Malvern Books

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. Everyone is welcome to join us for this fun and friendly free afternoon suitable for performers of all ages and abilities.

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

Everyone is welcome to attend the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by John Herndon. An open mic follows the featured reader, so bring poems, stories, scripts, rants, raves or midnight confessions to share, or just come to listen and enjoy.

This month’s featured reader is Rachel Starnes, author of The War at Home.

At once a portrait of the devastating strains that military life puts on families and a meditation on what it means to be left behind, The War at Home is a brave portrait of a modern military family and the realities of separation, endurance, and love that overcomes.

“Rachel Starnes’s The War at Home navigates the joys, fears, compromises, and casualties that create the terrain of marriage. And if you are a military spouse, her memoir will reveal thoughts you never even knew you had. This is a wise and fearless book.” —Siobhan Fallon, author of You Know When the Men Are Gone

Featured reader Rachel Starnes is author of The War at Home, a painful and funny memoir of life as a Navy wife. She earned her MFA at California State University, Fresno, and has published essays in The Colorado Review, Front Porch Journal, and O Magazine. She lives in Georgetown.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Yuki Tanaka’s poetry collection Séance in Daylight, winner of the 2018 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Featuring readings from Yuki, as well as Rachel Heng and Shangyang Fang.

Séance in Daylight is about desire, transformation, and dreams; it is also about intricate, yet light-footed sessions with the dead. The ever-present undertow of the poet’s sharp observations keeps these lush, yet lapidary lyrics from slipping into solipsism or sentimentality. ‘Back home, my body thin and healthy / cooling my feet on a crystal ball like a psychic out of business,’ says one speaker, returning from an imagined visitation. These poems remind us that at times, life’s very existence feels unbearably inexplicable, beautiful, perverse, moody, and touching. Yuki Tanaka connects these feelings with a spiritual intensity and a sweet wit. His images startle, ‘A bare white arm / disinfected. Plump, sizzling,’ and they pierce into our inwardness, ‘This pile of wood wished to be a stairway / but couldn’t. Will you pretend to climb it. —Sandra Lim

Yuki Tanaka is an MFA student at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas-Austin. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, Kenyon Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. His chapbook Séance in Daylight was the winner of the 2018 Frost Place Chapbook Competition.

Rachel Heng’s debut novel, Suicide Club, will be translated in nine languages worldwide and has been featured as a most anticipated summer read by ELLE, Gizmodo, Bitch Media, The Rumpus, NYLON and The Irish Times. Her short fiction has received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and Prairie Schooner‘s Jane Geske Award, and has been published in Glimmer Train, The Offing, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. Rachel is currently a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers, UT Austin.

Shangyang Fang grew up in Chengdu, China. He majored in Civil Engineering as an undergrad. After knowing there is a higher employment rate in the field of poetry, he decided to pursue an MFA. He writes both in English and Chinese. Sometimes he writes poems first in Chinese to structure their skeletons, then translate them into English to add flesh and blood. He is now a poetry fellow at the Michener Center for Writers.

Join us for an evening with poets Ellen Doré Watson and Abe Louise Young (left to right, below).

Ellen Doré Watson is the author of five full-length collections of poems, most recently, pray me stay eager, from Alice James Books. Earlier works include Dogged Hearts, from Tupelo Press, This Sharpening, also from Tupelo, and two from Alice James Books, We Live in Bodies and Ladder Music, winner of the New England/New York award. Watson’s journal appearances include APR, Tin House, Orion, Field, Ploughshares and The New Yorker. Among her honors are a Rona Jaffe Writers Award, fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and to Yaddo, and a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship. She has translated nine volumes from Brazilian Portuguese, most notably the poetry of Adélia Prado, including The Alphabet in the Park (Wesleyan University Press), Ex-Voto (Tupelo), and, most recently The Mystical Rose, from the UK poetry publisher Bloodaxe Books. Watson serves as poetry and translation editor of The Massachusetts Review and core faculty at Drew University’s Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Poetry and Translation.

Abe Louise Young is a believer in the power of words, generosity and vulnerability to make meaningful change. She’s the author of three chapbooks of poetry, Heaven to Me (Headmistress Press, 2017), Ammonite (Magnolia Press Collective, 2011), and Poem for a Friend Growing Lighter and Lighter (forthcoming Spring 2019 from Dancing Girl Press). She’s also the author or editor of numerous guides for educators, including the free guide Queer Youth Advice for Educators: How to Respect and Protect Your LGBTQ Students (Next Generation Press, 2011) and Hip Deep: Opinion, Essays and Vision from American Teenagers (Next Generation Press, 2005). She was nominated as Best Activist in Austin 2017 by the Austin Chronicle for her work mobilizing hundreds of people to prevent homelessness by building personal resource-sharing networks with families displaced by Hurricane Harvey, an effort called Hurricane Love. Young holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James Michener Fellow in Writing, an MA from Northwestern University and a BA from Smith College.

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’s Novel Night is a special edition—Political Science Professor Roy Casagranda will be launching his new novel, The Blood Throne of Caria.

Casagranda’s story is a bona fide page-turner that should have readers rooting for the tenacious Artemisia from beginning to end. A gripping, fast-paced adventure that delivers passionate writing. —Kirkus Reviews

The Blood Throne of Caria pushes back against the dominant misogynistic and racist portrayals of Artemisia I as a cruel and maniacal ruler. Casagranda reexamines the much-maligned queen to create an explicitly feminist portrait of ancient woman who must achieve to fulfill her ambitions and endure both familiar and extreme gender limits. Twenty-five centuries ago, the very mention of a woman’s name in public was taboo in Athens, yet despite this Artemisia assailed the ramparts of patriarchy to become one of the greatest rulers in human history.

Roy Casagranda got a GED and a BS in political science and went on to teach high school calculus, algebra, history, physics, and chemistry. Eventually he went back to school for a couple of graduate degrees and now teaches political science at a community college. Though he is obsessed with politics, he mostly hates it. And though he is obsessed with the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean he mostly loves it. Roy is especially interested in telling stories from the perspective of the loser, the forgotten, the unjustly villainized, and women with weapons.

“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 recent launch of Rachel Heng’s debut novel, Suicide Club: A Novel About Living. Featuring a reading from Rachel, as well as a Q & A hosted by Carrie Fountain.

Every month seems to bring some new health study promising an authoritative guide on how to get stronger, feel better, or live longer. Every month, we are left more confused than when we started. In Suicide Club: A Novel About Living, Heng’s characters live in a dystopian reality where immortality is possible, conforming to a shadowy health ministry is the new careerism, and no one seems to be happy. Along the lines of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, Suicide Club takes place in a science fiction reality that feels more real than we would like to admit.

Rachel Heng’s debut novel, Suicide Club, will be translated in nine languages worldwide and has been featured as a most anticipated summer read by ELLE, Gizmodo, Bitch Media, The Rumpus, NYLON and The Irish Times. Her short fiction has received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and Prairie Schooner‘s Jane Geske Award, and has been published in Glimmer Train, The Offing, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. Rachel is currently a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers, UT Austin.

Join author Amber Elby to celebrate the release of her new novel, Double Double Toil, the sequel to Cauldron’s Bubble. Enjoy a reading and Q&A session with Amber and special guest Nori Rose, as they explore new twists on old tales.

Amber Elby was born in Grand Ledge, Michigan but spent much of her childhood in the United Kingdom. She began writing when she was three years old and created miniature books by asking her family how to spell every, single, word. Several years later, she saw her first Shakespearean comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, in London. Many years later, she studied Creative Writing at Michigan State University’s Honors College before earning her Master of Fine Arts degree in Screenwriting at the University of Texas at Austin. She currently resides in Texas with her husband and two daughters and spends her time teaching, traveling, and getting lost in imaginary worlds.

Nori Rose is a writer, poet, multimedia artist, Witch, and unabashed Scorpio who draws inspiration from both sides of the Veil. She graduated with honors from Austin Community College in 2014 with an Associate of Arts in Creative Writing, and earned a BA in English & Creative Writing from the University of Texas in 2017. While at UT, she participated in the Digital Storytelling Workshop and published two theses: a critical examination of human-animal interdependency in Life Of Pi (basically, she spent a year writing 60 pages on why the tiger is really a person) and a creative writing thesis which included an excerpt of her forthcoming novel, The Dreaming Hour. Her work has been published in The Rio Review, Feminine Inquiry, Musings of a #LonelyFeminist, Hothouse, and online in Gingerbread House Literary Magazine and Corvid Queen. Her poem “Sluts” was featured at the 2015 Art As Activism showcase hosted by the Gender & Sexuality Center at UT Austin, and her poetry has been incorporated into an improv dance showcase. She was a 2016 Writers in New York participant at New York University, has lead workshops on Professional Writing and Dark Fantasy to Austin-area youth, and is currently working with other Witches and creatives to produce a zine for the times we’re upon. When not writing, making art and dismantling the patriarchy, she reads Tarot, collects tattoos, and bakes things with flowers. An eighth generation Texan, she lives in the Austin area with her husband, two rescue cats, a rescue dog, and a blue tongue skink.

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 “Otherworldly Intrigues”… what in the WORLD do we have here? Our featured artists include: LARRY MAYFIELD, RG HOOK, TERESA Y ROBERSON, JOSH DAVIS, and THOM THE WORLD POET. An open mic follows the featured artists. 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.

