Welcome to Malvern Books!
Malvern Books is now closed. Malvern Books was a bookstore and community space in Austin, Texas. We specialized in visionary literature and poetry from independent publishers, with a focus on lesser-known and emerging voices.
An Update from the Manager of Malvern Books
Dear Friends,
We’ve had a wonderful time sharing our favorite books with you over the past nine years, and it’s been an honor to celebrate the work of so many brilliant writers through our readings and events.
Malvern Books is the realization of Joe Bratcher’s vision—Joe dreamt of a bookstore that would carry the books he loved, mostly poetry and fiction from small, independent presses. He wanted to promote writers and translators of books from other countries, while also championing the work of local writers.
When Joe first talked to me about opening Malvern Books, I must admit I was skeptical. I didn’t think we’d find an audience. It was 2012 and everyone was saying that bookstores were dead, Kindle and online shopping were the future. I anticipated many quiet sales days, with Joe and I just sitting there, looking at each other. He told me if that’s how it ended up, well, at least we’d have a chance to chat—and since we always seemed to laugh a lot when we talked, it sounded like a good way to spend some time. And so from then on, whenever we’d have a really slow sales day, with just a few people coming in, we’d look at each other and say, “We’re living the dream!” and we’d laugh.
But back to opening… in early 2013, with the help of our amazing architect, contractor, and interior designer, we created the space that Joe had in mind. We started posting on social media thanks to Tracey, our wonderful digital media manager and first Malvern hire. And we were so grateful to the many enthusiastic writers and readers who expressed their excitement at the imminent arrival of Malvern Books. From the very beginning it felt like we were building a community.
We opened our doors in October 2013, and we were shocked by how many people came by. You showed up and you loved what we had to offer! You constantly surprised and humbled us with your kind words and helpful suggestions. People from out of town would visit the store because a local friend had told them they had to come by, and we received much appreciated shout-outs from the Austin Chronicle and numerous other newspapers and journals.
And then 2020 hit—but even with the pandemic, we had loyal customers who came by for curbside pick ups, signed up for individual shopping appointments, and participated in our Zoom book clubs and events. If we didn’t say it enough, THANK YOU!
All along the way, we were lucky enough to have truly wonderful staff members who loved the books we carried and who helped us build the store we have now. Their work has been invaluable and we could not have done this without them.
On July 28th of this year, we lost Joe. I can’t tell you how hard it has been to try and carry on in this space without him. Our little Malvern world has not been the same since, and, as much as we love this store and our amazing customers, Malvern Books simply cannot continue without our Joe.
Malvern Books will be closing on December 31st, 2022. It has been a wonderful nine years and we thank each and every one of our cherished customers, friends, staff, and suppliers for helping us along the way.
As we move forward, we’ll be sharing our plans with you for sales and specials. For now, we just wanted to let you know this was coming. We hope you all continue to seek out works in translation and books published by small presses—there is so much great stuff out there—and that you continue to support our local independent bookstores, like our dear friends at BookWoman, among others. But, most importantly, we hope to see you in the store sometime soon, to say goodbye and to thank you, both for being the readers that you are and because you have come with us on this incredibly fulfilling journey in Joe’s world.
With heartfelt thanks and wishing you all the best,
Becky Garcia,
Manager, Malvern Books
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.
This special edition of the Lion & the Pirate also features a reading from poet Mel Finefrock, who will be sharing her collection, Patchwork Poetry, and other poems. The Open Mic will be at 1pm, followed by Mel’s reading at 2pm.
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 Charlotte Gullick.
Charlotte Gullick is a novelist, essayist, editor, educator and Chair of the Creative Writing Department at Austin Community College. Charlotte’s first novel, By Way of Water, was chosen by Jayne Anne Phillips as the Grand Prize winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards Program, and a special author’s edition was reissued by the Santa Fe Writers Project in November of 2013. Her other awards include a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship for Fiction, a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry, a MacDowell Colony Residency, a Ragdale Residency, Faculty of Year from College of the Redwoods as well as the Evergreen State College 2012 Teacher Excellence Award. She has taught in the Travis County Correctional Complex and organized classes and literary events for Veterans in the Austin Community. Additionally, she has presented twice at the Associated Writing Programs Annual Conference (Washington, DC and Chicago, IL) on offering writing courses for Veterans. Charlotte’s work often explores the intersection of landscape, legacy, family, and identity, and she believes deeply in the power of story to create healing and coherence. She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and daughter.
