Malvern Books

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 Angel by Elizabeth Taylor. 

Perhaps every novelist harbors a monster at heart, an irrepressible and utterly irresponsible fantasist, not to mention a born and ingenious liar, without which all her art would go for naught. Angel, at any rate, is the story of such a monster. Angelica Deverell lives above her diligent, drab mother’s grocery shop in a dreary turn-of-the-century English neighborhood, but spends her days dreaming of handsome Paradise House, where her aunt is enthroned as a maid. But in Angel’s imagination, she is the mistress of the house, a realm of lavish opulence, of evening gowns and peacocks. Then she begins to write popular novels, and this fantasy becomes her life. And now that she has tasted success, Angel has no intention of letting anyone stand in her way—except, perhaps, herself.

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!

The Writers’ League of Texas presents “The Business of Poetry: Journals, Contests, Collections, and More,” a panel discussion featuring Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Sunny Leal, Lisa Olstein, and Sam Treviño.

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is a New York Times best-selling nonfiction writer and poet. She is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently The Year of No Mistakes, which was named 2014’s Book of the Year for Poetry by the Writers’ League of Texas, and How to Love the Empty Air, which was released last year. Her second nonfiction book, Dr Mütter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine, spent three months on the New York Times Best-Seller list. Recent awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry, the ArtsEDGE writer-in-residency at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Amy Clampitt House residency. She lives in Austin, TX.

Sunny Leal is a makeup artist and editor based out of Austin, Texas. She is the Poetry Editor for fields magazine and has previously worked for Feminine Inquiry and ORANGE Magazine. A former featured reader for the local Ice Scream Social Reading series, when she’s not reading the work of others, she is also writing poetry as a form of journaling.

Lisa Olstein is the author of four poetry collections, most recently, Late Empire (Copper Canyon Press, 2017). Pain Studies, a book-length lyric essay, will be published by Bellevue Literary Press in 2020. Recipient of a Hayden Carruth Award, Pushcart Prize, Lannan Writing Residency, and Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, she is a member of the poetry faculty for the University of Texas at Austin’s New Writers Project and Michener Center for Writers MFA programs.

Sam Treviño is a writer, poet and literary organizer from Austin, Texas. He received his BA in Creative Writing from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. He is the founder and organizer of Fresh Meat Poets Showcase in Austin, a former Editorial Contributor for Paper Darts Magazine, and has been published by Paper Darts, DigBoston, Scout Magazine in Cambridge and Somerville, and Sybil Journal. His debut chapbook, Werewolf Mask, was published in 2016 by Weekly Weird Monthly. He is currently Community Outreach Director of Chicon Street Poets, a literary nonprofit based in East Austin, and oversees the Aural Literature reading series for Austin Public Library, where he spends his days. He currently lives in Austin with his librarian superhero wife, Gina, and their anxious cat, Codex.

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.

Our April open mic will be an official City Read for the Austin International Poetry Festival! AIPF takes place April 4-7 and includes unique Austin venues, diverse themed poetry readings, open mics, workshops, music and poetry, anthology reading, midnight to dawn, and a poetry symposium. AIPF is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department.

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

Austin Writers Roulette is a bimonthly 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 “Apology Allergies”—I’m sorry, but… I’m not really going to offer you an apology. Our lineup of featured artists includes: DONNA DECHEN BIRDWELL, NICOLE CORTICHIATO, HOPE RUIZ, CHARLA HATHAWAY, STEPHANIE WEBB, RG HOOK, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, & THOM THE WORLD POET. An open mic follows intermission and welcomes all participants of the 2019 Austin International Poetry Festival.

Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information. Please note, this edition of the Roulette is the first Sunday of the month, so that Austin International Poetry Festival artists may participate.

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 Ursula Pike.

Featured reader Ursula Pike is a former ACC student who has earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her writing has appeared in World Literature Today, and the Rio Review. She is a member of the Karuk Tribe of California who lives in Austin.

Join us for an evening with Octavio Solis, who will be reading from his acclaimed memoir,  Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border.

Recommended by the New York Times and NBC News, and called one of 2018’s Best Books by Buzzfeed, Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border is a memoir about growing up brown at the U.S./Mexico border.

Living in a home just a mile from the Rio Grande, Octavio is a skinny brown kid on the border, growing up among those who live there, and those passing through on their way North. From the first terrible self-awareness of racism to inspired afternoons playing air trumpet with Herb Alpert, from an innocent game of hide-and-seek to the discovery of a Mexican girl hiding in the cotton fields, Solis reflects on the moments of trauma and transformation that shaped him into a man.

Octavio Solis does with words and imagery, lyricism and details, humor and heartbreak what the master craftsmen and women of the traditional retablos do with wood and paint, achieving the same results: these short luminous retablos are magical and enticing. Unpretentiously and with an unerring accuracy of tone and rhythm, Solis slowly builds what amounts to a storybook cathedral. We inhabit a border world rich in characters, lush with details, playful and poignant, a border that refutes the stereotypes and divisions smaller minds create. Solis reminds us that sometimes the most profound truths are best told with crafted fictions—and he is a master at it. His is a large, capacious, and inclusive imagination. Just as the traditional retablos are objects of beauty ultimately meant as devotional pieces, Solis’s Retablos will make devotees of his readers.
—Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

Author of more than twenty plays, Octavio Solis is considered one of the most prominent Latino playwrights in America. His works have been produced in theatres across the country, including the Center Group Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, South Coast Repertory, the Magic Theatre and the California Shakespeare Theatre in the San Francisco Bay Area, Yale Repertory Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Dallas Theater Center, and other venues nationwide. Among his many awards and grants, Solis has received an NEA Playwriting Fellowship, the Kennedy Center’s Roger L. Stevens award, the TCG/NEA Theatre Artists in Residence Grant, the National Latino Playwriting Award, and the PEN Center USA Award for Drama. His fiction and short plays have appeared in the Louisville Review, Zyzzyva,  Eleven Eleven, Catamaran, Chicago Quarterly Review, Arroyo Literary Review and Huizache.  This is his first book. He is based near Ashland, Oregon.

Author photo: Anne Hamersky

Join us for an evening with Austin Community College Performance Poet and Community Engagement Specialist Taria Person.

Taria Person “The Realest Person,” author of Rainbow Elephant, and playwright of the stageplay Hangers, performs poetry about conflict resolution through self-awareness, and acknowledging, respecting, and accepting each other’s differences.

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 acclaimed French writer and translator Brice Matthieussent, who will be sharing his novel Revenge of the Translator, a Nabokovian metafictional thriller.

The work of a masterful novelist and translator collide in this visionary and darkly hilarious debut from acclaimed French writer Brice Matthieussent. Revenge of the Translator follows Trad, who is translating a mysterious author’s book, Translator’s Revenge, from English to French. The book opens as a series of footnotes from Trad as he justifies changes he makes. As the novel progresses, Trad begins to take over the writing, methodically breaking down the work of the original writer and changing the course of the text. The lines between reality and fiction start to blur as Trad’s world overlaps with the characters in Translator’s Revenge, who seem to grow more and more independent of Trad’s increasingly deranged struggle to control the plot. Revenge of the Translator is a brilliant, rule-defying exploration of literature, the act of writing and translating, and the often complicated relationship between authors and their translators.

Brice Matthieussent is an award-winning translator of over 200 books from English into French, including works by Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, Bret Easton Ellis, Thomas Pynchon, Jim Harrison, and Charles Bukowski. He graduated from the École nationale supérieure Mines de Paris in 1973, and earned his PhD in philosophy in 1977. Matthieussent currently resides in Marseille, France, where he teaches the history of contemporary art and aesthetics at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. Revenge of the Translator, awarded the Prix du style Cultura, is his debut novel, and his first to appear in English. He is also the author of the novels Good Vibrations (2014) and Luxuosa (2015), all published by P.O.L.

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

Join us for an evening with Melissa Duclos, Mo Daviau, and Josh Denslow (left to right, below). We’ll be celebrating the launch of Melissa Duclos’ novel, Besotted, with readings related to the theme of heartbreak and relationships.

Besotted is the ballad of Sasha and Liz, American expats in Shanghai. Both have moved abroad to escape—Sasha from her father’s disapproval, Liz from the predictability of her hometown. When they move in together, Sasha falls in love, but the sudden attention from a charming architect threatens the relationship. Meanwhile, Liz struggles to be both a good girlfriend to Sasha and a good friend to Sam, her Shanghainese language partner who needs more from her than grammar lessons. For fans of Prague by Arthur Phillips and The Expatriates by Janice Y.K. Lee, Besotted is an expat novel that explores what it means to love someone while running away from yourself.

Melissa Duclos is the author of the novel Besotted (7.13 Books, 2019). Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Salon, and Bustle, among other venues. She is the founder of Magnify: Small Presses, Bigger, a monthly newsletter celebrating small press books; and co-founder of Amplify: Women’s Voices, Louder a series of writing retreats aimed at putting woman-identifying writers on the path to publication. She has an MFA from Columbia University and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Mo Daviau is the author of the novel Every Anxious Wave (St. Martin’s Press, 2016). Her nonfiction has appeared in The Offing, The Toast, Nailed Magazine, and McSweeney’s. She is hard at work on her third novel, as well as on her latest project, a dating and relationship advice podcast called No Love Signs. Mo lived in Austin for a long time, but now lives in Portland, Oregon.

Josh Denslow’s debut collection Not Everyone Is Special (7.13 Books) is a real book you can hold in your hands! In addition to constructing elaborate Lego sets with his three boys, he plays the drums in the band Borrisokane and edits at SmokeLong Quarterly.

Join us for an afternoon with Pierre Jarawan, who will be introducing us to his acclaimed novel, The Storyteller (translated from the German by Rachel McNicholl and Sinéad Crowe).

Samir leaves the safety and comfort of his family’s adopted home in Germany for volatile Beirut in an attempt to find his missing father. His only clues are an old photo and the bedtime stories his father used to tell him. The Storyteller follows Samir’s search for Brahim, the father whose heart was always yearning for his homeland, Lebanon. In this moving and gripping novel about family secrets, love, and friendship, Pierre Jarawan does for Lebanon what Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner did for Afghanistan. He pulls away the curtain of grim facts and figures to reveal the intimate story of an exiled family torn apart by civil war and guilt. In this rich and skilful account, Jarawan proves that he too is a masterful storyteller.

Pierre Jarawan was born in 1985 to a Lebanese father and a German mother and moved to Germany with his family at the age of three. Inspired by his father’s imaginative bedtime stories, he started writing at the age of thirteen. He has won international prizes as a slam poet, and in 2016 was named Literature Star of the Year by the daily newspaper Abendzeitung. Jarawan received a literary scholarship from the City of Munich (the Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis) for The Storyteller, which went on to become a bestseller and booksellers’ favorite in Germany and the Netherlands.

Join us for a reading from participants of the Spring 2019 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.

