turned into even more ice cream.

You’re already familiar with our NYRB Classics Bookclub, in which we read and discuss classic works of fiction… now we’d like to invite you to join The Other Book Club, a reading group for those of you interested in exploring works from the “Other” section of our store.

Our recently expanded “Other” collection includes ever so eclectic essays, plays, creative non-fiction, memoirs and more. Featuring books like Patrick Leigh Fermor’s travels through the Greek islands and the political tracts of Simone Weil—and let’s not forget Oskar Panizza’s blasphemous essay on the history of the pig!—our non-fiction section is as unusual as the rest of our store.

June’s book will be the essay collection Animals Strike Curious Poses by Elena Passarello. Beginning with Yuka, a 39,000 year old mummified woolly mammoth recently found in the Siberian permafrost, each of the 16 essays in Animals Strike Curious Poses investigates a different famous animal named and immortalized by humans. Modeled loosely after a medieval bestiary, these witty, playful, whipsmart essays traverse history, myth, science, and more, bringing each beast vibrantly to life.

Passarello treats her subjects with dextrous care, weaving narratives together in a way that investigates, honors, and complicates her subjects. . . . Passarello has created a consistently original, thoroughly researched, altogether fascinating compendium. —Booklist, starred review

How it works:

Stop by Malvern Books to sign up and you’ll receive a 10% discount off the title! Read the book and then come to the meeting prepared with either a question or specific passage to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you on Saturday, June 24th, at 1pm!

Join us in celebrating the launch of The Adventures of Juice Box and Shame, the next installment in Liv Hadden’s The Shamed Series—and this new release features comic book illustrations by St. Louis artist Mo Malone. This event will also feature live music from Lexi and the ​​Bleached Roses.

Li Nguyen, aka Juice Box, has never really had a friend. That is, until he meets the ultra cool, super mysterious Shame. Though Juice Box feels certain this is his new BFF, Shame’s dark past and nefarious entanglements get them both into serious, life-threatening trouble. It doesn’t help that Shame inadvertently pissed off one of the baddest crime bosses in Baltimore, Anna Nguyen (aka Laoban), who also happens to be Juice Box’s cousin. Shame stirred up trouble with a rival game, putting Anna and her crew in a precarious situation. Torn between his love for Anna and his new, exciting friendship with Shame, Juice Box must choose where his loyalties lie.

Liv Hadden (above left) has her roots in Burlington, Vermont and currently resides in Georgetown, Texas with her partner and two dogs, Madison and Samuel, where she is an active member of Writer’s League of Texas. Her 2016 release In the Mind of Revenge received high praise from Blue Ink Reviews, Writer’s Digest, Kirkus Reviews, indieBRAG and five stars from Foreword Clarion Review. Incredibly inspired by artistic expression, Hadden immerses herself in creative endeavors on a daily basis. She finds great joy in getting lost in writing and seeing others fully express themselves through their greatest artistic passions.

Mo Malone has been making art since she was a kid. Offered a tattoo apprenticeship while obtaining a B.F.A. in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University, Malone briefly diverted from tattooing to be an elementary and middle school teacher, an experience she greatly enjoyed, but ultimately came back to her artistic roots. She has tattooed at Rick’s Tattoo in Arlington, Virginia (where she got her start), Iron Age Studio in St. Louis, Missouri and Triple Crown Tattoo in Austin, Texas where she met Hadden. A lover of travel, her craft has taken her all over the world, to include a dozens of tattoo conferences spanning from New York to Moscow. You can now find Malone back in St. Louis at Ragtime Tattoo. She has recently joined Evil Prints to expand into screen-printing, and when she’s not working her magic in the art world, you can find her feeding her adventurous spirit BMXing at her local skate park or wandering the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Join us for a FREE monthly reading series, Malvern’s Multi-Verse, in which we explore the infinite possible (multi)verses of Austin’s boundless literary universe! Space-time might be flat and stretch out infinitely, but Malvern’s Multi-Verse is well-rounded, lasts for about an hour, and includes free cookies! Yes indeed, it’s the best of all possible worlds…

This month we have something rather special: an interview with Susan Post, owner of BookWoman, Austin’s renowned feminist bookstore. We’re thrilled to welcome Susan to Malvern and to learn more about BookWoman and its invaluable role in supporting women and the LGBTQ community over the past 40+ years.