Join us for an evening with visiting poet Valerie Wallace, who will be reading from her collection House of McQueen, released in March of this year. Valerie will be joined by Simone Muench and Katy Chrisler.

Selected by Vievee Francis for the Four Way Books Intro Prize, Valerie Wallace’s House of McQueen is a glittering debut by an assured new voice. Inhabiting the life and work of Alexander McQueen, Wallace builds a fantastical world using both original language and excerpts drawn from interviews, supermodels, Shakespeare, and more. At turns fierce and vulnerable, here is a collection that leaps from runway to fairytale to street with wild, brilliant grace.

Wallace conducts a literary seance in her transcendent debut, serving as a scholar of and medium for the late iconic fashion designer Alexander McQueen (1969–2010). Devising her poems using an extensive array of sources, Wallace manages to encapsulate the “monstrous and magical” visions that defined McQueen’s oeuvre. —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Valerie Wallace is the author of House of McQueen (Four Way Books, 2018) and the chapbook The Dictators’ Guide to Good Housekeeping (dancing girl press, 2011). Her work was chosen by Margaret Atwood for the 2012 Atty Award, and she has received an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award and the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference Award in Poetry. Her work has been supported by various grants and fellowships. She earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is Associate Director, Communications for the project Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life at the University of Chicago and teaches at Harold Washington College, the Newberry Library, and offers private workshops.

Simone Muench is the author of several books including Wolf Centos (Sarabande, 2014). Her recent, Suture, is a book of sonnets written with Dean Rader (Black Lawrence, 2017). She and Dean also edited They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (BLP, 2018). She is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship and the Meier Foundation for the Arts Achievement Award, and is professor of English at Lewis University where she teaches creative writing and film studies. She serves as a poetry editor for Tupelo Quarterly, the chief faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review, and the organizer (with Beth McDermott) of the Danny’s Sunday Series.

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

BREAK FREE … and share words with us. Join us for an evening of enlightenment when Louisiana poets Bessie Senette and Clare L. Martin and Austin poet Robert Okaji share their work.

Louisiana native Bessie Senette has published her first book, Cutting the Clouds, a Bayou Mystic’s Poems, Musings, and Imaginings. Currently, she is finalizing Louisiana Pines, a chapbook manuscript. Senette is an author, healer, public speaker, and ordained interfaith minister. In September of 2018, she served as Artistic Director and featured performer of a multi-disciplined arts event celebrating the Sufi poet Rumi. Senette lives in Lafayette, Louisiana with her husband of 35 years. She has two sons, two daughters-in-law, four grand-pups and one cantankerous grand-cat.

The author of five chapbook collections, two micro-chapbooks and a mini-digital chapbook, Robert Okaji writes in his backyard shack in Texas. He once won a goat-catching contest, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slippery Elm, Vox Populi, Panoply, Hamilton Stone Review, The New Reader and elsewhere.

Join us for an afternoon with authors A. R. Ashworth, K. P. Gresham, andHelen Currie Foster. All three will be sharing excerpts from recent novels.

A. R. Ashworth earned a degree in history and worked for over twenty years in high tech. Along the way he developed a lasting love for London, dark British-style mysteries and Scandinavian noir. Souls of Men, the first novel of the Elaine Hope series, was released in April 2017. Two Faced, the second Elaine Hope novel, was released in July 2018.

K.P. Gresham, author of the Pastor Matt Hayden Mystery series and Three Days at Wrigley Field, moved to Texas as quick as she could. Born Chicagoan, K.P. and her husband moved to Texas, fell in love with not shoveling snow and are 30+ year Lone Star State residents. She finds that her dual country citizenship, the Midwest and Texas, provide deep fodder for her award-winning novels. Her varied careers as a media librarian and technical director, middle school literature teacher and theatre playwright and director add humor and truth to her stories. A graduate of Houston’s Rice University Novels Writing Colloquium, K.P. now resides in Austin, Texas, where life with her tolerant but supportive husband and narcissistic Chihuahua is acceptably weird.

Helen Currie Foster writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series. She earned a BA from Wellesley College, an MA from the University of Texas, and a JD from the University of Michigan. Having grown up in Texas surrounded by books and storytelling, Foster taught high school English and covered politics and wrote features (prize-winning) for a weekly newspaper. After practicing law for more than thirty years as an environmental lawyer, she found the character Alice and her stories had suddenly appeared in her life. Married with two children, Foster lives north of Dripping Springs, Texas, supervised by three burros. She’s deeply curious about human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party. Foster works in Austin and is active with Hays County Master Naturalists and Austin Shakespeare. She currently serves as president of the local Heart of Texas chapter of the national organization Sisters in Crime. Foster enjoys meeting with readers in book groups and libraries in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas.

We’d like to invite you to join Malvern’s Line/Break Poetry Book Club! Hosted by Malvernian Julie Poole, this is a reading group for those of you interested in exploring works from our expansive poetry section.

This month’s selection is Pei Pei the Monkey King by Wawa.

Pei Pei the Monkey King, Wawa’s first book, is a playful book about painful subjects in contemporary Hong Kong, namely the Umbrella Revolution of 2014, the Fishball Revolution of 2016 and an on-going epidemic of suicides among young people. The author, who has recently moved to Honolulu, knows internal and external exile. The translator, Henry Wei Leung, has written a clear and perceptive introduction to the language and politics of Hong Kong. He also addresses the difficulties in translating Chinese poetry into English, noting that even people who speak ‘Chinese’ can often not understand each other. The book ends with an interview between poet and translator that elucidates the book’s private concerns.

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 a specific poem to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you at this meeting of our Line/Break Poetry Book Club!

Join us in celebrating the launch of Alisar Eido’s new novel, Night Bound. With readings from Alisar, as well as Victoria Champion and Brennan Utley.

Alisar Eido is an Austin author whose work spans multiple genres from psychological thrillers to dark fantasy. Her new release, Night Bound, is book two of three in The Soulfire Series. The author’s inspiration stems from her many experiences with strange coincidences and unexplainable events.

Brennan Utley is an emerging author based in Austin who blends realist, fabulist, science fiction, and satirical traditions into his unique and often darkly funny stories and aspiring novels. He is currently working late into the night on a handful of new projects and teaches in Bastrop, Texas.

Victoria Champion is an author of dark fiction, horror, and dark fantasy. She met Alisar while in a Creative Writing class while pursuing her Creative Writing degree. She has published multiple short stories and a novel, Zombie Flood: Disaster of the Dead.

Join Bat City Review and Malvern Books for SILKEN SAD UNCERTAIN: A Haunted Reading & Open Mic! Featuring Daniel Eduardo Ruiz, Michelle Dominique Burk, KING MTN, Sarah Matthes, and others. Bring your spookiest poems and ghost stories for an all-ages open mic.

Costumes highly encouraged.

Join us for an evening with Danielle Sellers (left) and Traci Brimhall (right).

Danielle Sellers’ poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Subtropics, The Cimarron Review, Smartish Pace, and elsewhere. She is the author of two collections of poetry: Bone Key Elegies (Main Street Rag 2009) and The Minor Territories (Sundress publications 2018). She teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Trinity Valley School in Fort Worth, Texas.

Traci Brimhall is the author of Saudade (Copper Canyon), Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), as well as the forthcoming Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod (Copper Canyon). She’s an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Kansas State University.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Kristy Peloquin’s Adrift: A Collection of Poems. With readings from Kristy and Mike Matthews.

Adrift: A Collection of Poems is an exploration of trauma and a quest for transcendence. Between broken souls, broken homes, and frustrating socio-political circumstances, Peloquin asks us to see these experiences not as disparate elements, but as part of a whole. Here, in this place, with this stirring narrator, memory and reality feed off one another, creating a world of inconstancy that can only be soothed by dreams of escape.

Kristy Peloquin is a poet, budding memoirist, teacher, and writing group leader in Austin, TX. She graduated from Texas State University with a BA in English in 2006 and went on to earn an MFA in poetry in 2009. She is a teacher at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas and co-leads therapeutic creative writing workshops for persons suffering through grief and loss. She is currently at work on a memoir about her life growing up in rural central Texas, separating from a religious sect, and surviving trauma. Reoccurring themes in her work include trauma, memory, the physical body, and spirituality in nature. Her work has been previously published in The Berkeley Poetry Review, Palimpsest: The Yale Literary and Arts Magazine, Sphere Magazine, Right Hand Pointing, and Midway Journal, among others.

Mike Matthews has been teaching college writing courses at Central Texas College in Killeen, Texas, including creative writing courses, since 2001. He has sponsored the Writer’s Club for students, and the student journal Byways, for arts and letters, since soon after he arrived to teach at the community college. Between semesters, he has worked on his poetry. He has published several individual poems, including one titled “The City of Strings,” in an anthology, The Book of Hopes and Dreams, published in Scotland. He has two collections in the final stages of development ready to submit to interested publishers. He hopes to complete and publish two books that reflect the journey from darkness to sunrise.

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.

This month’s selection is The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns, an enthralling and macabre fairy tale.

Through her reimagining of the wicked stepmother figure, Comyns speculates convincingly as to how damage escalates despite all conscious attempts to limit itself. —Helen Oyeyemi

Comyns’s world is weird and wonderful … there’s also something uniquely original about her voice. Tragic, comic and completely bonkers all in one, I’d go as far as to call her something of a neglected genius. —The Observer

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 to discuss a NYRB classic!