Join us for an evening with poet and novelist Terese Svoboda, who will share work from her story collection Great American Desert, the fourth book she has published in four years. She will also discuss her biography of poet Lola Ridge, Anything That Burns You.

Water, its use and abuse, trickles through Great American Desert, a story collection by Terese Svoboda that spans the misadventures of the prehistoric Clovis people to the wanderings of a forlorn couple around a pink pyramid in a sci-fi prairie. In “Dutch Joe,” the eponymous hero sees the future from the bottom of a well in the Sandhills, while a woman tries to drag her sister back from insanity in “Dirty Thirties.” In “Bomb Jockey,” a local Romeo disposes of leaky bombs at South Dakota’s army depot. A family quarrels in “Ogallala Aquifer” as a thousand trucks dump chemical waste next to their land. Bugs and drugs are devoured in “Alfalfa,” a disc jockey talks her way out of a knifing in “Sally Rides,” and an updated Pied Piper begs parents to reconsider in “The Mountain.” The consequences of the land’s mistreatment is epitomized in the final story by a discovery inside a pink pyramid. In her arresting and inimitable style, Svoboda’s delicate handling of the complex dynamics of family and self seeps into every sentence of these first-rate short stories about what we do to the world around us—and what it can do to us.

Terese Svoboda is an American poet, novelist, memoirist, short story writer, librettist, translator, biographer, critic, and videomaker. She is the author of seven collections of poetry, six novels, a novella and stories, a memoir, a biography and a book of translation from the Nuer. Her most recent works include When The Next Big War Blows Down the Valley: Selected and New Poems (Anhinga Press), Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet (Schaffner Press), and Professor Harriman’s Steam Air-Ship (Eyewear). Her essays, reviews, fiction, and poetry have appeared in numerous publications, including Granta, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Chicago Tribune, Ploughshares, The Atlantic, Poetry, Times Literary Supplement, Yale Review, Slate, and the New York Times. She has won a Guggenehim, the Bobst Prize in fiction, the Iowa Prize for poetry, an NEH grant for translation, the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, a Jerome Foundation prize for video, the O. Henry Award for the short story, and a Pushcart Prize for the essay. She is a three-time winner of the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and has been awarded Headlands, James Merrill, Hawthornden, Yaddo, McDowell, and Bellagio residencies. Her opera WET premiered at L.A.’s Disney Hall in 2005.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join us for a reading from members of St. Edward’s University’s Literature, Writing and Rhetoric department. Featuring Alan Altimont, Timothy Braun, Amy Clements, Mary Helen Specht, Sasha West, Michael Yang, and Beth Eakman.

Alan Altimont (top row, left) has been translating the largely neglected Latin poetry of Marbod of Rennes (1035-1123 CE), the only early medieval European to write poems about himself, his sexuality, aesthetic experience, and the writing of poetry. He is an associate professor of English at St. Edward’s University, where he has taught various literature, creative writing, and composition courses for more than thirty years.

Timothy Braun (top row, middle) is just a guy with a dog, you know? He will read from his New York Times essay Four-Legged Reason to Keep it Real and the opening monologue from his new play Happiness, or Counter Culture in the Age of Fascism, Formerly Titled Seagull 2: Electric Boogaloo: A “Comedy” Kind of, Sort of, Based on Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, but Without Jokes and Meaning, which he is writing in conjunction with his students at St. Edward’s University.

Amy Clements (top row, right) holds an MFA in creative writing from The New School and has served on the faculty of St. Edward’s since 2012. Her short fiction has appeared in The Beloit Fiction Journal, Southern Humanities Review, and The South Carolina Review. She is also the author of The Art of Prestige, a history of the Knopf publishing house.

Mary Helen Specht’s debut novel, Migratory Animals, was an Editors’ Choice by the New York Times Book Review and the Austin American-Statesmen, an IndieNext Pick, and an Apple iBook selection. Migratory Animals also won the Texas Institute of Letters Best First Fiction Award and the Writers’ League of Texas Best Book of Fiction. A previous Fulbright Scholar to Nigeria and Dobie-Paisano Fellow, Specht (bottom row, left) is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at St. Edward’s University. Texas Monthly has named her one of “Ten Writers to Watch.”

Sasha West’s first book, Failure and I Bury the Body, was a winner of the National Poetry Series and the Texas Institute of Letters First Book of Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review Online, Crazyhorse, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. West (bottom row, second from left) is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at St. Edward’s University in Austin, TX.

Michael Yang’s stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly Review, Boulevard, The Seattle Review, and other publications. Yang (bottom row, second from right) is currently working on a book of short stories and a novel.

Beth Eakman’s essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Brain, Child Magazine, New York Family Magazine, and the late, lamented AustinMama.com. Eakman (bottom row, right) is currently working on a memoir. Beth lives with her husband in Austin, Texas, where she has taught writing at St. Edward’s University since 2006.

Join us for an evening with acclaimed Afro-Brazilian poet Salgado Maranhão and translator Alexis Levitin. Their third collaboration, Palávora, will be released shortly by Lavender Ink / Diálogos.

Alexis Levitin’s translation of the Afro-Brazilian poet Salgado Maranhão succeeds in negotiating the quirky experimental richness of Maranhão’s Pre-Columbian, Amazonian, and Yoruba influences with his traditional rhymed lyrics and jazz-like syncopations. Levitin skillfully alerts us to the presence of a complex and offbeat poet whose work merits a wide audience. —Colette Inez

Salgado Maranhão’s Palávora is a fierce, metaphysical testament and testimony to the power of the human spirit and the necessity for the world of the poet and poetry, “expressing a language of within / printed on a horizon of beyond…”. One of South America’s leading poets, Maranhão’s music is masterfully translated here by one of the foremost practitioners of that art in English, Alexis Levitin. Here is essential, brilliant poetry. —Mark Statman

Brazil’s northeast is a dry and ancient land. Little visited, it has come to be known outside the country for producing some if its best writing. Alexis Levitin has given us a perfect English rendering of Salgado Maranhão’s deft expression of the tonality of this people and land. —Gregory Rabassa

Salgado Maranhão (above left) was born in the impoverished interior of Maranhão, in the northeast of Brazil, where he lived with his mother as an illiterate field worker till the age of fifteen. From these humble beginnings, he has risen to a position as one of the leading poets of his country and probably the leading voice representing the Afro-Brazilian experience. He won the prestigious Prêmio Jabuti in 1999 with his fourth poetry collection, Mural of Winds. In 2011, The Color of the Word won the Brazilian Academy of Letters highest poetry award. In 2014, the Brazilian PEN Club chose his collection Mapping the Tribe as best book of poetry for the year. In 2015 the Brazilian Writers Union gave him first prize, again for The Color of the Word. In 2016, he was awarded the Jabuti for his book Opera of Nos. This was his second Jabuti, an extremely rare honor. He has published two books since Opera of Nos: Avessos Avulsos (Sundry Reverses), 2016, and A Sagração dos lobos (Consecration of the Wolves), 2017. In addition to fourteen books of poetry, he has written song lyrics and made recordings with some of Brazil’s leading jazz and pop musicians. His work has appeared in numerous magazines in the USA, including Bitter Oleander, BOMB, Cream City Review, Dirty Goat, Florida Review, Massachusetts Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Here in the USA, prior to Palávora, he was represented by two bilingual collections of poetry: Blood of the Sun (Milkweed Editions, 2012) and Tiger Fur (White Pine Press, 2015). On Nov. 13, 2017, Salgado received an honoris causa doctorate for his achievements in poetry from the Federal University of Piaui in Teresina, Brazil. Salgado, together with his translator, Alexis Levitin, has presented his work at close to one hundred colleges and universities throughout the USA.

Alexis Levitin (above right) translates works from Portugal, Brazil, and Ecuador. His forty-one books of translation include Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm and Eugenio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words, both from New Directions. In 2010, he edited Brazil: A Traveler’s Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press). Recent books from Brazil include Astrid Cabral’s Cage and Salgado Maranhão’s Blood of the Sun and Tiger Fur. Recent books from Portugal include The Art of Patience by Eugenio de Andrade, Exemplary Tales by Portugal’s leading woman writer, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, and Cattle of the Lord by Rosa Alice Branco. Recent books from Ecuador include Tobacco Dogs by Ana Minga, Destruction in the Afternoon by Santiago Vizcaíno, and Outrage by Carmen Váscones. He has been the recipient of two NEA Translation Awards and a participant in two NEH summer seminars. He was a Senior Fulbright Lecturer in Oporto and Coimbra, Portugal in 1980. He was a Fulbright International Specialist teaching Shakespeare and the Translation of American Women Poets into Spanish at the Catholic University of Santiago de Guayaquil, Ecuador, in 2015. IN 2018, he served again as a Fulbright Specialist, teaching Shakespeare, William Blake, and Emily Dickinson, as well as the translation of Contemporary American Women Poets into Portuguese at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. In addition, he has held translation residencies at Banff, Canada, Straelen, Germany (twice), and the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy.

 The Michener Center for Writers presents an evening with acclaimed poet Cathy Park Hong.

Cathy Park Hong’s latest poetry collection, Engine Empire, was published in 2012 by W.W. Norton. Her other collections include Dance Dance Revolution, chosen by Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Translating Mo’um. Hong is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her poems have been published in Poetry, A Public Space, Paris Review,  McSweeney’s, Baffler, Boston Review, The Nation, and other journals. She is the poetry editor of the New Republic and is a professor at Rutgers-Newark University. Her book of creative nonfiction, Stand Up, will be published by One World/Random House in Spring 2020.

Get your cones ready for another round of Malvern Books’ FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld and Schandra Madha. Featuring women-identified writers from the Austin community (and beyond!), this month’s I Screamers are Maryan Nagy Captan, Hedgie Choi, Loan Tran, Shaina Frazier, and Sade LaNay.

Maryan Nagy Captan is a Poetry Fellow at The Michener Center for Writers and serves as the Marketing Director for Bat City Review. Maryan is the author of copy/body (Empty Set Press, 2017) and an alumna of the 2017 Disquiet International Literary Program. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in The Egyptian Writers Folio (Anomaly Press), Foundry, ProLit, AJAR, Apiary Magazine, Mantra Review, Boneless/Skinless, Sundog Lit, and elsewhere.

Hedgie Choi is an MFA fellow at the Michener Center for Writers.

Loan Tran lives in Austin and likes to browse around bookstores and the produce section of supermarkets. She likes so many things, which makes her both readily agreeable and existentially indecisive. She can be dramatic! She can be pleasantly dull. She writes poetry.

Shaina Frazier is a first-year fiction student in the New Writers Project. She was born in Sacramento, CA but was raised in H-Town. Shaina earned her BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston in 2015. She has held various jobs as an administrative assistant, but she’s no longer about that life.