In the interview series Borderless: Conversations on Art, Action, and Justice, emerging and established writers talk with host Chaitali Sen about the power of words and the role of art in reflecting and changing our world.
This month’s guest is Rinku Sen, author of The Accidental American and Stir It Up: Lessons on Community Organizing.
Rinku Sen is a writer and a political strategist. With over 30 years experience leading racial justice organizations in the United States, she has trained thousands of organizers, activists and agents of social change across the country. Rinku is currently Senior Strategist at Race Forward, having formerly served as Executive Director and as Publisher of their award-winning news site Colorlines. Under Sen’s leadership, Race Forward has generated some of the most impactful racial justice successes. One example is the groundbreaking 2011 Shattered Families report, which changed the immigration debate with investigative research on how record deportations of parents were leading to the placement of thousands of children in foster care, often separating them permanently and legally from their families. Sen was the architect of Drop the I-Word, a campaign for media outlets to stop referring to immigrants as “illegal,” resulting in the Associated Press, USA Today, LA Times, and many more outlets dropping the i-word, affecting millions of readers every day. Her books Stir it Up and The Accidental American theorize a model of community organizing that integrates a political analysis of race, gender, class, poverty, sexuality, and other systems. A key advisor in the philanthropy world, Rinku has worked with foundations like Novo, Open Society, Nathan Cummings and Kellogg. She is a devoted board member of numerous social justice organizations including Hedgebrook, a residency that supports visionary women writers to help achieve a just and peaceful world; the Ms. Foundation for Women, a public foundation building women’s collective power for social, economic and reproductive justice; and the Advancement Project, a multiracial civil rights organization dedicated to eliminating structural racism through high impact policy change. She also serves on the board of Maven, the largest independent media coalition in North America. A highly sought-after keynote speaker for colleges, Sen has spoken at Harvard, Brown, University of Michigan, Penn State, and was the Commencement Speaker at Antioch New England. She is a James O. Gibson Innovation Fellow at PolicyLink.
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.
In association with VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities), we’re delighted to present an inclusive (mic-less) open mic for writers and musicians. Everyone is welcome to join us for this fun and friendly free evening suitable for performers of all ages and abilities.
Footage from previous Lion & Pirate open mic events can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1m7v4L8.
In association with VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities), we’re delighted to present an inclusive (mic-less) open mic for writers and musicians. Everyone is welcome to join us for this fun and friendly free afternoon suitable for performers of all ages and abilities.
Footage from previous Lion & Pirate open mic events can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1m7v4L8.
Everyone is welcome to attend the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by John Herndon. An open mic follows the featured reader, so bring poems, stories, scripts, rants, raves or midnight confessions to share, or just come to listen and enjoy.
This month’s featured reader is Rachel Starnes, author of The War at Home.
At once a portrait of the devastating strains that military life puts on families and a meditation on what it means to be left behind, The War at Home is a brave portrait of a modern military family and the realities of separation, endurance, and love that overcomes.
“Rachel Starnes’s The War at Home navigates the joys, fears, compromises, and casualties that create the terrain of marriage. And if you are a military spouse, her memoir will reveal thoughts you never even knew you had. This is a wise and fearless book.” —Siobhan Fallon, author of You Know When the Men Are Gone
Featured reader Rachel Starnes is author of The War at Home, a painful and funny memoir of life as a Navy wife. She earned her MFA at California State University, Fresno, and has published essays in The Colorado Review, Front Porch Journal, and O Magazine. She lives in Georgetown.
In association with VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities), we’re delighted to present an inclusive (mic-less) open mic for writers and musicians. And this month we’ll also be announcing the winners of our annual Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest! Everyone is welcome to join us for this fun and friendly free evening suitable for performers of all ages and abilities.
Footage from previous Lion & Pirate open mic events can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1m7v4L8.
Everyone is welcome to attend the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by John Herndon. An open mic follows the featured reader, so bring poems, stories, scripts, rants, raves or midnight confessions to share, or just come to listen and enjoy.
This month’s featured reader is Gogi Hale.
Gogi Hale is President of the Board for Kallisto Gaia Press. She is a member of the Writers’ League of Texas (WLT), Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and 2016 Finalist for the SCBWI Cynthia Leitich-Smith Mentoring Award. Active in the writing community, Gogi volunteers for the WLT, and continues her education through Austin Community College, WLT courses, workshops and in-depth study at The Writing Barn. She has hosted a weekly writing critique group for the past four years. Writer of fiction, both short and long form, Gogi is deep at work on a thriller and a YA road trip novel. One of her proudest moments was when a fellow writer read her work and said, “Sometimes you scare me.” Her short story, “The Choosing,” was recently published in the horror journal, Jitterpress #7. When not working on scary stories, Gogi loves to travel and cook. Lately, she has been experiencing the challenge of boiling lots and lots of water.