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. And this month we’ll also be announcing the winners of our annual Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest! Everyone is welcome to join us for this fun and friendly free evening suitable for performers of all ages and abilities.

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

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

This month’s Novel Night will be an evening of suspense, with readings from mystery writers Manning Wolfe, Billy Kring, and Mark Pryor.

Manning Wolfe, an award-winning author and attorney residing in Austin, Texas, writes cinematic-style, smart, fast-paced thrillers with a salting of Texas bullshit. Her series features Austin Lawyer Merit Bridges. As a graduate of Rice University and the University of Texas School of Law, Manning’s experience has given her a voyeur’s peak into some shady characters’ lives and a front row seat to watch the good people who stand against them.

Billy Kring is a writer and actor, and in another life, he was a Border Patrol Agent and a consultant on terrorism and international border issues. He has worked in Mexico, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pan Pacific. He is an eight-generation Texan, and lives in a small town in southwest Texas, an hour from the Mexican border, so it’s close enough to visit when he feels the need.

Mark Pryor is a former newspaper reporter from England, and now a prosecutor with the Travis County District Attorney’s Office, in Austin, Texas. He is the author of the Hugo Marston mystery series, set in Paris, London, and Barcelona. The most recent is The Sorbonne Affair, a “flawlessly constructed whodunit,” according to Booklist. His previous novel in the series was The Paris Librarian, which the Toronto Globe & Mail says “has it all… a finely structured plot that’s one of Pryor’s best books yet.” The first Hugo Marston novel, The Bookseller, was a Library Journal Debut of the Month, and called “unputdownable” by Oprah.com, and the series has been featured in the New York Times. Mark is also the author of the psychological thriller, Hollow Man, and its sequel, Dominic, published in January of 2018. He also created the nationally-recognized true-crime blog D.A. Confidential. As a prosecutor, he has appeared on CBS News’s 48 Hours and Discovery Channel’s Discovery ID: Cold Blood.

Join us for an evening with acclaimed poets Diane Seuss and John Fry.

Diane Seuss’s most recent collection, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, was released in 2018 by Graywolf Press. Four-Legged Girl, published in 2015 by Graywolf Press, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open won the Juniper Prize and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2010. Seuss was raised in rural Michigan, which she continues to call home.

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

Join us for an evening with Kathleen Winter, Mong-Lan, and Jess Smith (left to right, below).

Kathleen Winter is the author of two poetry collections, I will not kick my friends (2018), which won the Elixir Poetry Prize, and Nostalgia for the Criminal Past, winner of the 2013 Texas Institute of Letters Bob Bush Memorial Award. Her poems have appeared in Tin House, The New Statesman, Agni, New Republic, Poetry London, The Texas Observer, Gulf Coast, and other journals. Winter was granted fellowships at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Dobie Paisano Ranch, Dora Maar House, James Merrill House and Cill Rialaig Project. She grew up in Texas and teaches writing at Sonoma State in Northern California.

Mong-Lan celebrates the publication of her new book of poems and artwork, Dusk Aflame: poems & art; her new chapbook, Tone of Water in a Half-Filled Glass; and her new tango CD, Perfumas de Amor, de Argentina y Viet Nam (Tango por Siempre). Writer, former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and Fulbright Scholar, Mong-Lan has published seven books of poetry and artwork and three chapbooks, and has won prizes such as the Juniper Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Awards, among others. Frequently anthologized in the Best American Poetry Anthology, she has finished a novel, with an excerpt in the North American Review. A former college professor with the University of Maryland in Tokyo, she left her native Viet Nam on the last day of the evacuation of Sai Gon. Also a musician and composer, she has released ten albums of jazz piano and tangos, which showcase her poetry. As a visual artist, her artwork has been exhibited in galleries in the US, in museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art, and in public exhibitions in Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok, Bali, and Buenos Aires. Mong-Lan as a dancer has studied ballet, jazz, and flamenco, and has specialized as a tango dancer, performer, and teacher, having over twenty years of tango dance experience, in Buenos Aires, San Francisco, New York City, Tokyo, Bangkok, Hanoi, and elsewhere. Mong-Lan’s new solo show, “Ocean of Senses: Dream Songs & Tangos—one woman’s journey from Sai Gon to Buenos Aires, via America,” blends original poetry, jazz piano, guitar, dance, story, and song.

Jess Smith is currently pursuing a PhD in English at Texas Tech University, where she curates the LHUCA Literary Series. Her work can be found in Prairie Schooner, Waxwing, 32 Poems, The Rumpus, and other journals. She has received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Vermont Studio Center.

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 “Attitude of Gratitude”—have you hugged/honored a Veteran today? Our lineup of featured artists includes URSULA PIKE, HOPE RUIZ, STEPHANIE WEBB, STEPHANIE ELISE FRENO, JIM TENNY, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, and THOM THE WORLD POET. An open mic follows the featured artists. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

Everyone is welcome to attend the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by John Herndon. An open mic follows the featured reader, so bring poems, stories, scripts, rants, raves or midnight confessions to share, or just come to listen and enjoy.

This month’s featured reader is Gogi Hale.

Gogi Hale is President of the Board for Kallisto Gaia Press. She is a member of the Writers’ League of Texas (WLT), Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and 2016 Finalist for the SCBWI Cynthia Leitich-Smith Mentoring Award. Active in the writing community, Gogi volunteers for the WLT, and continues her education through Austin Community College, WLT courses, workshops and in-depth study at The Writing Barn. She has hosted a weekly writing critique group for the past four years. Writer of fiction, both short and long form, Gogi is deep at work on a thriller and a YA road trip novel. One of her proudest moments was when a fellow writer read her work and said, “Sometimes you scare me.” Her short story, “The Choosing,” was recently published in the horror journal, Jitterpress #7. When not working on scary stories, Gogi loves to travel and cook. Lately, she has been experiencing the challenge of boiling lots and lots of water.

Join us in celebrating the launch of the English translation of local Iranian poet Roja Chamankar’s poetry collection, Dying in a Mother Tongue, translated by Blake Atwood (UT Press).

Born in Borazjan in southern Iran in 1981, Roja Chamankar is a poet and filmmaker with an academic background in Dramatic Literature and Cinematography. She has published nine books of poetry in Iran, co-written three books for children, and translated two collection of poems from French into Persian. Her works have been translated into several other languages and have won a number of national and international awards, including the Greek Nikos Gatsos prize in 2016. Roja has participated in numerous poetry readings and festivals in Iran, France, Sweden, Austria, Malta, and the United States. A collection of her poems titled Dying in A Mother Tongue, translated by Blake Atwood, will be published in November 2018 by the University of Texas Press. She is currently residing in Austin, Texas.

Blake Atwood is an assistant professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Reform Cinema in Iran: Film and Political Change in the Islamic Republic.

Join us for a reading from participants of the Fall 2018 Free Minds writing workshop. Writers will share their original works of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. All are welcome to attend!

Members of the Free Minds writing workshop meet to produce and share writing in a supportive group environment. These workshops are founded on the principle that each person has a unique and powerful voice which deserves to be heard. Free Minds is a collaboration between Foundation Communities, UT Austin, and ACC which offers educational and creative opportunities to adults who have faced barriers to higher education. To learn more about our free community writing workshops or our two-semester college course in humanities, visit www.FreeMindsAustin.org or call 512.610.7961.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the interview series Borderless: Conversations on Art, Action, and Justice, emerging and established writers talk with host Chaitali Sen about the power of words and the role of art in reflecting and changing our world.

This month’s guest is writer and educator Jack Kaulfus.

Jack Kaulfus is the author of the short story collection Tomorrow or Forever (Transgress Press, 2018). Their work has been published in A Cappella Zoo, Heavy Feather Review, and Off the Rocks, among other journals. Jack teaches high school English in Austin, Texas, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University in San Marcos. When all the grading is finished, Jack plays in the queer Americana band Brand New Key.

Chaitali Sen is a writer and educator based in Austin, Texas. She is the author of the novel The Pathless Sky, and numerous stories and essays which have appeared or are forthcoming in Catapult, Colorado Review, Ecotone, LitHub, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, New Ohio Review, and other journals. She is the founder of the interview series Borderless: Conversations on Art, Action, and Justice.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Sara Bawany’s (W)holehearted: A collection of poetry and prose. Hosted by CAIR-Austin.

Sara Bawany is a social worker, a writer, and a poet with a passion for bringing to light some of the most taboo issues in the South Asian community. A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, Sara received her Master’s degree in Social Work and her Bachelor’s degrees in Biology and Islamic Studies. She currently serves as a social worker at the Muslim Community Center for Human Services, providing free mental health counseling and mental health education to the community. She has been writing since she was very young and she recently published her first poetry book. Some of the themes you can find in her work include femininity, spirituality, social justice issues, identity, mental health, and domestic violence. When she is not writing or working, you can find her baking cookies, traveling somewhere new, or cuddling with her two pet rabbits.

Join us for a meet and greet with authors Jaycie Morrison and Barbara Ann Wright, hosted by the Sapphic Reading Group. Everyone is welcome!