Sade LaNay (fka Murphy) is a poet and artist from Houston, TX. Sade holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Pratt Institute and a BA in Studio Art and Theology from the University of Notre Dame. They are the author of Härte (Downstate Legacies, 2018), self portrait (Birds of Lace, 2018), Dream Machine (co•im•press, 2014), and the forthcoming I love you and I’m not dead (Argos Books, 2019). Her poems are included in the Electric Gurlesque, Bettering American Poetry and Best American Experimental Poetry anthologies. Her writing explores the limits of language and creativity as a balm for systemic violence and generational trauma, specifically as it pertains to lives and bodies of Black and queer people. Alongside her writing, Sade engages in printmaking, silk painting, and book arts with the goal of upholding human connection in the midst of the ongoing struggle for liberation. Her research interests include multilingualism, performance, Black feminist studies, critical race theory, non-hierarchical pedagogy, trauma informed care and the use of monumentality in the manifestation of architectures and public spaces for grief and reconciliation.

~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.

Saturday, April 27th, is Independent Bookstore Day and we’re delighted to be taking part, with free cake (from 12pm until it runs out!) and 20% OFF EVERYTHING ALL DAY LONG! We’re also participating in the Austin Bookstore Crawl with a scavenger hunt! More info here.

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 Of Death. Minimal Odes by Hilda Hilst, translated by Laura Cesarco Eglin.

If life is no more than a prolonged flirtation with death, then Hilda Hilst’s Of Death. Minimal Odes is the true account of a lifelong seduction. It is at once both a reverie and reliquary, as the poet imagines and reimagines that most paradoxical moment of disintegration—the corporeal flesh fusing with death’s own dark corpus. With a visceral-mystical poetic voice that is as teasingly unrestrained as it is intellectually sublime, Hilst’s odes enact a baroque danse macabre, where the poet revels in the incongruities of simultaneously seeking the sacred and profane. Translating the first collection of Hilda Hilst’s significant body of poetry to appear in English, Laura Cescarco Eglin renders the imagery and philosophical complexity of these minimal odes with brio, while preserving the playful tone and lush melodies that mark Of Death. Minimal Odes as uniquely Hilstian.

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 E.C. Belli’s Objects of Hunger, winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Featuring readings from E.C. Belli, Jay Deshpande, Marina Blitshteyn, and Diana Khoi Nguyen.

Objects of Hunger explores in reflective, raw lyrics the dread and beauty of our inner worlds as expressed through our struggles against the self and the other. Each poem is a slender organism that speaks its own mind, unafraid of pathos; the emotions here have been tried on and lived in, and the work accrues, lyric after lyric, page after page. In the second section, World War I poems are broken down and dismantled, as the voices of that era’s poets meld with that of a postpartum mother, exposing a shared vernacular among these disparate experiences. Other poems in the collection explore the unraveling and entrapments of the domestic, but with tenacity in place of softness, using a lexicon gathered from Virginia Woolf’s The Waves and Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood, among others.

E.C. Belli is a bilingual poet and translator. Her translation of I, Little Asylum, a short novel by Emmanuelle Guattari, was published in 2014, and The Nothing Bird, selected poems by Pierre Peuchmaurd, appeared in 2013. She is the recipient of a 2010 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. Her work has been published in Verse, AGNI, and FIELD, among others. Her work in French has appeared in Europe: revue littéraire mensuelle and  PO&SIE.

Jay Deshpande is the author of Love the Stranger and The Rest of the Body (both from YesYes Books). His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Narrative, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from Kundiman, Civitella Ranieri, Saltonstall Arts Colony, and the Key West Literary Seminar, and is currently a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford.

Marina Blitshteyn is the author of Two Hunters, her first full-length collection, published by Argos Books this year with a CLMP Face-Out grant. Prior chapbooks include Russian for Lovers, Nothing Personal, $kill$ (read ‘skills’), and most recently Sheet Music. She lives and works in NYC.

Diana Khoi Nguyen’s debut collection, Ghost Of (Omnidawn, 2018), was selected by Terrance Hayes for the Omnidawn Open Contest. In addition to winning the 92Y “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Contest and being shortlisted for the National Book Award, she is a PhD candidate in creative writing at the University of Denver.

This event features eight terrific authors: Ali Vali, Barbara Ann Wright, Del Robertson, Erin O’Reilly, Lacey Schmidt, Laydin Michaels, MJ Williamz, and JM Dragon. With readings, panel discussion, and book signing. Free admission, refreshments, and book drawing.

Ali Vali (top left) is the author of 6 romantic thrillers in the popular Cain Casey series, and 2 books in her Balance of Forces series: Toujours Ici and Sera Toujours. Ali has also penned numerous stand alone novels. Her most recent publication is Answering the Call, which is a sequel to Calling the Dead. Her next novel (available in May, 2019) is Stormy Seas, a sequel to Blue Skies. Originally from Cuba, Ali has retained much of her family’s culture and traditions that influence her stories. She now lives outside New Orleans with her partner of over 32 years. When she isn’t writing, Ali works in the non-profit sector.

Barbara Ann Wright (top row, second from left) writes fantasy and science fiction novels and short stories when not ranting on her blog. Of her fantasy series, The Pyramid Waltz was one of Tor.com’s Reviewer’s Choice books of 2012, was a Foreword Review Book of the Year Award Finalist and a Goldie finalist, and won the 2013 Rainbow Award for Best Lesbian Fantasy; and A Kingdom Lost was a Goldie finalist and won the 2014 Rainbow Award for Best Lesbian Fantasy Romance. She has also written Thrall: Beyond Gold and Glory, a Viking-themed fantasy, and Paladins of the Storm Lord, a science fantasy, all from Bold Strokes Books. Her latest novel is Inheritors of Chaos.

Del Robertson (top row, third from left) has always been an avid reader, particularly, fantasy, history, the unusual, the offbeat, and the simply odd. She enjoys mixing all these elements into the stories she writes. Thanks to the women in charge at Affinity Rainbow Publications, she’s found a place to tell her tales: From the swash-buckling pirate adventure in Taming the Wolff to the sword-wielding My Fair Maiden, to the real story of St. Nic in Thundersnow and Lightning.

Over a decade ago, Erin O’Reilly (top row, at right) moved to the Texas Hill Country where she resides on Lake LBJ. Her hobbies include rock collecting, bird watching, and gardening. Erin also enjoys reading, cooking, and crafts. She is an active member of the Austin Sapphic Readers’ Group. Erin has a dual literary role as both publisher and author. She is the CEO of Affinity Rainbow Publications, which she co-founded with JM Dragon. In addition, Erin has penned over fifteen novels and co-authored the popular When Hell Meets Heaven series with JM Dragon. Erin is best known for her gentle love stories sprinkled with intrigue and surprises. Her latest novel is Addicted To You.

By day, Dr. Lacey Schmidt (bottom row, at left) is a “corporate” suit. She runs her own company, Minerva Work Solutions, and serves as the Executive Director for Faculty Development at the University of Houston. When she sheds her daytime persona, Lacey morphs into other roles: poet, artist, adventurer, and novelist. In the latter instance, she has published three lesfic romances with Affinity Rainbow Publications: A Walk Away, Catch to Release, and Playing With Matches. Lacey has also penned several short stories. Two romances, “Love’s Luck” and “Peaches and Honey” are in anthologies published by Affinity. Lacey’s latest short story is a sci-fi adventure entitled “A Lone Star.” It’s part of The Lone Star Collection, an anthology which benefits lesfic literary events. Lacey is married and lives in Houston. She and Laura have several furry children: Oberon, the tabby terrorist, and his sidekick, Sabina, plus two couch loving canines, Misha and Nakita.

Laydin Michaels is from Houston, where she shares her home and her life with MJ Williamz. The wide blue skies and long empty roads of Texas have influenced her development as a writer. Being the thirteenth of sixteen children has influenced her desire to kill off characters. She is a mild mannered preschool teacher by day, and a writer of psychological thrillers by night. She has four published novels with Bold Strokes Books: Forsaken, Bitter Root, Buried Heart, and Captured Soul.

MJ Williamz (bottom row, third from left) is the author of seventeen novels, including three Goldie Award winners. She has also written over thirty short stories, most of them erotica with a few romance and horror thrown in for good measure. She lives in Houston with her wife and fur babies.

JM Dragon (bottom row, at right), originally from the UK, is now a New Zealand citizen living in the beautiful Canterbury countryside. She loves to garden and has over 140 chickens of various breeds to tend along with two alpacas, Cherokee and Comanche. She also has three adorable cats, her babies: Katie, Mr. Ginge, and Maxwell, aka Smarty Pants (because he is). When not taking care of the property, she has business interests in Affinity eBook Press, and of course, a love of writing. Published by Affinity Rainbow Publications, JM Dragon’s books include At Last, Breaking the Silence, the Promise, the best-selling Fix-it Girl, the Destiny series, and the 2015 GCLS winner, The One, plus many more. Her various collaborations with Erin O’Reilly include the popular When Hell Meets Heaven Series.

Join us for a poetry reading with Joshua Edwards, Sarah Matthes, and Danielle Wheeler. Sponsored by the Poets & Scholars reading series from UT-Austin’s Poetry & Poetics Interest Group.

Joshua Edwards is the author of several books, including The Exhausted Dream and Photographs Taken at One-Hour Intervals During a Walk from Galveston Island to the West Texas Town of Marfa. He directs Canarium Books, teaches at the University of Chicago, and sometimes sells books at Marfa Book Company.

Sarah Matthes is a poet from central New Jersey. She is a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, where she serves as the poetry editor for ˆ. She has received support for her work from the Yiddish Book Center and the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. Her work can be found at the Iowa Review online, Prodigal, the Bad Version, Girlblood Info, the Feminist Utopia Project, and Yalobusha Review.

Danielle Wheeler was born in the Midwest and was the Rona Jaffe Fellow at the Iowa Writers Workshop where she completed her MFA. Her chapbook, Teenage Exorcists, is available from Slim Princess Holdings.

Come celebrate the release of chapbooks generated through a partnership between writers in the St. Edward’s University Poetry II class, designers in graphic design Junior Studio, and the Risograph Lab. Authors Emma Bernhoft, Jessica Enriquez, Melissa Gonzales, Morgan Hunicutt, Aleida Lopez, Kat McCollum, Madeleine McIlheran, Lizette Nava, Timothy Nguyen, Cielo Ontiveros, Gabriela Rendon, Madeline Smith, Daniela Urda Vazquez, and Taheera Washington will read from their work. Designers will be on hand to talk about the collaboration process with faculty mentors Sasha West and Jimmy Luu.

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

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

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 Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt.

A weird wonder of Argentine and modern literature and a crucial work for Julio Cortázar, The Seven Madmen begins when its hapless and hopeless hero, Erdosain, is dismissed from his job as a bill collector for embezzlement. Then his wife leaves him and things only go downhill after that. Brutal, uncouth, and brilliantly colored, The Seven Madmen takes its bearings from Dostoyevsky while looking forward to Thomas Pynchon and Marvel Comics.