BookWoman is one of only 15 women-owned bookstores in the country—and the only one of its kind in Texas. The store began 41 years ago in an upstairs shop on Guadalupe. It started out as a collective called The Common Woman Bookstore (based on the Judy Grahn poem). From there, the store moved into Susan Post’s house at the time, and the collective eventually dissolved. The store took on the name BookWoman and moved to 6th Street. After that, BookWoman moved to 12th and Lamar, and since 2008 the store has been located at 5501 North Lamar.

For more on BookWoman—and some excellent reading recommendations from Susan Post—check out this article in Austin Woman.

Worth noting: On June 27th we’ll be donating the money from all sales from 5pm till closing to BookWoman.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Joe Giordano’s second novel, Appointment with ISIL, An Anthony Provati Thriller. Joe will be joined by author Walt Gragg, who will be reading from his recently released novel The Red Line.

Joe Giordano was born in Brooklyn. He and his wife, Jane, have lived in Greece, Brazil, Belgium and the Netherlands. They now live in Texas with their shih tzu, Sophia. Joe’s stories have appeared in more than one-hundred magazines including The Monarch Review, The Saturday Evening Post, decomP, The Summerset Review, and Shenandoah. His novel, Birds of Passage, An Italian Immigrant Coming of Age Story, was published by Harvard Square Editions in October 2015. His second novel, Appointment with ISIL, An Anthony Provati Thriller, will be published by HSE on June 15, 2017.

Walt Gragg lives in the Austin, Texas area with his wife, children, and grandchildren. He is a retired attorney. Prior to law school, he spent a number of years in the military. His time with the Army involved many interesting assignments including three years in the middle of the Cold War at United States European Command Headquarters in Germany where the idea for The Red Line took shape. In this assignment he was privy to many of the elements of the actual American plan in place at the time for the conduct of the defense of Germany. While there, he also participated in a number of war games that became the basis for many of the novel’s events.

Welcome to Malvern Books’ Club: Reading Classics from New York Review Books, hosted (on most occasions) by Malvern’s own curmudgeon-in-chief, Dr. Joe. Everyone is invited to join us for what we’re sure will be a series of irreverent and insightful conversations.

Our July selection is Nancy Mitford’s Voltaire in Love. Mitford’s account of Voltaire’s fifteen-year relationship with the Marquise du Châtelet—the renowned mathematician who introduced Isaac Newton’s revolutionary new physics to France—is a spirited romp in the company of two extraordinary individuals as well as an erudite guide to French high society during the Enlightenment.  

In this substantial but wonderfully gay and gossipy book, Miss Mitford details with a zest that is wholly engaging the idyllic moments and the hectic hours that marked the long association of these enormously intelligent lovers. —The New Yorker

The NYRB Classics series started in 1999 with the publication of A High Wind in Jamaica and by the end of this year over 400 titles will be in print—so we have plenty of excellent reading material to choose from. The series includes nineteenth-century and experimental novels, reportage and belles lettres, established classics and cult favorites, and literature high, low, unsuspected, and unheard of. Literature in translation also constitutes a major part of the NYRB Classics series, including new translations of canonical figures such as Euripides, Aeschylus, Dante, Balzac, Nietzsche, and Chekhov, as well as fresh translations of Stefan Zweig, Robert Walser, Alberto Moravia, and Curzio Malaparte, among others.

How it works:

Stop by Malvern Books to sign up and you’ll receive a 10% discount off the title! Read the book and then come to the meeting prepared with either a question or specific passage to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you on July 1st.

Join us for an evening with Alaskan Fiddling Poet Ken Waldman, who will share poems from his recent collection, Trump Sonnets: Volume One, and play the fiddle with accompanists.

November 9, 2016, incredulous at Donald Trump’s victory, Ken Waldman, scribbled: “You make George W. seem a statesman—your opening trick,” which he made into the first line and a half of a sonnet. A week later, Waldman wrote two more Trump-inspired sonnets. He ended up processing Donald Trump’s unlikely rise to power by writing 71 sonnets in the first 50 days after the 2016 presidential election. 41 were in the voice of Donald Trump; the other 30 were addressed to him. The result: an ambitious, satirical look at current events.

Ken Waldman has six previous poetry collections, a memoir, a kids’ book, and nine CDs that combine original poetry with Appalachian-style string-band music and Alaska-set storytelling. Since 1995 he’s been a full-time touring artist, appearing in a wide range of venues for a wide
range of audiences.