Jaycie Morrison is a second generation native Dallasite who is also in love with Colorado and now splits her time between the two. She lives with her wife of over two decades and their spoiled dog. As a youngster, Jaycie and her friends entertained themselves making up and acting out stories featuring characters from popular TV shows or favorite bands. As a voracious reader, she always wondered what it would be like to write a book. Once she started, it was almost impossible to stop. Jaycie’s debut novel, Basic Training of the Heart, (Bold Strokes Books, fall, 2016) and its sequel, Heart’s Orders (2017), are the first two in a series that combine her love of the written word and her fascination with history. “Weather or Not,” in The Lone Star Collection, is her first short story.

Barbara Ann Wright pens fantasy and science fiction novels and short stories when not adding to her enormous book collection or ranting on her blog. She says that her writing career can be boiled down to two points: when her mother bought her a typewriter in the sixth grade, and when she took second place in the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing in 2004. One gave her the means to write and the other gave her the confidence to keep going. Believing in oneself, in her opinion, is the most important thing a person can do. Barbara’s short fiction has appeared twice in Crossed Genres Magazine and once made Tangent Online’s recommended reading list. She’s published ten novels with Bold Strokes Books. Her first novel, The Pyramid Waltz, was one of Tor.com’s “Reviewer’s Choice” books. It was also a “Foreword Review Book of the Year” award finalist, as well as a GCLS Goldie finalist. In addition, The Pyramid Waltz won the 2013 Rainbow Award for Best Lesbian Fantasy and made Book Riot’s “100 Must-Read Sci-Fi Fantasy Novels By Female Authors.” Barbara has been the recipient of four other Rainbow Awards, and her novel, Coils, was a finalist in the 2017 Lambda Awards. Her latest novel is The Tattered Lands. Barbara lives in the Austin area with a small army of pets, and she’s not afraid to sic them on her critics.

The Sapphic Reading Group of Austin, Texas, celebrates and promotes works of fiction by women that authentically express the historical, cultural, political, and interpersonal experiences of lesbians. The group serves as a forum for lovers of lesbian fiction to discuss good reads, exchange books, and share news concerning the LesFic literary community. We welcome readers, authors, editors, and publishers of lesbian fiction.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Texas State University MFA professor Steve Wilson’s new poetry collection. With readings and book signings from Steve and fellow Finishing Line Press and MFA poetry graduate Prudence Arceneaux.

Steve Wilson’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies nationwide. He is the author of four collections of poetry, and editor of The Anatomy of Water: A Sampling of Contemporary American Prose Poetry. He teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University.

C. Prudence Arceneaux, a native Texan, is a poet who has taught English and Creative Writing at Austin Community College, in Austin, TX, since 1998. She earned a BA in English/ Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico, but even before finishing the degree realized “there’s no place like home.” Upon her return to Texas, she began work on an MFA in Creative Writing, which she received from the University-formerly-known-as-Southwest-Texas-State in 1998. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Limestone, New Texas, Clark Street Review, and Inkwell. Her chapbook, Dirt, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2017.

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!

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.

This month’s selection is Ending Up by Kingsley Amis.

Ending Up is a grimly hilarious dance of death, full of bickering, bitching, backstabbing, drinking (of course), and idiocy of all sorts. It is a book about dying people and about a dying England, clinging to its memories of greatness as it succumbs to terminal decay.

“Ending Up is a sardonic little masterpiece which, with incredible economy and stylistic restraint, shows what old age is really like, and also—far, far better than any other writer I know—what contemporary England is like.”

—Anthony Burgess

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 to discuss a NYRB classic!

Join us in celebrating the Austin launch of Isabella Ides’ White Monkey Chronicles.

A rogue order of nuns are raising an undocumented deity on the down-low in this contemporary fable. Expect a plague of Cardinals. A feminist insurgency. And divine monkeyshines.

Born under the Hollywood Sign, Isabella was abducted by life, packed in a suitcase and dropped off in Texas. She launched as a poet in Austin, then a playwright in Dallas. Now with the launch of White Monkey Chronicles, she is relishing her latest reincarnation as a novelist.

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. Everyone is welcome to join us for this fun and friendly free afternoon suitable for performers of all ages and abilities.

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

Join us in celebrating the release of the Fall 2018 edition of Austin Community College’s journal, The Rio Review. Students featured in this issue will share their fiction, nonfiction, and poetry with us.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Gabino Iglesias’ new novel, Coyote Songs. With readings from Gabino and Max Booth III.

Constructed as a sort of literary mosaic, Coyote Songs takes place on either side of the US-Mexico border, the frontera in Spanish. Madness, magic, murder, sadness, loss, and love all dwell within the pages of Coyote Songs, forces struggling to reconcile the ugliness and beauty of life. In the opening chapter, a young boy witnesses a murder while on a fishing trip with his father. Later, witches and saints, goddesses and monsters, heroic criminals and villainous victims all play their parts in a story that owes as much to magical realism as noir. —TNB Book Review

Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book critic living in Austin. He is the author of Coyote Songs and Zero Saints. His words have appeared in venues like the New York Times, The Rumpus, The Los Angeles Times, and others. He is the book reviews editor for PANK Magazine and a columnist for LitReactor and CLASH Media.

Max Booth III is the Editor-in-Chief of Perpetual Motion Machine, the Managing Editor of Dark Moon Digest, and the co-host of Castle Rock Radio, a Stephen King-themed podcast. His new novel, Carnivorous Lunar Activities, will be published by Fangoria in February 2019 and is now available for pre-order.

Join us in celebrating the launch of the poetry collection Spokes of an Uneven Wheel by Colin Dodds. With readings from Colin and Aaron Seward.

Colin Dodds is a writer. His work has appeared in more than 300 publications, been anthologized, nominated and shortlisted for numerous prizes, and praised by luminaries including Norman Mailer and David Berman. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughter.

Aaron Seward is the editor of Texas Architect magazine. His journalism and criticism has appeared in several national and international design journals, including Architect, Curbed, Domus, Metropolis, and The Architect’s Newspaper, where Seward served as executive editor until 2015. He lives in Austin and is at work on his first collection of poetry.

“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 over 25 nationally recognized Texas poets as they read their work from the 2019 Texas Poetry Calendar and celebrate the 21st Edition of this iconic journal / planner / calendar.

Featured poets include Christine Boldt, Hugh Burke, Sandra Cobb, Diana Conces, Chip Dameron, Charles Darnell, Terry Dawson, Nancy Fierstien, Christine Gilbert, Amy Greenspan, Barbara Gregg, Laura Guli, Betsy Joseph, Carie Juettner, Lauren Kinzie, Kimberley Lambright, Jim LaVilla-Havelin, Wade Martin, Robert Okaji, Frank Pool, Tina Posner, Margi McCreless Roe, Carol Coffee Reposa, Shubh Schiesser, Mary Louise Shack, Rie Sheridan Rose, Jan Spence, Dee Susong, Claire Vogel-Camargo, Christine Wenk-Harrison, Allyson Whipple, Steve Wilson, with 2019 Calendar editor, Cindy Huyser and Kallisto Gaia Press managing editor, Tony Burnett.

This event is supported in part by the city of Austin Economic Development Department Cultural Arts Division.

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 “The End Is the Beginning”—you have to let go of some things to embrace new things. Our lineup of featured artists includes: LARRY MAYFIELD, URSULA PIKE, ASA MORRIS, HOPE RUIZ, JIM TENNY, STEPHANIE ELISE FRENO, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, and THOM THE WORLD POET. An open mic follows the featured artists. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

Everyone is welcome to attend the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by John Herndon. An open mic follows the featured reader, so bring poems, stories, scripts, rants, raves or midnight confessions to share, or just come to listen and enjoy.

This month’s featured reader is Cecily Parks (at right).

Featured reader Cecily Parks is the author of the poetry collections Field Folly Snow and O’Nights, and editor of the anthology The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses. She teaches at Texas State University.

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’s Novel Night features Rachael Sparks and Tamar Ben-Ur. Rachel will read from Resistant, a compelling hybrid of romance and science-based fiction; and Tamar will read from Oasis 2064, part one of a saga that begins in 2064, following a series of natural catastrophes that cause death, destitution, and the collapse of social systems.

Rachael Sparks was born in Waco, Texas. She graduated with a degree in microbiology from Texas A&M University. After a career in Austin, Texas, as a transplant specialist, she joined a startup fighting healthcare-acquired infections. She recently relocated with her husband, young daughter, and mother to Asheville, North Carolina, where she finally put her first novel onto the page. In her free time she serves on the board of the Asheville Museum of Science and loves to cook, brew, garden, and spend time with friends and family.

Tamar Ben-Ur retired from her position as a systems analyst and felt called to write a novel incorporating her grave concerns over climate change and social injustice. Her work intertwines her imagination with experiences such as twenty years of involvement in shamanic drumming sessions. She currently lives in Austin, Texas.

Get your cones ready for another round of Malvern Books’ FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld & Schandra Madha. This month is our special annual holiday edition! Ugly sweaters strongly encouraged!

Featuring women-identified writers from the Austin community (and beyond!), this month’s I Screamers are Meg E. Griffitts, Meaghan Loraas, and Nicole Cortichiato.

Meg E. Griffitts is a poet and educator from Aurora, Colorado. Her work has appeared in White Stag, Crab Fat, Hypertrophic, BlazeVox, and others. She collects rocks, succulents, and cookbooks. Her favorite ice cream flavor is mint chocolate chip.