“So firmly rooted was Arlt in the explosive urban society and political culture of his time that his book is able to illuminate what was actually to happen during the first Peronist era in the 1940s and in the country’s later descent into violence in the 1970s after Juan Peron had returned as President for the last time. It is one of the great books of the 20th century.” —The Guardian

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 journalist and author Asher Elbein for the inaugural reading and signing of his new book, Ghost Days. Spooky fun likely. Refreshments a certainty.

Southern Appalachia, 1900. Anna O’Brien had a home, a husband, and a future. Now, cast out by tragedy and strange magic, she wanders the countryside on her wooden leg: living by her wits, settling spirits for her work, and never, ever looking back.

There are plenty of horrors ahead. Ancient things stir in the woods, awakened by the belching locomotives and logging cuts. Dark things yearn for a terrible savior on a remote hill. A bank heist runs afoul of an undead curse. Two women find themselves tormented by a relentless suitor. An omen of death dogs Anna’s heels. And deep in the land beneath mountains, a forgotten god offers a difficult gift. Anna O’Brien’s got a lot to learn. If she’s going to survive, she’d better learn fast…

A collection of linked short stories illustrated by concept artist Tiffany Turrill, Ghost Days is road trip through a land on the brink of massive upheaval and ecological collapse, a world of old traditions and remnant powers.

Asher Elbein is a journalist and short fiction writer based in Austin, Texas. He began writing fiction in high school, briefly set it aside to focus on narrative journalism, and now makes time in his life for both. His work has previously appeared in the New York Times, The Texas Observer, The Atlantic, Bitter Southerner, Oxford American, and Audubon. He likes hats, folk music, wandering back roads and wild places, looking for snakes, and listening to stories.

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 open mic for writers, performers, and acoustic 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 W. Joe Hoppe.

W. Joe Hoppe has taught Creative Writing and English at ACC since 1996. His poetry has appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, as well as two full-length poetry books: Galvanized (2007, Dalton Publishing), and Diamond Plate (2012, Obsolete Publishing). His new collection Hotrod Golgotha will be coming out soon. Joe was named Best Mopar Poet in the Austin Chronicle’s 2016 Best of Austin Awards.

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!

The Rio Review Release party is a fun-filled gathering where students, writers, and creative minds alike come together to celebrate the publication of the newest anthology of ACC’s Student Literary and Arts Journal, The Rio Review!

The Rio Review is a student-run journal that showcases a collection of poetry, prose, and artwork submitted and published by talented ACC students every Fall and Spring semester.

This soirée is not only a party to celebrate the newest edition of The Rio Review, but it is also a perfect opportunity to meet and network with other writers and artists in the area while enjoying refreshments, artwork, and student readings!

artwork info: “No Traffic” by Makenna Hatter

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 a bit of a thriller, featuring a book launch for Joe Giordano’s new Anthony Provati novel, Drone Strike. Joe will be joined by Kathryn Lane and Phil Hewitt. Kathryn will be reading from her newest Nikki Garcia detective novel, Coyote Zone, and Phil will be sharing from Revenge of the Eagle.

In Drone Strike, Karim’s family is killed as ‘collateral damage’ by a U.S. drone strike in Iraq. The Islamic State in the Levant exploits his rage, recruiting him for a terrorist attack on the U.S., and only Anthony Provati can stop him. Drone Strike takes you on a fast-paced adventure across the Mediterranean, into Mexico, finally arriving in the States. Drone Strike explores the psychological realities that seduce Karim to commit an act of terror, includes a love story between Moslem Karim and Miriam, a Christian woman he defends in Turkey, and highlights the plight of Middle Eastern and Central American refugees.

As a former International Executive Vice President of 3M, Joe Giordano’s experience included running a business in the Middle East out of Athens, Greece. Born in New York, he’s had first-hand experience with the cultures and most of the locations in Drone Strike. Joe’s stories have appeared in more than one hundred magazines including The Saturday Evening Post and Shenandoah. His novels, Birds of Passage, An Italian Immigrant Coming of Age Story (2015) and Appointment with ISIL, an Anthony Provati Thriller (2017) were published by Harvard Square Editions. Joe was among one hundred Italian-American authors honored by Barnes & Noble Chairman Len Riggio to march in the 2017 Manhattan, Columbus Day Parade.

Kathryn Lane is the award-winning author of the Nikki Garcia series—Waking Up in Medellin and Coyote Zone. She sets her novels and short stories in exotic places, including the US-Mexico border states. Coyote Zone won first place in the Action/Adventure category in Latino Books into Movies 2018 contest. Her short story collection, Backyard Volcano, won Best Short Story Collection-2018 at Killer Nashville’s International Mystery Writers’ Conference. Waking Up in Medellin won Best Fiction Book of the Year 2017 at Killer Nashville’s International Mystery Writers’ Conference. She lives in The Woodlands, TX, with her husband, Bob Hurt. She loves all of the arts and is a member of the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council.

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 will feature a conversation between ire’ne lara silva and Marilyse Figueroa.

ire’ne lara silva is the author of two poetry collections, furia (Mouthfeel Press, 2010) and Blood Sugar Canto (Saddle Road Press, 2016), which were both finalists for the International Latino Book Award in Poetry, an e-chapbook, Enduring Azucares (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015), as well as a short story collection, flesh to bone (Aunt Lute Books, 2013), which won the Premio Aztlán. She and poet Dan Vera are also the co-editors of Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute Books, 2017), a collection of poetry and essays. ire’ne is the recipient of a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final recipient of the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award, and the 2008 recipient of the Gloria Anzaldúa Milagro Award. ire’ne is currently working on her first novel, Naci. Her latest collection of poetry, CUICACALLI/House of Song, was published by Saddle Road in April 2019.

Marilyse V. Figueroa is an unapologetic Scorpio just like Björk. They are a proud queer Xicanx-Boricua from Oklahoma and Tejas. They have been published in Acentos Review, St. Sucia Zine, and many others. You can catch this water sign writing poems, short fiction, or anything else that flows with their *feelings*. Marilyse works with youth and their writing whenever possible. They are currently the Regional Program Manager for Austin Bat Cave and Director of the San Marcos, Texas chapter of Barrio Writers Workshop.

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 Austin Audio Fiction at Malvern Books for a special introduction to local fiction podcasts. From sci-fi adventure to urban fantasy, learn about the world of audio drama and how your next favorite writer may actually be in your ears. Featuring Chris Garrett (“Splintered Caravan” podcast);Michelle Nickolaisen (“Unplaced”); Gabe Alvarez (“Starcalled”); and A. R. Olivieri (“GREAT & TERRIBLE”).

Michelle Nickolaisen is a writer and creator based in Austin, TX, with projects ranging from a novel series to a tabletop RPG to, of course, fictional podcasts. When not working on one of these projects, you can often find Michelle at the bouldering gym or training martial arts.

A. R. Olivieri is in fact a writer, director, producer, voice actor, anxiety sufferer, imposter, and french fry addict. Mostly though, he’s a creator of podcasts. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Fernando A. Flores’ debut novel, Tears of the Trufflepig, one of Lit Hub and The Millions’s Most Anticipated Books of 2019 and one of Buzzfeed and Tor.com‘s Books to Read This Spring!

A parallel universe. South Texas. Narcotics are legal and there’s a new contraband on the market: ancient Olmec artifacts, shrunken indigenous heads, and filtered animals—species of animals brought back from extinction to clothe, feed, and generally amuse the very wealthy. Esteban Bellacosa has lived in the border town of MacArthur long enough to know to keep quiet and avoid the dangerous syndicates who make their money through trafficking.

But his simple life starts to get complicated when the swashbuckling investigative journalist Paco Herbert invites him to come to an illegal underground dinner serving filtered animals. Bellacosa soon finds himself in the middle of an increasingly perilous, surreal, psychedelic journey, where he encounters legends of the long-disappeared Aranaña Indian tribe and their object of worship: the mysterious Trufflepig, said to possess strange powers.

Written with infectious verve, bold imagination, and oddball humor, Fernando A. Flores’s debut novel, Tears of the Trufflepig, is an absurdist take on life along the border, an ode to the myths of Mexican culture, a dire warning against the one percent’s determination to dictate society’s decline, and a nuanced investigation of loss. It’s also the perfect introduction for Flores: a wonderfully weird, staggeringly smart new voice in American fiction, and a mythmaker of the highest order.

Fernando A. Flores was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and raised in the U.S. In 2018 his short story collection Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas was released by Host Publications.

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

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

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 in celebrating the launch of Rubén Degollado’s Throw, a literary crossover novel set in ‘90s Rio Grande Valley. Rubén will be joined by ire’ne lara silva, Natalia Sylvester, and Gerard Robledo.

Llorona is the only girl Güero has ever loved. A wounded soul, she has adopted the name of a ghost from Mexican folklore. True to her namesake, Llorona cast Güero away with the coldness of the apparition she has become. But Güero—though he would never admit it to his friends—still wants to get back together with her.

Güero spends time with his friends Ángel and Smiley—members of the HCP (Hispanics Causing Panic) gang—roaming the streets of the South Texas border towns they inhabit, trying to forget Llorona even as she seems to appear around every corner.

Over three days Güero’s increasingly violent confrontations with Llorona’s current boyfriend will jeopardize the lives of Ángel and Smiley and the love he hopes to regain.

As events begin to accelerate toward their conclusion—and gang signs are thrown as both threats and claims of identity—the question arises: will Güero throw the HCP sign, or will he throw off that life? Güero’s life will be irrevocably changed by violence and loss, but who will he lose, and will he—somewhere along the way—lose himself?

Rubén Degollado is from the Río Grande Valley. His work has been published in Beloit Fiction Journal, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Image, Relief, and the anthologies Juventud, Fantasmas and Bearing the Mystery. He has been a finalist in American Short Fiction’s annual contest, Glimmer Train’s Family Matters Contest, and Bellingham Review’s Tobias Wolff Award. Throw is his debut novel, and is set in the border towns where he grew up.

ire’ne lara silva (above left) is the author of two poetry collections, furia (Mouthfeel Press, 2010) and Blood Sugar Canto (Saddle Road Press, 2016), which were both finalists for the International Latino Book Award in Poetry, an e-chapbook, Enduring Azucares (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015), as well as a short story collection, flesh to bone (Aunt Lute Books, 2013), which won the Premio Aztlán. She and poet Dan Vera are also the co-editors of Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute Books, 2017), a collection of poetry and essays. ire’ne is the recipient of a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final recipient of the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award, and the 2008 recipient of the Gloria Anzaldúa Milagro Award. ire’ne is currently working on her first novel, Naci. Her latest collection of poetry, CUICACALLI/House of Song, was published by Saddle Road in April 2019.