Meaghan Loraas is a third-year fiction student in the Texas State University MFA program. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, New South, subTerrain, and others. She is currently working on her first novel, and enjoys binge watching television and drinking IPAs that taste like trees. She also really likes to laugh. Her favorite ice cream flavor is chocolate peanut butter swirl.

If you ever attend an open mic in Austin, chances are you will see Nicole Cortichiato perform. She’s been a featured reader at Malvern Book’s “I Scream Social” and “Writer’s Roulette.” She is also a member of a band called, “Nicole and Eric’s Guide to a Meaningful Life” in which she plays theremin and gives life advice. Her favorite ice cream flavor is dark chocolate.

~7pm – Ice cream & Open Mic for women-identified and non-binary writers. We want a chance to hear everyone’s wonderful work, so please try to keep readings under 3 minutes.

~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 Vanessa Couto Johnson’s first full-length poetry collection, Pungent dins concentric (Tolsun Books).

Pungent dins concentric . . . is bounteous and exhilarating, even as it aces the heavy lifting of the book’s real and often startling wisdom. In the delectable world of these poems, “the properties of bellies are what lead us” in a “life, not fare, but air-letting. We all lung for.” With lightning quick “voracity veracity velocity” this book invites us to “laugh until full, until body itself is a world.” “Elegant in the mathematical sense,” wry but confident pronouncements amount to a love song to the pleasure and puzzlement of sentient sensuality, onomatopoetically delivering the very delight and savor these “polylingual spoon nutrients, crave and carve and cave of / deepening morphemes” describe.
—Susan Lewis

Propelled by extraordinary imaginative force, the poems of Vanessa Couto Johnson’s dazzling pungent dins concentric unfold in a sequence of evocations, each one summoning into view a moment of bustle in a specific but overloaded social space. The works are built of sentences, swirling syntactic image structures that seem to be the outcome of critical attention to the strangeness of the world around us. Linguistic wit and sassy irreverence partially veil Johnson’s dismay, but they cannot veil the poet’s ebullient joie de vivre.
—Lyn Hejinian

Vanessa Couto Johnson has written a tantalizing book, full of quick moves, wild associations, and linguistic flair. In pungent dins concentric, our world of dailiness is in considerable disarray: language calls out differences: seams don’t quite match and words lose their constancy (“I said celibate, not celebrate,” “no wrestling matte today.”) With meaning unstuck and liberty to disconnect or form new connections, the poems arrive at new truths, moments of hilarity and insight.
—Maxine Chernoff

Vanessa Couto Johnson’s first full-length book is pungent dins concentric (Tolsun Books, 2018). “Try the yen relish,” a sixteen-page prose poem sequence, was released in a first BoxSet from Oxidant | Engine in March 2018. Her chapbooks are speech rinse, winner of Slope Editions’ 2016 Chapbook Contest; rotoscoping collage in Cork City (dancing girl press, 2016); and Life of Francis, winner of Gambling the Aisle’s 2014 Chapbook Contest. Softblow, Thrush, Field, Blackbird, Cheat River Review, Cream City Review, and other journals and anthologies have featured her poetry. Most recently, four constraint-based erasure poems appeared in Surrealists and Outsiders 2018: I Wagered Deep On the Run of Six Rats to See Which Would Catch the First Fire (Thrice Publishing). A Brazilian born in Texas (dual citizen) and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she is currently a Lecturer at Texas State University, where she earned her MFA.

Join us for an afternoon with Dorothy Ellis Barnett, who will read from her poetry and short stories.

Dorothy Ellis Barnett landed in Austin, Texas after a hardscrabble childhood growing up on the riverbeds, campgrounds and roads of the Southwest. While at The University of Texas she obtained a B.A. in Anthropology, an M.A. in English and was awarded a James A. Michener Fellowship. Together with her Fellows, she founded Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, then went on to launch The Rio Review and Poetry at Round Top, leaving over 50 literary journals in print along the literary highway. These publications have promoted, encouraged, and inspired countless writers and artists. Dorothy subsequently earned her M.F.A. from Pacific Lutheran University. She is now Professor Emerita at Austin Community College where she founded and created the Creative Writing Department. She is a former Board Member of the Writers’ League of Texas and is currently on the organizational committee for Poetry at Round Top held at Festival Hill each Spring. While her path has left a legacy for the literary community that includes her own publications, it pales in comparison to her role as wife, mother, grandmother and friend.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Love&Wages, Jim Trainer’s fifth full-length collection of poetry and prose through Yellow Lark Press. With host Dave Julian and featured readers Nathan Hamilton, Christia Madacsi Hoffman, and Nicole Brissette.

Jim Trainer (above) publishes one collection of poetry and prose every year through Yellow Lark Press. Love&Wages is his 5th. He’s also a singer-songwriter, journalist and curator of Going For The Throat—a weekly publication of cynicism, outrage, correspondence and romance. Please visit his website for Love&Wages, his latest collection, and for music, film, and appearances. (Photo credit: Adam Glick Photography.)

Host Dave Julian, aka The Poetic Butcher was born and raised in the Big N.O. (Old New Orleans, Louisiana). He moved to Lexington, Kentucky a few days after Hurricane Katrina to live with his mother and stepfather. This formerly was his home aside from some occasional adventures, perhaps most notably his time in The Land of the Rising Sun, Japan. Now he resides in Austin, Texas.

Featured reader Nathan Hamilton (below, left) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Austin, Texas. As a singer/songwriter he has been performing professionally for more than 20 years. During that time he has released six albums on his own and two as a member of the Good Medicine Band (aka Sharecroppers). He was a winner of the 2000 Kerrville New Folk Award and a Top 5 Finalist in the 2008 Independent Music Awards. Nathan has toured internationally and in 2012 was selected as one of the official City of Austin Music Ambassadors to Oita, Japan as part of the Sister Cities Program. Nathan is a studied visual artist as well and has shown work in both group and solo shows. He employs a raw and loose-handed aesthetic along with a recycling sensibility. Using old doors, boards, dirt, rope, sticks, house paint, stones and other salvaged materials, Nathan turns these crudely textural elements into assemblages and paintings that take on a rough-hewn and contemplative elegance.

Featured reader Christia Madacsi Hoffman (below, center) grew up along the banks of the Mystic River in Mystic, Connecticut. Through her Austin-based 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. With an accessible and insightful poetic voice, Hoffman’s poetry explores the universal themes of place, beauty, youth, and family. Her personal reflections reveal the depth in our everyday experiences and the significance of our intentions.

Featured reader Nicole Brissette (below, right) has a BFA in English. Her writing can be found in Austin Artmosphere Artists, Art World, and at Sybiljournal.com.

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

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

Join us in celebrating the launch of John Campion’s new poetry collection, Consilience.

John Campion is the author of numerous books of poetry, including his projected quincunx of five book-length poems. Among these, Tongue Stones (Austin Book Award; Violet Crown Award), Squaring, the Circle (Blue-Star Foundation Award—Art in Service to the Earth), Medusa, and Consilience (just published by The Open Theatre/Ecotropic Works). Campion has collaborated with important artists from around the world. With sculptor T.J. Mabrey, he created two award-winning installations: Floodstage at the Memory Theatre at Texas A&M (mirroring the precession of the equinox as drawn in ancient astronomy and myth); and more recently, migration metamorphosis symbiosis emergence (exploring ideas concerning identity and change). He is currently working with composer Cindy Cox on a large musical theater piece (On the Road to Xibalba), based upon the Maya myth of The Popol Vuh. Campion translated the first English version of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’ magnum opus, Primero Sueño (Thorp Springs Press, Austin). He has been a teacher for more than 40 years—at UT Austin, Austin Community College, and most recently at UC Berkeley. He currently lives in Oakland, CA.

We’d like to invite you to join Malvern’s Line/Break Poetry Book Club! Hosted by Malvernian Julie Poole, this is a reading group for those of you interested in exploring works from our expansive poetry section.

This month’s selection is The Happy End / All Welcome by Mónica de la Torre.

The Happy End / All Welcome is set in a job fair inspired by the Nature Theater of Oklahoma from Kafka’s unfinished novel Amerika: the largest theater company in the world is recruiting all kinds of employees. De la Torre builds, fastens, cuts, pastes, performs, and extrudes a variety of poems to suit this most serious situation comedy: poems as job interviews, poems as postings, poems as questionnaires, reports, speeches, lyrical rants… At its heart, this playful bricolage explores the norms of the workplace and its notions of competence, while tackling office design, performativity, and skilled vs. deskilled creative labor.

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 a specific poem to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you at this meeting of our Line/Break Poetry Book Club!

Join us for a reading from The Lumberjack’s Dove—and a shadow puppet crankie show—with visiting writer GennaRose Nethercott, and with special guest Sean Petrie.

In the ingenious and vividly imagined narrative poem The Lumberjack’s Dove, GennaRose Nethercott describes a lumberjack who cuts his hand off with an axe—however, instead of merely being severed, the hand shapeshifts into a dove. Far from representing just an event of pain and loss in the body, this incident spirals outward to explore countless facets of being human, prompting profound reflections on sacrifice and longing, time and memory, and—finally—considering the act of storytelling itself. The lumberjack, his hand, and the axe that separated the two all become participants in the story, with unique perspectives to share and lessons to impart. “I taught your fathers how to love,” Axe says to the acorns and leaves around her. “I mean to be felled, sliced to lumber, & reassembled into a new body.” Inflected with the uncanny enchantment of modern folklore and animated by the sly shifting of points-of-view, The Lumberjack’s Dove is wise, richly textured poetry from a boundlessly creative new voice.