Natalia Sylvester (above center) is the author of the novels Chasing the Sun and Everyone Knows You Go Home, which was named a Best Book of 2018 by Real Simple. She studied Creative Writing at the University of Miami and is a faculty member of the low-res MFA program at Regis University in Denver, Colorado. Natalia’s articles have appeared in Latina Magazine, Writer’s Digest, The Austin American-Statesman, and NBCLatino.com. Born in Lima, Peru, she came to the U.S. at age four and spent time in South and Central Florida and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas before her family set roots in Miami. She now lives and works in Austin.

Gerard Robledo (above right) is a Latino social justice poet from San Antonio, Texas. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso, teaches creative writing at San Antonio College, and is the Associate Editor for Voices de la Luna: A Quarterly Poetry & Arts Magazine. His Spanish language poetry translations and poetry have appeared in Voices de la Luna, the Texas Poetry Calendar, Pilgrimage, The Thing Itself, Outrage: A Protest Anthology for Injustice in a post 9/11 World, and The Texas Observer. Robledo is also one of the first sixteen poets to be archived in the San Antonio Poetry Archive at Palo Alto College and is a Macondo Writers’ Workshop Fellow.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Hill Country Birds and Waters: Art and Poems, featuring poetry by Jim Blackburn and artwork by Isabelle Scurry Chapman.

Isabelle Scurry Chapman (a.k.a. Princie) makes art and looks for magic in life. Isabelle resides in Houston where she scours the landscape and old books for inspiration and spiritual connections. She has received a Mid-America National Endowment for the Arts individual grant and has shown her work across Texas, the US, and Mexico. Her art is visceral, from the heart and of the spirit.

Jim Blackburn is an environmental lawyer and planner who teaches at Rice University in Civil and Environmental Engineering. He has published two books—The Book of Texas Bays and A Texan Plan for the Texas Coast. He is President of the Trinity Edwards Springs Protection Association (TESPA) that is focused on Hill Country water issues. He was designated a Rice University distinguished alumni laureate in 2018.

Join us for a reading with Dimitris Lyacos and Nick Courtright, and Katy Chrisler.

Dimitris Lyacos is the author of the Poena Damni trilogy (Z213: EXIT, With The People From The Bridge, The First Death). So far translated into thirteen languages, Poena Damni developed as a work in progress over the course of thirty years with subsequent editions and excerpts appearing in journals around the world, as well as in dialogue with a diverse range of sister projects it inspired. Renowned for combining, in a genre-defying form, themes from literary tradition with elements from ritual, religion, philosophy and anthropology, the trilogy reexamines grand narratives in the context of some of the enduring motifs of the Western Canon, while, at the same time, being one of the most widely acclaimed avant-garde works published in the new millennium.

The long-time Co-Executive Editor of Gold Wake Press, Nick Courtright is Executive Editor of Atmosphere Press. He is the author of Let There Be Light, called “a continual surprise and a revelation” by Naomi Shihab Nye, and Punchline, a National Poetry Series finalist. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, The Southern Review, AGNI, The Iowa Review, Boston Review, and The Kenyon Review, among many others. He is currently completing doctoral work at the University of Texas, and lives with his two children in East Austin.

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, and Black Warrior Review. She currently lives and works 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 and Schandra Madha. Featuring women-identified writers from the Austin community (and beyond!), this month’s I Screamers are  Claudia Delfina Cardona, Melanie Robinson, and Liz Clausen.

Claudia Delfina Cardona is a poet from San Antonio, Texas. She received her MFA from Texas State University. She is the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Chifladazine, a publication that highlights the creative work of Latinas and Latinxs. Her poetry can be found in Cosmonauts Avenue, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Apogee. Claudia’s favorite flavor depends on the day, but she knows for certain that her sun is in strawberry, her moon is in chocolate, and her rising is cookies n cream.

Liz Clausen is a writer and graduate student at Texas State University’s MFA program. Her fiction has appeared in Fiction Southeast and delta journal. She’s a Louisiana native, and the proud owner of two crazy dogs. Her favorite ice cream flavor is non-dairy chocolate chip cookie dough.

~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.

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 Barbie Chang by Victoria Chang.

In Barbie Chang, Victoria Chang explores racial prejudice, sexual privilege, and the disillusionment of love through a reimagining of Barbie – perfect in the cultural imagination yet repeatedly falling short as she pursues the American dream. By turns woeful and passionate, playful and incisive, these poems reveal a voice insisting that “even silence is not silent.”

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!

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 Penelope Mortimer’s The Pumpkin Eater, a surreal black comedy about the wages of adulthood.

A strange, fresh, gripping book. One of the the many achievements of The Pumpkin Eater is that it somehow manages to find universal truths in what was hardly an archetypal situation: Mortimer peels several layers of skin off the subjects of motherhood, marriage, and monogamy, so that what we’re asked to look at is frequently red-raw and painful without being remotely self-dramatizing. In fact, there’s a dreaminess to some of the prose that is particularly impressive, considering the tumult that the book describes. —Nick Hornby, The Believer

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 open mic for writers, performers, and acoustic musicians. Everyone is welcome to join us for this fun and friendly free evening suitable for performers of all ages and abilities.

This month’s Lion & Pirate will also feature guests Jeff Moyer and Christopher Cook and Emmy Rose.

Jeff Moyer is an award-winning songwriter and disability history documentarian who recently published his memoir GRIT: A Family Memoir on Adversity and Triumph. GRIT tells the story of Jeff’s resilience in the face of progressive blindness. It is important for both American and Disability History in part because it documents the horrors of State Institutions for individuals with cognitive disabilities, within which Jeff’s younger brother Mark languished for 33 years until Jeff was able to pull him out and establish a supported living home for him in Jeff’s neighborhood. In addition, the book tells the story of Jeff’s role as a leader in the Disability Rights Movement and his work in assistive technology that included his role evaluating the speech synthesizer that became the speech prosthesis used by Dr. Stephen Hawking until his death. Further, it documents Jeff’s experience as a kidney donor with resulting severe and chronic pain.

Cook & Rose are a duo from Central Texas, playing original music rooted in folk and blues. Their songs of sadness, loss, and defiance reflect their Western roots and longing for redemption.

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

Join us for a reading with Skye Jackson, Benjamin Aleshire, and Josh Denslow. We’ll be celebrating the release of Skye’s new chapbook, A Faster Grave (Antenna Press).

Skye Jackson was born in New Orleans. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop where she serves as an associate poetry editor of Bayou Magazine. She is the author of the prizewinning chapbook, A Faster Grave, published by Antenna.

Benjamin Aleshire travels the world as a poet-for-hire, composing poems for strangers on a manual typewriter. His work has been featured recently in The Times UK, Iowa Review, Boston Review, and on television in the US, China, and Spain. An excerpt of his novel, ‘Poet for Hire: Kismet of a 21st Century Troubadour’ is forthcoming in LitHub. Ben was a Breadloaf waiter in 2016, and serves as assistant poetry editor for the Green Mountains Review. He lives in New Orleans.

Josh Denslow’s debut collection Not Everyone Is Special (7.13 Books) is a real book you can hold in your hands! In addition to constructing elaborate Lego sets with his three boys, he plays the drums in the band Borrisokane and edits at SmokeLong Quarterly.

Join us for a reading from members of Donna M. Johnson’s literary nonfiction workshop. Readers TBA.

Join us for a reading with Micah Bateman, Ash Smith, Daniel Eduardo Ruiz and Matthew Klane.

Micah Bateman is the author of a chapbook of poems, Polis, from the Catenary Press; the recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poetry Award; and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Austin, where he’s at work on a Ph.D. dissertation, “#WebPoetsSociety: Poetry in the Digital Public Sphere.”

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

Daniel Eduardo Ruiz was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico and studies poetry at the Michener Center for Writers. A former Fulbright Scholar, his poems can be found in New Ohio Review, Juked, The Journal, and elsewhere.

Matthew Klane is co-editor at Flim Forum Press. His books include Canyons (w/ James Belflower, Flim Forum, 2016), Che (Stockport Flats, 2013), and B (Stockport Flats, 2008). An e-chapbook from Of the Day is online at Delete Press and an e-book My is online at Fence Digital. Recent work is online or forthcoming at Barzakh, Homonym, Pulpmouth, and The Spectacle. He currently lives and writes in Albany, NY, where he curates the The REV Poetry Series and teaches at Russell Sage College.

Please join us for a celebratory reading by the writers of S. Kirk Walsh’s nine-month fiction workshop (Sept-June). Writers include Deborah de Freitas, Lisa Jackson, Jack Kaulfus, Sarah Morgan, Alejandro Puyana, Sara Saylor, Jason Sprinkle, Allison Turrell, and Julie Wernersbach. Short excerpts from novels and short stories will be read. Everyone is welcome to attend.

For the past nine months, this talented group has participated in an intensive fiction workshop, drafting and revising novels and short stories throughout the year. Please join us in celebrating their inspiring work and distinctive voices with this end-of-the-workshop reading.

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

Join us in celebrating the launch of Lance Myers’s Why So Much?, the first publication of Austin-based publishing company Persistence of Vision. With readings from Lance and W. Joe Hoppe.

Debut author Lance Fever Myers paints the heartbreaking portrait of a teenage artist struggling to find her voice in a small refinery town off the Texas Gulf Coast. Why So Much? is an emotionally rich novel exploring sex, death, addiction, celebrity, and theme restaurants at the turn of the millennium. Think Vonnegut meets Jonathan Franzen.

Lance Myers has been a professional artist, writer, and animator for over twenty years. His traditional animation can be seen in the feature films Space Jam, Anastasia, Quest for Camelot, Prince of Egypt, and Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly. His essays and comics have appeared in the Austin American-Statesman, The Austin Chronicle, JINX, and Powerball Magazine. He has also written and directed several short subject films which have shown on HBO, MTV, Adult Swim, PBS, and Canada’s Movieola. Myers was born in Lubbock but got to Austin as fast as he could. He currently teaches in the Communications Department at the University of Texas, and his debut novel, Why So Much? is now available through Persistence of Vision Publishing and in fine bookstores everywhere.

W. Joe Hoppe has taught Creative Writing and English at ACC since 1996. His poetry has appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, as well as two full-length poetry books:  Galvanized (2007, Dalton Publishing), and Diamond Plate (2012, Obsolete Publishing). His new collection Hotrod Golgotha will be coming out soon. Joe was named Best Mopar Poet in the Austin Chronicle’s 2016 Best of Austin Awards.

Austin Writers Roulette is a bimonthly 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 “Volcanic Summer”—under normal conditions, this would have NEVER happened. In addition to performing our theme-inspired works, everyone is invited to share their favorite Brian Grosz story or written piece that honors him. An open mic follows intermission. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.

It’s Bloomsday! Named for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Bloomsday is observed around the world on June 16th, as this is the date during which the events of Ulysses are relived (16th June, 1904). Join us for a celebration of the life of James Joyce, with short readings from Ulysses (sign up in store on the day if you’d like to read!) and suitably Irish snacks.

You’re invited to join us for another Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series! June’s theme is “Traveling Light” and the guests are Lucas Schaefer, Dalia Azim, S. Kirk Walsh, Nancy Koerbel, and Michael Fracasso (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.

Lucas Schaefer’s fiction has appeared in One Story and CRAFT. He has received a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center, and has been a recent resident at 100W Corsicana, the Studios of Key West, and the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods. A graduate of the New Writers Project at UT-Austin, Lucas lives with his husband in Austin and is currently at work on a novel.

Dalia Azim’s writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Aperture, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Glimmer Train (where she won their Short Story Award for New Writers), Other Voices, and Sightlines, among other places. She is manager of special projects at the Blanton Museum of Art and is working on a novel.

S. Kirk Walsh’s work has appeared—or is forthcoming—in StoryQuarterly, Guernica, Electric Literature, the New York Times Book Review, Longreads, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. She lives in Austin, Texas, and is the founder of Austin Bat Cave, a writing and tutoring center for kids. Walsh has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, Ragdale, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is currently at work on a novel about Detroit, Michigan. 

Nancy Koerbel’s poems have recently appeared in Redactions, One, and The Pittsburgh Poetry Review. A former recipient of a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, she lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she teaches legal and business writing, works as a copyeditor for a large tech company, and coordinates the Pittsburgh branch of Why There are Words.

Michael Fracasso, musician, chef, and Austinite, is a genre-crossing artist incapable of repeating himself. His critically acclaimed work includes nine distinctive solo CDs, recorded duets with both Patty Griffin and Lucinda Williams, an epic reinterpretation of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero,” and memorable tributes to Woody Guthrie, Mickey Newbury and Townes Van Zandt. In 2011 he was short listed for the Austin Public Library Award for literary achievement.

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 Lucy Negro, Redux: The Bard, a Book, and a Ballet by Caroline Randall Williams.

Part lyrical narrative, part bluesy riff, part schoolyard chant and part holy incantation, the book is an unflinching investigation of otherness and a dead-sexy exploration of the intersection of identity and desire. Above all it is a witty and audacious rejoinder to literary history and its systematic suppression of female voices. Especially black female voices.
—The New York Times

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 release of Michael Parker’s highly acclaimed new novel, Prairie Fever, a moving, funny, and often surprising story about the unique connection between sisters. Michael will be in conversation with Laura Furman.

In Prairie Fever, Parker takes his readers to the prairie of Oklahoma in the early 1900s and introduces two sisters, opposites in every way, as they grow up amongst the rugged landscape. 

“In the tradition of Katherine Ann Porter, Parker’s exceptional tale explores the power and strength of kinship on the harsh American frontier.” —Publishers Weekly

“A frontier tale of sibling rivalry. . . Parker’s novel isn’t as much about sisterhood as love, as the two struggle to reckon with their estrangement head-on; some of the novel’s most powerful sections are Elise’s letters to Lorena, addressed not directly to sis but to the horse she rode during the blizzard. . .the easygoing, sometimes-smirking nature of the prose (True Grit comes to mind) makes the novel a pleasant ride overall.” —Kirkus Reviews

Michael Parker’s work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times Magazine, the Oxford American, Runner’s World, Men’s Journal, and elsewhere. His work has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Pushcart Prize. He is the Nicholas and Nancy Vacc Distinguished Professor in the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and divides his time between Saxapahaw, North Carolina, and Austin, Texas.

Laura Furman was born in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Bennington College. After college she worked at Grove Press and then as a freelance copy editor for various New York publishing houses and the Menil Foundation. Her first story appeared in The New Yorker in 1976, and since then work has appeared in Yale Review, Epoch, Southwest Review, Ploughshares, American Scholar, and other magazines. Her books include three collections of short stories, two novels, and a memoir. Her most recent collection is The Mother Who Stayed. She has received fellowships from the New York State Council on the Arts, Dobie Paisano Project, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Since 2002, she’s been Series Editor of The O. Henry Prize Stories. For many years, she taught at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is now professor emerita. Laura Furman lives in Austin with her husband Joel Warren Barna and their son.

Join us in celebrating the Austin launch of Matty Layne Glasgow’s debut poetry collection deciduous qween (Red Hen Press). With readings from Matty, as well as Esteban Rodriguez, Laura Villarreal, and Alfredo Aguilar.

Matty Layne Glasgow’s debut collection deciduous qween is the winner of the 2017 Benjamin Saltman Award with Red Hen Press. Selected by President Obama’s inaugural poet Richard Blanco, deciduous qween explores the queer world all around us through the creaking of bedazzled branches and the soft rustle of jeweled leaves, revealing how we, like our environment, wear and shed identities in our performance as human, as drag queen, as ancient tree.

Matty Layne Glasgow’s debut collection, deciduous qween (Red Hen Press, 2019), was selected by Richard Blanco for the Benjamin Saltman Award. His poems appear in the Missouri Review, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Ecotone, Poetry Daily, Houston Public Media, and elsewhere. He lives in Houston, Texas and teaches with Writers in the Schools.

Esteban Rodríguez is the author of Dusk & Dust, forthcoming from Hub City Press (September 2019) and the micro-chapbook Soledad (Ghost City Press, 2019). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, The Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Puerto del Sol, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. His reviews have appeared in PANK and American Book Review. He lives with his family and teaches in Austin, Texas.

Laura Villareal earned her MFA from Rutgers University-Newark. She is a recipient of the 2018 Key West Literary Seminar Teacher and Librarian Scholarship, The Highlights Foundation’s 2018 Laurie Halse Anderson Scholarship and Poetry at Round Top’s 2019 Norma Pascusz Fellowship. Her first chapbook The Cartography of Sleep came out in 2018 with Nostrovia! Press. Her writing can be found in Black Warrior Review, Vinyl, Waxwing, and elsewhere.

Alfredo Aguilar is the son of Mexican immigrants. He is a winner of the 92Y’s Discovery Contest and author of the chapbook What Happens On Earth (BOAAT Press 2018). He has been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Frost Place. His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Best New Poets 2017, The Adroit Journal and elsewhere. Originally from North County San Diego, he now resides in Texas.

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

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

To celebrate our fourth birthday, we’ll have cake and a big ole heaping scoop of open mic performances from our women and non-binary community! Stay tuned for more party details!

Join us in celebrating the launch of McAllen Poet Laureate Edward Vidaurre’s new collection of poetry, JAZzHOUSE. With readings from Edward, as well as Daniel García Ordaz, Reyes Cárdenas, Jo Reyes-Boitel, and Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros.

JAZzHOUSE features compelling love songs to the intensity of everyday life; from the magic in the routine to the marvels and miraculousness of living. Edward Vidaurre takes us with him on his life trip, from East LA to the Rio Grande Valley and all the far-reaching roots that accompany him in the form of ancestors, spirits, family, and other familiars. JAZzHOUSE is a base camp, and a life. We are invited in to share some food, some cafecito, or a glass of wine—to sit awhile and be grateful for every minute we are alive.

Edward Vidaurre is the 2018-2019 McAllen,Texas Poet Laureate and author of five collections of poetry: I Took My Barrio on A Road Trip (Slough Press 2013), Insomnia (El Zarape Press 2014), Beautiful Scars: Elegiac Beat Poems (El Zarape Press 2015), Chicano Blood Transfusion (FlowerSong Press 2016), and Ramona & Rumi: Love in the Time of Oligarchy & Unedited Necessary Poems (Hercules Publishing 2018). Vidaurre has been published in several literary journals and anthologies. Vidaurre was the Director of Operations in 2018 for the Valley International Poetry Festival, moderator for Poets Responding, and founder of Pasta, Poetry & Vino, a reading series in the Rio Grande Valley. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and resides in McAllen. He writes from the front lines of the Mexican-American borderlands of El Valle in south Texas. Born and raised in Boyle Heights, California.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Murder on the Third Try, the third installment in K.P. Gresham’s Pastor Matt Hayden mystery series.

Former undercover cop Mike Hogan wakes up in an Austin, Texas, hospital ICU. Not only is he missing part of his skull, he is missing four years of memories. In those four years he learns he has entered the Fed’s Witness Protection Program and become a pastor, taken a church in rural Texas, and fallen in love with the beguiling, red-headed owner of the town’s local bar.

He does remember why he’s on the run. Howard Rutledge, former Chief of Police in Miami, has killed Mike’s father and brother, and wants Mike dead too. Mike’s testimony could put Rutledge in jail for racketeering, smuggling, and murder. When Mike wakes up in that ICU, he can only assume that Rutledge has found him.

Mike is helpless with a broken body and an unsettled mind. Who are his friends and who are his foes? Can he trust the kindly sheriff who has hired security to guard him? Can he trust the woman whom his soul remembers but his brain does not? Who in this unfamiliar world is his assassin? Mike Hogan must stay alive to put Rutledge away, and the hole in his head and his piecemeal memory are not going to stop him.​

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.

We’ll be open from 10am – 5pm on July 4th. We’ll be eating cake and reading from The Constitution every hour—and we’re also offering 25% off all non-fiction from our “Other” section.

Join us for a homecoming reading from Austinite Dr. Walter Moore. His book of poetry, My Lungs Are a Dive Bar, a series of deadpan/gritty/neo-beat/punkish poems about rural Indiana and urban Washington (some Texas, too) was published by EMP Books in the Spring of 2019. Walter will be joined by Owen Egerton.

“Hilarious, painful, and outrageous—often in the same phrase. Drawing from overheard fist fights, willfully eschewed observations, and half-a-lifetime of wrong turns turned right, Walter Moore crafts nail-sharp poems and prose explosions with a kind of screaming, laughing brilliance that is not be missed. These pages will slap your eyes until everything you see shines.” —Owen Egerton

Dr. Walter Moore or “Walt” was born in Singapore and has lived in about twenty cities/towns around the world: from Jakarta, Indonesia; Houston and Austin, Texas; Oklahoma City; Brooklyn, New York, and Carmel, California, to Providence, Rhode Island; Seattle, Washington, and Perth, Australia, among other places. In a former life, he worked as a life guard, line cook, restaurant server, law clerk, and tennis teaching professional. More recently, he’s written reading passages for an education textbook company, worked as a journalist for a few newspapers, and published poems in various journals. His scholarly research interests include 20th-Century American Literature and Film and, specifically, how selected literary and cinematic texts “speak to” the narratives of gentrification in U.S. cities. Walt is also currently working on a novel about a drifter who returns to his hometown of Houston, Texas. Dr. Moore has taught courses in academic writing, creative writing, literature, and film in places as varied as Southwestern University, the University of Rhode Island, and the University of Washington Tacoma. 2018-2019 marks his second year of teaching at Oregon State University and his fifteenth year of teaching at the college level overall. He holds a BA in English from DePauw University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University, and a Ph.D. in American Studies (English) from Purdue University. His other joys include playing soccer and tennis, watching movies, seeing live music, and hanging out in the Pacific Northwest with his partner Erica and his 100-pound dog/beast Lloyd.