GennaRose Nethercott’s book The Lumberjack’s Dove was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series for 2017. She is also the lyricist behind the narrative song collection Modern Ballads, and is a Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellow. Her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies including BOMB, The Massachusetts Review, The Offing, and PANK, and she has been a writer-in-residence at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore, Art Farm Nebraska, and The Vermont Studio Center, among others. A born Vermonter, she tours nationally and internationally composing poems-to-order for strangers on a 1952 Hermes Rocket typewriter.

Sean Petrie is a founding member of “Typewriter Rodeo,” whose poetry book came out earlier this year. He has 6 short books coming out in 2019 as part of Fountas & Pinnell’s “Leveled Books” series. He also teaches legal writing at UT, and thinks Buffy is the best show ever.

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.

This month’s selection is Basic Black with Pearls by Helen Weinzweig.

Helen Weinzweig published her first novel when she was fifty-eight. Basic Black with Pearls, her second, won the Toronto Book Award and has since come to be recognized as a feminist landmark. Here Weinzweig imbues the formal inventiveness of the nouveau roman with psychological poignancy and surprising humor to tell a story of simultaneous dissolution and discovery.

 

“Celebrated in Canada as a feminist classic, Weinzweig’s searing 1980 novel captures a woman’s awakening to her lover’s exploitation….Weinzweig’s prose style is sharp, particularly her dialogue: strange and surprising, it knocks every character interaction askew.”
—Publishers Weekly

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 to discuss a NYRB classic!

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. Everyone is welcome to join us for this fun and friendly free evening suitable for performers of all ages and abilities.

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

In the interview series Borderless: Conversations on Art, Action, and Justice, emerging and established writers and artists talk with host Chaitali Sen about the power of words and the role of art in reflecting and changing our world.

This month’s Borderless features a conversation between writer and curator Lise Ragbir (left, below) and esteemed visual artist Deborah Roberts (right, below) about the connection between text, literature, visual art, and social justice.

Lise Ragbir is a writer, curator and Director of the Art Galleries at Black Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2017, she was Jack Jones Literary Art’s Tiphanie Yanique Fellow. In 2015, she was an invited participant in Callaloo’s Creative Writing Workshop, in Barbados. Her essays about arts and culture, race, and immigration have appeared in The Guardian, Hyperallergic, Time Magazine, and USA Today, among other outlets. She was born and raised in Montreal, and now makes her home in Austin, Texas.

Deborah Roberts (American, b. 1962) is a mixed media artist whose work challenges the notion of ideal beauty. Her work has been exhibited internationally across the USA and Europe. Roberts’ work is in the collections of Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles, California; Block Museum of Art, Evanston, Illinois; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey; and The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, New York. Roberts is the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2016) and Ginsburg-Klaus Award Fellowship (2014). She received her MFA from Syracuse University, New York. She lives and works in Austin, Texas. Roberts is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

Chaitali Sen is a writer and educator based in Austin, Texas. She is the author of the novel The Pathless Sky, and numerous stories and essays which have appeared or are forthcoming in Catapult, Colorado Review, Ecotone, LitHub, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, New Ohio Review, and other journals. She is the founder of the interview series Borderless: Conversations on Art, Action, and Justice.

“We read all types, we take all types. Aim to keep things light and fun.” Hosted by Jon Meador.

Join us in celebrating the release of All That is Evident is Suspect, the first collection in English to offer a life-size picture of the OuLiPo in its historical and contemporary incarnations. Featuring a reading from Daniel Levin Becker (below, right).

Since its inception in Paris in 1960, the OuLiPo—ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or workshop for potential literature—has continually expanded our sense of what writing can do. It’s produced, among many other marvels, a detective novel without the letter e (and a sequel of sorts without a, i, o, u, or y); an epic poem structured by the Parisian métro system; a story in the form of a tarot reading; a poetry book in the form of a game of go; and a suite of sonnets that would take almost 200 million years to read completely.

Lovers of literature are likely familiar with the novels of the best-known Oulipians—Italo Calvino, Georges Perec, Harry Mathews, Raymond Queneau—and perhaps even the small number of texts available in English on the group, including Warren Motte’s Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature and Daniel Levin Becker’s Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature. But the actual work of the group in its full, radiant collectivity has never before been showcased in English. (“The State of Constraint,” a dossier in issue 22 of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, comes closest.)

Enter All That is Evident is Suspect, the first collection in any language to represent all of its members (numbering 41 as of April 2018 ). Combining fiction, poetry, essays and lectures, and never-published internal correspondence—along with the acrobatically constrained writing and complexly structured narratives that have become synonymous with oulipian practice—this volume shows a unique group of thinkers and artists at work and at play, meditating on and subverting the facts of life, love, and the group itself. It’s an unprecedentedly intimate and comprehensive glimpse at the breadth and diversity of one of world literature’s most vital, adventurous presences.

Daniel Levin Becker is an American critic, editor, and translator who joined the Oulipo in 2009. He is the author of a book about the Oulipo, Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature, and has translated work by Georges Perec, Éric Chevillard, Thomas Clerc, and Paul Griffiths among others.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’d like to invite you to join Malvern’s Line/Break Poetry Book Club! Hosted by Malvernian Julie Poole, this is a reading group for those of you interested in exploring works from our expansive poetry section.

This month’s selection is Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon.

The title section of Kim Hyesoon’s powerful new book,  Autobiography of Death, consists of forty-nine poems, each poem representing a single day during which the spirit roams after death before it enters the cycle of reincarnation. The poems not only give voice to those who met unjust  deaths during Korea’s violent contemporary history, but also unveil what Kim calls “the structure of death, that we remain living in.” Autobiography of Death, Kim’s most compelling work to date, at once reenacts trauma and narrates death—how we die and how we survive within this cyclical structure. In this sea of mirrors, the plural “you” speaks as a body of multitudes that has been beaten, bombed, and buried many times over by history. 

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 a specific poem to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you at this meeting of our Line/Break Poetry Book Club!

Join us for an evening with Tatiana Ryckman and Adeena Reitberger.

Tatiana Ryckman (left) is the author of the novella, I Don’t Think of You (Until I Do) and two chapbooks of prose. She is the editor of Awst Press and has been a writer in residence at Yaddo, Arthub, and 100W. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Lithub, Paper Darts, Barrelhouse, and other publications. Tatiana can be found on airplanes or at tatianaryckman.com.

Adeena Reitberger’s fiction and nonfiction have been published in Black Warrior Review, Mississippi Review, Cimarron Review, Nimrod International Journal, Third Coast, NANO Fiction, SmokeLong Quarterly, Sierra Nevada Review, and other magazines, and her work has been listed as notable in the Best American Series. She teaches creative writing at Austin Community College and works the editor of American Short Fiction.

Join us for a reading with William West, Lily Lewis, and Ruby Montalvo.

William West grew up in Texas, attended UT and graduated from the University of Houston. West has lived in other places such as Santa Barbara, Traverse City, Maui, and Chicago, but he returned to Texas to enjoy his home State and to write. He always held a deep interest in human behavior which found a place in his debut novel, Evolution of a Young Man in Love.  West currently lives in Austin with his wife and their two dogs.

Nothing is normal in Austin. A fast-paced debut, William West’s Evolution of a Young Man in Love elicits sentiments of uncertainty and rebirth. As high school English teacher Joseph Hawking works through the death of his lover in the face of a new one, we begin to uncover the story’s true nature. For a first novel, West has a knack for characterization, weaving complicated strands of soft-hearted care and intellectual determination through Joseph that holds steady throughout a truly terrifying serial killer plot line and the delicate web that is a new relationship. With help from long-time friend David, a cantankerous live-how-you-want side-kick, we are transported into a deep hole of investigation and self-discovery through realized superhero meets noiresque narrative. —Rebecca Baumann 

Lily Lewis is a warrior against ignorance and injustice both in the classroom and in the community. Three extraordinary children and four luminescent grandchildren inspire her to be a better human. The deep blue sea remains her place of power and wonder. She is a survivor, living one day at a time, with her soul partner and two cats, Sophie and Sylvester. Her novel, The Last Mermaid Princess, is a semi-autobiographical account of an unusual set of circumstances and events that will resonate with all people because we all struggle with the same things in different ways. The protagonist, Lily Chaidee, was never at home with herself, her family, or her geography as a rare Asian hybrid growing up in the Texas Panhandle during the 1960’s. Amarillo was an inhospitable place for an ethnically diverse family, and to make matters worse, there were numerous difficulties from mental instability to addictions to sexual predation to racism and objectification and other dysfunctional elements that marked Lily’s childhood and changed the trajectory of her life. Lily will inevitably evoke mixed emotions. You will love her, empathize with her, and champion her while feeling disappointed, angry, and absolutely disgusted by her inability to keep herself on a positive path. It’s a wild ride from Thailand to Texas—one you will not soon forget.

Ruby Montalvo was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. She graduated with a degree in English from The University of Texas at Austin and has had many jobs over the years—proofreader, graphic artist, customer service representative, executive complaints clerk, corporate trainer, corporate content writer, English teacher, ESL teacher, elementary school librarian, and blogger, but what she always wanted to do was write a novel. And when she was in her mid-50’s that’s exactly what she did. In May 2018 Ruby published her first novel, A Song for Jessica, just before her 56th birthday. On her website Ruby blogs about starting a new career later in life and strives to encourage others, just as others encouraged her, to believe it’s never too late to do what you’ve always wanted to do. Ruby is proof that it’s never too late to follow your dreams. She run/walks a solid twelve-minute mile and lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband and two dogs.