Owen Egerton, original Austin polymath, is one of the founders of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Master Pancake Theatre, has acted in several films, emcees the Fantastic Debates at the Fantastic Fest, and hosts public radio’s The Write Up. He’s written four books of fiction (the novel Hollow being the most recent) and directed three films. Mercy Black, his most recent film, was just released by Netflix.

On Saturday, July 6th, ALL SALES, ALL DAY will go directly to NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, an organization that fights for reproductive freedom. If you’d like to learn more about NARAL, join us at 7pm to hear from a NARAL representative who will tell us more about the organization and how we can get involved. And yes, of course, snacks will be served.

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

This month’s selection is Tatyana Tolstaya’s The Slynx, which reimagines dystopian fantasy as a wild amusement park ride.

Poised between Nabokov’s Pale Fire and Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, The Slynx is a brilliantly inventive and shimmeringly ambiguous work of art: an account of a degraded world that is full of echoes of the sublime literature of Russia’s past; a grinning portrait of human inhumanity; a tribute to art in both its sovereignty and its helplessness; a vision of the past as the future in which the future is now.

“It is impossible to communicate adequately the richness, the exuberance, and the horrid inventiveness of The Slynx.” — John Banville, The New Republic

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 open mic for writers, performers, and acoustic 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 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 authors are M. Ward Leon and J. Darris Mitchell.

M. Ward Leon’s new book, Blood of the Beast, is an action thriller featuring an international French eco-terrorist group waging a world war against poachers and big game hunters. And J. Darris Mitchell’s Fireflies and Cosmos: Interstellar Spring Book 1 is a humorous space opera about love in all of its forms.

M. Ward Leon is a former advertising creative director who started his career at Doyle Dane Bernbach, New York, during the Madmen era. While at DDB his writing on the Volkswagen Rabbit campaign won him inclusion into the Smithsonian Institution Advertising Archives. Recently his writing has earned him two National Emmy Awards for Public Service advertising. He recently became a published author, with his novel; The Blood of the Beast, published with Beacon Publishing Group. He is a graduate of California State University Los Angeles and an alumnus of Art Center College of Design.

J. Darris Mitchell is a native of Austin, TX who is obsessed with bringing biodiversity back to the city. He lives with his darling wife, his amazing son, a flock of chickens, a lazy cat, and a backyard brimming with wildflowers and insects.

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 guest is Raj Patel, co-author of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet.

Raj Patel is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, and a Senior Research Associate at the Unit for the Humanities at the university currently known as Rhodes University (UHURU), South Africa. In addition to numerous scholarly publications in economics, philosophy, politics and public health journals, he regularly writes for The Guardian, and has contributed to the Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Times of India, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Mail on Sunday, and The Observer. His first book was Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. His second, The Value of Nothing, was a New York Times and international best-seller. His latest, co-written with Jason W. Moore, is A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things.

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 launch of the 2019 summer 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.

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 Emily O’Neill, E. Kristin Anderson, and Layne Ransom.

Emily O’Neill teaches writing and tends bar in Cambridge, MA. Her debut poetry collection, Pelican (2015), won YesYes Books’ inaugural Pamet River Prize, as well as the 2016 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Series in Poetry. Her second collection with YesYes, a falling knife has no handle (2018), was named one of the ten most anticipated poetry titles of fall by Publishers Weekly and long-listed for the Julie Suk Award from Jacar Press. She is the author of five chapbooks and her recent work appears in Bennington Review, Catapult, Hypertrophic Literary, Little Fiction, Redivider, and Salt Hill, among others.

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet and glitter enthusiast living mostly at a Starbucks somewhere in Austin, Texas. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press), and her work has been published worldwide in many magazines. She is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press), and Behind, All You’ve Got (Semiperfect Press, forthcoming). Kristin is a poetry reader at Cotton Xenomorph and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked nights at The New Yorker.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Donna Dechen Birdwell’s new novel, Not Knowing, on July 20th, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon walk—an event that is of some significance in this book!

Donna Dechen Birdwell is an anthropologist whose latest novel takes place in two locales she knows and loves—Belize and Texas. Stepping away from the dystopian future she created in Recall Chronicles, she writes in Not Knowing about two wings of our human quest for knowledge—archaeology and space exploration.

Join us for a discussion with Daisy Hernández, co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism. Daisy will be interviewed by Chaitali Sen.

Newly revised and updated, this landmark anthology offers gripping portraits of American life as seen through the eyes of young women of color.

It has been decades since women of color first turned feminism upside down, exposing the feminist movement as exclusive, white, and unaware of the concerns and issues of women of color from around the globe. Since then, key social movements have risen, including Black Lives Matter, transgender rights, and the activism of young undocumented students. Social media has also changed how feminism reaches young women of color, generating connections in all corners of the country. And yet we remain a country divided by race and gender. Now, a new generation of outspoken women of color offer a much-needed fresh dimension to the shape of feminism of the future. In Colonize This!, Daisy Hernández and Bushra Rehman have collected a diverse, lively group of emerging writers who speak to the strength of community and the influence of color, to borders and divisions, and to the critical issues that need to be addressed to finally reach an era of racial freedom. With prescient and intimate writing, Colonize This! will reach the hearts and minds of readers who care about the experience of being a woman of color, and about establishing a culture that fosters freedom and agency for women of all races.

Daisy Hernández is the author of A Cup of Water under My Bed: A Memoir and the former editor of ColorLines magazine. She has written for National Geographic, The Atlantic, the New York Times, and NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and currently teaches creative writing at Miami University in Ohio.

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.

Get your cones ready for another round of Malvern Books’ FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld and Schandra Madha. Featuring women-identified writers from the Austin community (and beyond!), this month’s I Screamers are Jasmine Waiters, Susan Niz, and Simone Warner.

Jasmine Waiters is an emerging spoken word poet from California. As an artist, she often uses raw truth, relentless imagery, and ambitious metaphors as a means for commentary and expression. In June of this year Jasmine released her poetry book, Before We Were Magic, and performed on an international stage for the first time. She traveled to Australia to perform at, and co-facilitate a workshop for the Emerging Writers Festival. She also headlined a feature performance for Slamalamadingdong Poet Slam while in Melbourne. Jasmine’s hope is that through spoken and written word she can promote healing, understanding, empowerment, and community. Her favorite flavor of ice cream is orange sherbet!

Susan Niz’s first poetry chapbook is Beyond this Amniotic Dream (Beard Poetry, Minneapolis, 2016). She has a second chapbook, Left-Handed Like a Lightning Whelk, forthcoming with Finishing Line Press (November 2019). Her short work has appeared in Ponder Review, Ginosko, Tipton Poetry Journal, Blue Bonnet Review, and other places. She has been featured in live poetry shows in Minneapolis and Austin. Susan writes across genres. Her novel Kara, Lost (North Star Press, 2011) was a finalist for a Midwest Book Award (MIPA) for Literary Fiction. She has a Master’s Degree in Education, raises kids, has been a grassroots community organizer, and conserves Monarchs. She recently relocated from Minnesota (having survived the Polar Vortex last winter) to the Austin area. She will be leading a poetry workshop at local libraries called “You are a poet.” Her favorite flavor of ice cream is salted caramel!

Simone Warner is passionate about language. She studied French at UT and currently translates commercial copy. She studied Creative Writing at ACC where her poetry habit found technique and where she opened to other genres. Her favorite flavor of ice cream is cookies and cream.

~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.

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 Lima :: Limón by Natalie Scenters-Zapico.

In her striking second collection, Scenters-Zapico sets her unflinching gaze once again on the borders of things. Lima :: Limón illuminates both the sweet and the sour of the immigrant experience, of life as a woman in the U.S. and Mexico, and of the politics of the present day. Drawing inspiration from the music of her childhood, her lyrical poems focus on the often-tested resilience of women. Scenters-Zapico writes heartbreakingly about domestic violence and its toxic duality of macho versus hembra, of masculinity versus femininity, and throws into harsh relief the all-too-normalized pain that women endure. Her sharp verse and intense anecdotes brand her poems into the reader; images like the Virgin Mary crying glass tears and a border fence that leaves never-healing scars intertwine as she stares down femicide and gang violence alike. Lima :: Limón is grounding and urgent, a collection that speaks out against violence and works toward healing.

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 C. S. Woolwine’s debut novel, Cyclic.

Cyclic is a new take on the integration of man and machine. Imagine being able to think of anything you desire, and instantly spawn it into existence. Imagine the good that could come from this, the wonder and excitement, the freedom of creation. Nothing is off limits! Now, imagine the bad. The purpose of this tale is to open your mind to the possibility, to explore what could be. This epic adventure is set in the distant future when society has already deemed this technology worthy. The story follows Cal, whose mediocre life can be best described as wanting. He’s thrown into a world he never knew existed when he discovers certain traits which make him particularly skilled with this technology. He must rebuild himself after tragedy, learn to master cyclic, and fight for what he believes in… even when it’s only him who believes it.

C. S. Woolwine, also known as “HaxDogma,” was born in the little border town of Yuma, Arizona. Growing up he lived in Pasadena, Maryland where he found his passion for technology. After high school, he decided to pursue cyber security and found his calling for Information Technology. Right after college, he moved down to Austin, TX with his girlfriend, now wife, and started climbing the corporate ladder. His quick rise in the IT field, and his YouTube channel dedicated to analytical discussion, gave him the confidence to continue pursuing a dream he’s had since he was a boy, writing. Inspired to create a better world for his wife and furry children, Mr. Woolwine finished the story he has been trying to tell his entire life… Cyclic.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Ron Seybold’s Stealing Home, a memoir about fatherhood, baseball, and an epic road trip with a Little Leaguer.

An epic road trip with my tween set me on a path to uncover perfection in fatherhood—and how my father’s suicide didn’t doom me to recreate his mistakes. Stealing Home is the story of an 11-day, 9-game road trip I took with my Little Leaguer—and how my plans for perfection delivered things much deeper than scores, miles, and smiles. You don’t have to drive 3,147 miles to find your way to fatherhood. When I did, something magical and rare appeared at the end of the journey, inside my heart as well as on a diamond. As a divorced dad, I was trying to redeem my fatherhood with a baseball road trip with my Little League son Nicky. Our odyssey of nine games in eleven days, crossing eight states in a rented convertible, was supposed to salvage my life as an unsure father. Custody Dad fatherhood demoted me to the second team. I was certain of that. One sign of salvation came unbidden in an unscheduled tenth ballgame. The adventures and revelations of the road led to a deeper reckoning of how my father had failed enough at his fatherhood to take his own life. Thousands of miles and dozens of innings delivered a discovery: a drive toward perfect fatherhood has a destination that cannot be found on any map.