Join us for a reading and exhibit to celebrate the launch of the latest issue of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review. The keynote poet is J. Scott Brownlee, and the featured artist is Alyssa Surabian. Other readers include John Fry and Katelin Kelly, and Cindy Huyser will also read and discuss the career of Debra Winegarten.

Bring friends – join the celebration! The event is free of charge and open to everyone.

Borderlands is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department.

J. Scott Brownlee is a poet-of-place from Llano, Texas. His poems appear in The Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, West Branch, Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbooks Highway or Belief, Ascension, and On the Occasion of the Last Old Camp Meeting in Llano County. Honors for these collections include the 2013 Button Poetry Prize, 2014 Robert Phillips Poetry Prize, and 2015 Tree Light Books Prize. His first full-length collection, Requiem for Used Ignition Cap, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and 2015 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award and selected by C. Dale Young as the winner of the 2015 Orison Poetry Prize. It also won the 2016 Bob Bush Memorial Award for Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters. He currently lives in Austin, Texas and teaches for Brooklyn Poets as a core faculty member.

Alyssa Surabian’s work is currently available at the Bent Tree Gallery in Wimberley, TX. She is an active member in the Wimberley Vallery Art League where she is often accepted into juried shows, sometimes winning awards. Born in Boston, Alyssa now lives and works in Wimberley, TX. She earned her MS in Occupational Therapy from Tufts University in Boston.

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.

This month’s selection is Anna Seghers’s Transit, an existential, political, literary thriller that explores the agonies of boredom, the vitality of storytelling, and the plight of the exile with extraordinary compassion and insight.

On its own, this story is an important untold story of the refugee situation in Second World War-era Europe, but in its own grappling with its allegorical nature, Segher transforms the book into a masterpiece. Seghers balances these two impulses in telling her story with an existential, theological layer. The situation of these refugees mimics the course of the human soul. —Vol 1.Brooklyn

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 to discuss a NYRB classic!

Join us for an evening with Barbara Henning, Maureen Owen, and Ashley Smith Keyfitz (left to right, below).

Barbara Henning is the author of four novels and seven collections of poetry. Most recent books are a novel, Just Like That, and a book of poetry, A Day Like Today. She is also the editor of a book of interviews, Looking Up Harryette Mullen, and The Collected Prose of Bobbie Louise Hawkins. Barbara lives in Brooklyn, has taught for Naropa, and presently teaches for Long Island University and writers.com.

Maureen Owen’s most recent book is Edges of Water, Chax Press. Other books include: Erosion’s Pull, Coffee House Press, finalist for the Colorado Book Award; American Rush: Selected Poems, finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize; and AE (Amelia Earhart), Before Columbus American Book Award. She was the publisher of Telephone Magazine/Telephone Books. Maureen lives in Denver and has taught for Naropa University. Her readings can be found on PennSound.

Ashley Smith Keyfitz (Ash Smith) is the author is Water Shed, Come Such Frequency, Pigeon of Tears & (forthcoming from Xexoxial Editions) Park of Unwired Asking. Formerly a publisher for LRL magazine & book series, she lives in Austin where she does web design, graphic, and community outreach work.

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. Everyone is welcome to join us for this fun and friendly free afternoon suitable for performers of all ages and abilities. And it’s our 5th birthday, so be ready to celebrate!

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

Join us for a poetry reading with Steve Bellin-Oka, Raye Hendrix, and Lisa L. Moore (left to right, below). Sponsored by the Poets & Scholars reading series from UT-Austin’s Poetry & Poetics Interest Group.

Steve Bellin-Oka earned his MFA from the University of Virginia and his PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers. He is the author of two chapbooks, O Frankenstein (Blue Trouser Press, 2003) and Dead Letter Office at North Atlantic Station (Seven Kitchens Press, 2017). His first book, Instructions for Seeing a Ghost, is forthcoming in 2020. The recipient of a 2019 Tulsa Artist Fellowship, he has also received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Arts. His poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, Nimrod, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among other publications, and his interviews with other poets appear in Adroit and Mississippi Review. He lives in Portales, New Mexico.

Raye Hendrix is a poet from Middle-Of-Nowhere, Alabama, who loves cats, crystals, and classic rock. Raye is the Online Content and Web Editor for Bat City Review and is pursuing her MFA at the University of Texas at Austin. Her recent work can be found in Southern Indiana Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Shenandoah, The Pinch, and elsewhere.

Lisa L. Moore is the author of the chapbook 24 Hours of Men (Dancing Girl, 2018). Her writing has been recognized with the Art/Lines Poetry Prize and the Lambda Book Award. She is Director of the LGBTQ Studies Program at The University of Texas at Austin.

“We read all types, we take all types. Aim to keep things light and fun.” Hosted by Jon Meador.

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 “Laugh at My Love Life”—you’ll either find this funny or at least be happy this didn’t happen to you. Our line up of featured artists includes: RG HOOK, SUSAN MACK, BROOKE AXTELL, LARRY MAYFIELD, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, and THOM THE WORLD POET. An open mic follows the featured artists. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

Everyone is welcome to attend the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by John Herndon. An open mic follows the featured reader, so bring poems, stories, scripts, rants, raves or midnight confessions to share, or just come to listen and enjoy.

This month’s featured reader is Sasha West.

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 in Kenyon Review Online, West Branch, Southern Review, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. Her awards include a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Fellowship, Inprint’s Verlaine Prize, Rice University’s Parks Fellowship, and a Houston Arts Alliance grant. 

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’s Novel Night features a book launch for Scott Semegran’s new novel, To Squeeze a Prairie Dog: An American Novel, and Larry Brill will be reading from his latest novel, the romantic comedy Déjà vu All Over Again.

Scott Semegran lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, four kids, two cats, and a dog. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in English. He is an award-winning writer and a cartoonist. 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.

Larry Brill grew up in San Jose, California with three goals: To become a broadcast journalist; to write a hit novel; and to pitch for a major league baseball team. Well, two out of three ain’t bad. He spent 25 years as a television news anchor, ten of those here in Austin, picking up numerous awards along the way. After leaving the business, Larry wrote his first novel, Live At Five, using his experiences to lampoon TV news from the inside out. His second comic novel The Patterer, imagines what broadcast news would be like if Ben Franklin invented it in 18th century London. His latest novel has nothing to do with TV news, but Déjà vu All Over Again has received starred reviews from IndieReader, ForeWord and BlueInk Reviews, described as “A fun, satisfying romantic comedy—a rom-com that is more com than rom.”

Join Newfound journal contributors and chapbook winners for a reading… everyone is welcome! Featuring M.J. Gette, Rodney Gomez, Catherine Pikula, and Octavio Quintanilla (left to right, below). Gette and Quintanilla will incorporate visual poetics in their readings, and chapbooks and the latest print issue will be for sale.

Megan Jeanne (M.J.) Gette’s work explores ecological relationships within a postcolonial discourse of translation, dislocation and hybridity. Her winning chapbook was developed out of a residency with Arquetopia, Oaxaca, and the Marcella DeBourg Fellowship. She is twice recipient of FLAS fellowships to study the Kaqchikel language in Guatemala with Oxlajuj Aj’, a language revitalization and decolonization project through Tulane University. She has worked as a translator and researcher for various NGOs and nonprofits in the Americas since 2010, and has performed her work in both academic and local settings as a species of poetic theory—thought that is relative to the linguistic borders that aim to purify, hide, or package it. Her winning chapbook, The Walls They Left Us, was published by Newfound in spring of 2016.

Rodney Gomez is the author of the forthcoming collection Citizens of the Mausoleum (Sundress Publications, 2018). His chapbooks include Mouth Filled with Night (Northwestern University Press, 2014), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize, and A Short Tablature of Loss (Seven Kitchens Press, 2017), winner of the Ran Arroyo Chapbook Prize. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, Rattle, Pleiades, Denver Quarterly, Barrow Street, Blackbird, and RHINO, where it won the Editors’ Prize. Born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, he earned a BA from Yale and an MFA from the University of Texas–Pan American. He has been awarded residencies to the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Santa Fe Art Institute. He has also served on the board of Migrant Health Promotion, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health and well-being of migrants, immigrants, and related populations. He edits the accompanying anthology to El Retorno, an annual event honoring Gloria E. Anzaldúa held at the University of Texas-Pan American. He works as an urban planner in Weslaco, Texas. His winning chapbook, Spine, was published by Newfound in spring of 2015.

Catherine Pikula is a glorified secretary by day and writer all of the time. She studied literature and philosophy at Bennington College and poetry at NYU. Her chapbook I’m Fine. How Are You? was selected by Chloe Caldwell as winner of the 2018 Newfound Prose Prize. You can find her poetry online in places like Poor Claudia and Cosmonauts Avenue. Currently, she is researching relationship anarchy and the porn industry’s effects on learned perceptions of gender and sexuality expression.

Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014) and the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of San Antonio, TX. His poetry, fiction, translations, and photography have appeared, or are forthcoming, in journals such as Salamander, RHINO, Alaska Quarterly Review, Pilgrimage, Green Mountains Review, Southwestern American Literature, The Texas Observer, and others. His visual work has been featured in the AllState Almaguer Art Gallery in Mission, TX, and an exhibit is forthcoming at The Weslaco Museum. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas and is the regional editor for Texas Books in Review. He teaches Literature and Creative Writing in the M.A./M.F.A. program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.

Join us for an afternoon with award-winning author Michael Blumlein.

Varying widely in theme and subject matter, the stories in All I Ever Dreamed showcase the breadth and power of Michael Blumlein’s vision and once again reveal him to be one of the most original and fascinating of contemporary writers. They are stories that skirt the boundaries of fantasy, science fiction and horror, existing in a genre uniquely the author’s own. This volume brings together all the short fiction published by Blumlein in the three decades since the original appearance of his award-winning collection The Brains of Rats (1989), including two stories published here in book form for the first time.

Michael Blumlein is the author of four novels and three story collections, including the award-winning The Brains of Rats. His most recent publications, both in 2018 are: All I Ever Dreamed, containing three decades worth of fiction, and Thoreau’s Microscope, part of PM Press’ celebrated “Outspoken Authors” series. He has twice been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and twice for the Bram Stoker. He has been short-listed for the Tiptree. The Brains of Rats was awarded Best Collection of the Year. He has written for both stage and film, including the award-winning independent film Decodings. His novel X,Y was made into a feature-length movie. Until his recent retirement Dr. Blumlein taught and practiced medicine at the University of California in San Francisco.

Join us in celebrating the launch of the fourth issue of Kallisto Gaia Press’ literary journal, The Ocotillo Review, which features over 100 pages of literary genius by award-winning writers from around the world and superb new pieces by writers from underserved communities.

Featured reader Cynthia White (above right), winner of the Julia Darling Memorial Poetry Prize, will be flying in from Santa Cruz to share her poetry! Other readers include Diana Conces, Charles Darnell, Terry Dawson, Geoffrey Hall, Bobby Horecka, and Frank Pool, among others to be announced.

Cynthia White (Santa Cruz CA) has poems appearing in Poet Lore, ZYZZYVA, New Letters and CALYX, among others. She’s been both finalist and semi-finalist for Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’d like to invite you to join Malvern’s Line/Break Poetry Book Club! Hosted by Malvernian Julie Poole, this is a reading group for those of you interested in exploring works from our expansive poetry section.

This month’s selection is Indecency by Justin Phillip Reed.

Indecency is boldly and carefully executed and perfectly ragged. In these poems, Justin Phillip Reed experiments with language to explore inequity and injustice and to critique and lament the culture of white supremacy and the dominant social order. Political and personal, tender, daring, and insightful—the author unpacks his intimacies, weaponizing poetry to take on masculinity, sexuality, exploitation, and the prison industrial complex and unmask all the failures of the structures into which society sorts us.

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 a specific poem to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you at this meeting of our Line/Break Poetry Book Club!

Join us in celebrating the launch of Monty Jones’ poetry collection, Cracks in the Earth.

A Preference for Pears

The painters know
what they’re looking at,
what their eyes are seized by,
the aureate reds and yellows
of a pear amid three apples,
or a pear and two plums.

For those who need a story
they can be forbidden or stolen,
endowed with magic power,
sacred to Aphrodite,
conducive to long life.

One taste enough to awaken you,
new knowledge giving you ideas,
a bare shoulder, a swelling hip.

Sometimes the pear
will lie hidden, almost
forgotten in the crowded bowl,
almost overcome by the plenty
of ornate and orotund fruit,
only glimpsed where it shoved
its way into a share of the light,
the eyes drawn toward it
by the preference for pears.

Monty Jones is an Austin writer. He has worked as a teacher, a newspaper reporter, and a university public affairs official. He also is the author of two works of non-fiction, A Civic Entrepreneur: The Life of Technology Visionary George Kozmetsky, and, with William H. Cunningham, The Texas Way: Money, Power, Politics and Ambition at the University, both published by the Briscoe Center for American History at UT Austin.

You’re invited to join us for another Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series! The theme of this month’s reading is “Walk on the Wild Side,” and the readers are Tomás Q. Morín, Carrie Fountain, Sarah Bird, and Eliza Gilkyson (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.

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 is at work on a memoir about fathers. He teaches at Drew University and in the low residency MFA program of Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Carrie Fountain’s poems have appeared in Tin House, Poetry, and The New Yorker, among others. Her debut collection, Burn Lake, was a National Poetry Series winner and was published in 2010 by Penguin. Her second collection, Instant Winner, was published by Penguin in 2014. Fountain’s debut novel, I’m Not Missing, was published in July, 2018 by Flatiron Books (Macmillan). Born and raised in Mesilla, New Mexico, Fountain received her MFA as a fellow at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. Currently writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University and Visiting Professor at the Michener Center, she is the host of NPR’s This Is Just to Say, a radio show and podcast where she has intimate conversations with America’s most influential poets. Fountain lives in Austin with her husband, playwright and novelist Kirk Lynn, and their two children.

Sarah Bird is the author of nine novels and one book of non-fiction. Her latest novel, Above the East China Sea, was long-listed for the Dublin International Literary Award; was an ALEX Award nominee; winner of the 2016 Texas Philosophical Society Literary Award; a Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice; a Seattle Times Best Book of the Year; a Tucson Book Festival Great Books for Book Club selection; and a Marie Claire Best Summer Reads. Sarah has been an NPR Moth Radio Hour storyteller, and a writer for Oprah’s Magazine and the NY Times Sunday Magazine. During her ten-year screenwriting career, Sarah was hired to write for Paramount, CBS, Warner Bros, National Geographic, ABC, TNT, as well as several independent producers. Her latest novel, Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen, inspired by the true story of Cathy/Cathay Williams, the only woman to serve with the fabled Buffalo Soldiers and the first woman to enlist in the peacetime U.S. Army, has been selected to be a lead Fall 2018 title.

Eliza Gilkyson is a twice Grammy-nominated (2006/2015) singer songwriter and activist who is one of the most respected musicians in Folk, Roots and Americana circles. Her songs have been covered by Joan Baez, Bob Geldof, Tom Rush and Rosanne Cash and have appeared in films, PBS specials and on prime-time TV. A member of the Austin Music Hall of Fame, and a recent inductee into the Austin Songwriter Hall of Fame, she has won countless Folk Alliance and Austin Music awards, including 2014’s Songwriter of the Year. Eliza’s music has always offered a vivid reflection of the times we live in, full of joys and sorrows, each song a window into a life of struggle and triumph in a world she feels is “poised on the edge of moral, economic and environmental bankruptcy.” Her new CD released in summer 2018 from Red House Records, is titled Secularia.

Join us for something rather special: Austin Community College’s Creative Writing Department will be introducing us to the two winners of their 2017 Balcones Prize. Alessandra Lynch will read from her poetry collection, Daylily Called it a Dangerous Moment, and Brian Van Reet will read from his novel, Spoils. Sponsored by the Creative Writing Department. This event is free and open to the public.

Alessandra Lynch’s latest book is Daylily Called It a Dangerous Moment. She has received several fellowships, including residencies at Yaddo and the Macdowell Colony. Her poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, and other journals. Currently, she is poet-in-residence at Butler University.

Brian Van Reet is the author of Spoils, a novel that was named one of the best books of 2017 by the Guardian, Military Times, the Wall Street Journal, and others. He lives in Austin and has twice won the Texas Institute of Letters short story award.

Join us for a reading from poets Abraham Smith and Greg Brownderville. Abraham will be sharing work from his most recent collection, Destruction of Man.

“Abraham Smith’s Destruction of Man is a compass setting toward musics caught between the hungry teeth of vole and buried bone of river.” —Tyehimba Jess, Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Willie Nelson sang for Farm Aid and it didn’t work: this won’t either: yet Destruction of Man is a book: a book by a poet/farmer about farming and a family man and a familiar county—stung body; stung land—as told by a tweaked-to-warble farm machine that ate a human arm, and the chicken ate what’s left, and the hawk ate what’s left, and then the hawk died of old age. This is a book-length poem about small-scale family farming in the midst of the “get-big-or-get-out” mantra and foghorn. The conclusions are clarion clear: rurality has its hectic musics and all we have is love. In the words of Gertrude Stein: “After all anybody is as their land and air is.”

Abraham Smith (above left) is the author of five poetry collections—Destruction of Man (Third Man Books, 2018); Ashagalomancy (Action Books, 2015); Only Jesus Could Icefish in Summer (Action Books, 2014); Hank (Action Books, 2010); and Whim Man Mammon (Action Books, 2007)—and one coauthored fiction collection, Tuskaloosa Kills (Spork Press, 2018). In 2015, he released Hick Poetics (Lost Roads Press), a co-edited anthology of contemporary rural American poetry and related essays. His creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA, and the Alabama State Council on the Arts. He recently completed a poetry manuscript about cranes—birds whose song and stature electrify him. He lives in Ogden, Utah, where he is Assistant Professor of English at Weber State University.

Greg Brownderville (above right) is the author of A Horse with Holes in It (LSU Press, 2016), Deep Down in the Delta (Butler Center, 2012), and Gust (Northwestern University Press, 2011). At SMU in Dallas, he serves as Associate Professor of English, Director of Creative Writing, and Editor of Southwest Review.