Ron Seybold directs the Writer’s Workshop in Austin, a place for workshopping, books and weekly creativity groups. His debut novel is Viral Times, futuristic thriller about a pandemic that changes the way the world heals and loves. A two-time finalist in the Writer’s League of Texas manuscript contests for memoir and historical fiction, he’s reported over the radio, acted in Austin melodramas, and walks his standard poodle Tess Harding less often than she’d like. A teaching volunteer at the Austin Bat Cave literacy program in schools, he coaches writers, edits books, and plays a part in helping authors from inspiration to publication.

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

The keynote poet is Alex Lemon, author of Another Last Day (Milkweed Editions, 2019). Saúl Hernández will be an additional poetry reader. The featured artist for this issue is James Surls, who contributed his artwork to the cover of Borderlands‘ Issue #1 in 1992! An engaging visual series by Surls is showcased in Issue 50 and several pieces will be presented at Malvern Books by Ruby Surls, James’ daughter. Frances Thompson from the UMLAUF Sculpture Garden & Museum will discuss Surls’s current exhibit there. Liz Garton Scanlon, early Borderlands editor, will provide remarks on the history of the journal. Terry Sherrell, account liaison for Borderlands since the premier issue, will discuss her experiences designing and printing the journal.

Bring friends – join the celebration! The event is free of charge and open to everyone. Copies will be available for purchase on-site.

Keynote poet Alex Lemon’s Another Last Day was just published by Milkweed Editions. He is the author of two memoirs—Feverland: A Memoir in Shards and Happy: A Memoir—and four poetry collections: The Wish Book, Fancy Beasts, Hallelujah Blackout and Mosquito. His writing has appeared in Borderlands, Esquire, American Poetry Review, The Huffington Post, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry, Tin House, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, AGNI, New England Review, The Southern Review, Grist, and jubilat, among numerous other publications. Among his awards are a 2005 Fellowship in Poetry from the NEA, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship, and a 2006 Minnesota Arts Board Grant. He is an editor at large for Saturnalia Books, the Poetry Editor of descant and he sits on the advisory board of The Southern Review and TCU Press. He lives in Fort Worth with his amazing family and teaches at TCU.

Saúl Hernández is a queer writer from San Antonio, TX. He was raised by undocumented parents and as a Jehovah Witness. He has a MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso. He’s the former Director for Barrio Writers at Borderlands. He’s a semi-finalists for the 2018 Francine Ringold Award for New Writers, Nimrod Literary Journal. His work has appeared/is forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Normal School, and Rio Grande Review.

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

Join us for an evening with translator Sam Bett, who will be introducing and reading from his new book, a translation of Yukio Mishima’s novel Star. Sam will be joined by a number of poets, including Sarah Matthis, Rainey Frasier, Taylor Davis, Dion K. James, and Stephanie Davison, who will read poems that address the novel’s themes of celebrity, the camera, and “being seen.”

All eyes are on Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer, screaming and yelling to attract his attention—they would kill for a moment alone with him. Finally the director sets up the shot, the camera begins to roll, someone yells “action”; Rikio, for a moment, transforms into another being, a hardened young yakuza, but as soon as the shot is finished, he slumps back into his own anxieties and obsessions. Being a star, constantly performing, being watched and scrutinized as if under a microscope, is often a drag. But so is life. Written shortly after Yukio Mishima himself had acted in the film Afraid to Die, this novella is a rich and unflinching psychological portrait of a celebrity coming apart at the seams. With exquisite, vivid prose, Star begs the question: is there any escape from how we are seen by others?

SAM BETT studied Japanese at UMass-Amherst and Kwansei Gakuin University. Awarded Grand Prize in the 2016 JLPP International Translation Competition, he has translated fiction by Yoko Ogawa, Yukio Mishima, and NISIOISIN. With David Boyd, he is co-translating the novels of Mieko Kawakami for Europa Editions.

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 A House and Its Head, Ivy Compton-Burnett’s subversive look at the politics of family life.

A radical thinker, one of the rare modern heretics, said Mary McCarthy of Ivy Compton-Burnett, in whose austere, savage, and bitingly funny novels anything can happen and no one will ever escape. The long, endlessly surprising conversational duels at the center of Compton-Burnett’s works are confrontations between the unspoken and the unspeakable, and in them the dynamics of power and desire are dramatized as nowhere else. 

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 open mic for writers, performers, and acoustic 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.

Join us in celebrating the recent release of Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s David Mogo, Godhunter, a powerful and atmospheric urban fantasy novel set in Lagos. Suyi will be joined by Austin writer Jack Kaulfus.

The gods have fallen to earth in their thousands, and chaos reigns. Though broken and leaderless, the city endures. David Mogo, demigod and godhunter, has one task: capture two of the most powerful gods in the city and deliver them to the wizard gangster Lukmon Ajala. No problem, right?

Suyi Davies Okungbowa is a Nigerian SFF author of the recent godpunk novel, David Mogo, Godhunter. His shorter works have appeared in Lightspeed, Tor.com., Strange Horizons, Fireside, and other periodicals and anthologies. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria and Tucson, Arizona, where he teaches undergraduate creative writing while completing his MFA.

Join us for another installment of Novel Night, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: published author/s 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 authors are Joseph Reid and Meg Gardiner. Joseph will be reading from his recent thriller, False Horizon, and Meg will also be reading from her most recent thriller, Into the Black Nowhere, the second novel in the UNSUB series, featuring rookie FBI agent Caitlin Hendrix.

“An exciting final battle, plenty of technical details, quirky characters, and the West Virginia setting all add up to a riveting, fast-moving thriller.” —Publishers Weekly

A commuter flight has fallen from clear skies over West Virginia, its wing sheared off at twenty thousand feet. Air marshal Seth Walker is called to the mountains of Appalachia to investigate. But what he stumbles into is a ground war as unpredictable and combustible as a mason jar full of nitroglycerin. Before he can even start searching for what might have downed the plane, Walker finds himself caught in the confounding—and deadly—cross fire between drone-deploying eco-terrorists, unstable frackers, ruthless drug smugglers, and armed miners pushed to the breaking point. The escalating mystery takes a personal turn as Seth gets closer to the truth about the money, power, and politics motivating everyone involved—including those Seth believed he could trust. Can he dodge the danger lurking in every hill and holler long enough to discover what may be the biggest threat of all?

Joseph Reid chased great white sharks as a marine biologist before becoming a patent lawyer who litigates multi-million-dollar cases for high-tech companies. He has flown millions of miles on commercial aircraft and has spent countless hours in airports around the world. These travel experiences spawn the backdrops for his novels, which he writes each morning before dawn breaks and the real world intrudes. His thrillers—Takeoff and False Horizon—feature federal air marshal Seth Walker, a former electrical engineer whose investigative cases force him to confront the dark past he left behind. A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Duke University, and the University of Notre Dame Law School, Reid lives in San Diego with his wife and children.

“With a plot that moves at a breathless pace and a heroine with a history of her own issues, Gardiner’s gripping nail-biter will please fans of Alex Kava, Tami Hoag and even Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lechter novels. Be ready for requests.” –Booklist
Inspired by real-life serial killer Ted Bundy, Into the Black Nowhere is an exhilarating thriller in which FBI profiler Caitlin Hendrix faces off against a charming, merciless serial killer.

Edgar-winning novelist Meg Gardiner writes thrillers. Fast-paced and full of twists, her books have been called “Hitchcockian” (USA Today) and “nailbiting and moving” (Guardian). They have been bestsellers in the U.S. and internationally and have been translated into more than 20 languages. Publishers Weekly calls Into the Black Nowhere, her current title, “excellent.” The first novel in the series, UNSUB, won the 2018 Barry Award for Best Thriller, and is in development as a television series by CBS. Meg was born in Oklahoma City and raised in Santa Barbara, California. She graduated from Stanford University, where she earned a B.A. in Economics. She went on to graduate from Stanford Law School. She practiced law in Los Angeles and taught in the Writing Program at the University of California Santa Barbara. Later she moved with her husband and three young children to London, where she began writing suspense novels. She hasn’t stopped. In addition to her fourteen novels, Meg has published short stories in American and British magazines and the anthology Echoes of Sherlock Holmes. She’s contributed essays to Now, Write! Mysteries, The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook, and the Anthony Award winning Books to Die For. Beyond writing, Meg is a three-time Jeopardy! champion and a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. She lives in Austin, Texas.

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

Join us in celebrating the launch of John Casey’s RAW THΦUGHTS, a visceral, mindful, and compelling fusion of poetics and black and white film photography. John will be joined by Jack Bresette-Mills, author of the bilingual poetry collection Touching Death / Tocando la Muerte (with artwork by Jennifer Klimsza).

In RAW THΦUGHTS, John Casey unfolds a compelling and viscerally honest exploration of mindfulness and spirituality through a symbiotic fusion of poetic and photographic art. A singular and provocative approach, Casey combines literary and visual abstraction into emotive and cognitive catalysts for introspection. Each successive poem-photo pairing—each ‘raw thought’—builds on an underlying philosophy that compels us to assess and adjust what and how we think, with the aim of improving our lives—and by extension, the lives of those around us.

Jack Bresette-Mills, the author of Reasoning with an Optimist and Sensitive Beekeeping, lives happily with his dear wife, Barbara, in Austin, Texas.

Austin Writers Roulette is a bimonthly 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 “Too-Woke Insomniac”—here’s what I do to sleep at night when the fate of the world depends on my political correctness. Our lineup of featured artists includes: RT KILGORE, ELLEN SWEETS, RG HOOK, STEPHANIE WEBB, HOPE RUIZ, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, and THOM THE WORLD POET. An open mic follows intermission. 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 in celebrating Women in Translation Month, with readings and discussion from award-winning poet and acclaimed Spanish translator Liliana Valenzuela, and Marian Schwartz, who translates Russian classic and contemporary fiction, history, biography, criticism, and fine art. Liliana will read from Puro Amor by Sandra Cisneros, and Marian will read from The Man Who Couldn’t Die: The Tale of an Authentic Human Being by Olga Slavnikova.

Also worth noting: On the day of this event, we’re offering 25% off all books in translation that are written or translated by women.

Liliana Valenzuela is the acclaimed Spanish language translator of works by Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, Denise Chávez, and many other writers. As a poet, she is the author of Codex of Journeys: Bendito Camino and is an inaugural fellow of CantoMundo. An adopted tejana, Valenzuela was born and raised in Mexico City and now lives and works in Austin, Texas. 

Marian Schwartz has translated many books of Russian contemporary and classic fiction, including Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and is the principal translator of Nina Berberova. In 2018, Archipelago Books published her translation of Leonid Yuzefovich’s Horsemen of the Sands.