In the interview series Borderless: Conversations on Art, Action, and Justice, emerging and established writers talk with host Chaitali Sen about the power of words and the role of art in reflecting and changing our world.
This month’s guest is writer and educator Jack Kaulfus.
Jack Kaulfus is the author of the short story collection Tomorrow or Forever (Transgress Press, 2018). Their work has been published in A Cappella Zoo, Heavy Feather Review, and Off the Rocks, among other journals. Jack teaches high school English in Austin, Texas, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University in San Marcos. When all the grading is finished, Jack plays in the queer Americana band Brand New Key.Chaitali Sen is a writer and educator based in Austin, Texas. She is the author of the novel The Pathless Sky, and numerous stories and essays which have appeared or are forthcoming in Catapult, Colorado Review, Ecotone, LitHub, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, New Ohio Review, and other journals. She is the founder of the interview series Borderless: Conversations on Art, Action, and Justice.
In association with VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities), we’re delighted to present an inclusive (mic-less) open mic for writers and musicians. Everyone is welcome to join us for this fun and friendly free afternoon suitable for performers of all ages and abilities.
Footage from previous Lion & Pirate open mic events can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1m7v4L8.
Everyone is welcome to attend the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by John Herndon. An open mic follows the featured reader, so bring poems, stories, scripts, rants, raves or midnight confessions to share, or just come to listen and enjoy.
This month’s featured reader is Cecily Parks (at right).
Featured reader Cecily Parks is the author of the poetry collections Field Folly Snow and O’Nights, and editor of the anthology The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses. She teaches at Texas State University.
Join us for a reading from The Lumberjack’s Dove—and a shadow puppet crankie show—with visiting writer GennaRose Nethercott, and with special guest Sean Petrie.
In the ingenious and vividly imagined narrative poem The Lumberjack’s Dove, GennaRose Nethercott describes a lumberjack who cuts his hand off with an axe—however, instead of merely being severed, the hand shapeshifts into a dove. Far from representing just an event of pain and loss in the body, this incident spirals outward to explore countless facets of being human, prompting profound reflections on sacrifice and longing, time and memory, and—finally—considering the act of storytelling itself. The lumberjack, his hand, and the axe that separated the two all become participants in the story, with unique perspectives to share and lessons to impart. “I taught your fathers how to love,” Axe says to the acorns and leaves around her. “I mean to be felled, sliced to lumber, & reassembled into a new body.” Inflected with the uncanny enchantment of modern folklore and animated by the sly shifting of points-of-view, The Lumberjack’s Dove is wise, richly textured poetry from a boundlessly creative new voice.
GennaRose Nethercott’s book The Lumberjack’s Dove was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series for 2017. She is also the lyricist behind the narrative song collection Modern Ballads, and is a Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellow. Her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies including BOMB, The Massachusetts Review, The Offing, and PANK, and she has been a writer-in-residence at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore, Art Farm Nebraska, and The Vermont Studio Center, among others. A born Vermonter, she tours nationally and internationally composing poems-to-order for strangers on a 1952 Hermes Rocket typewriter.
Sean Petrie is a founding member of “Typewriter Rodeo,” whose poetry book came out earlier this year. He has 6 short books coming out in 2019 as part of Fountas & Pinnell’s “Leveled Books” series. He also teaches legal writing at UT, and thinks Buffy is the best show ever.
In association with VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities), we’re delighted to present an inclusive (mic-less) open mic for writers and musicians. Everyone is welcome to join us for this fun and friendly free evening suitable for performers of all ages and abilities.
Footage from previous Lion & Pirate open mic events can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1m7v4L8.
In the interview series Borderless: Conversations on Art, Action, and Justice, emerging and established writers and artists talk with host Chaitali Sen about the power of words and the role of art in reflecting and changing our world.
This month’s Borderless features a conversation between writer and curator Lise Ragbir (left, below) and esteemed visual artist Deborah Roberts (right, below) about the connection between text, literature, visual art, and social justice.
Lise Ragbir is a writer, curator and Director of the Art Galleries at Black Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2017, she was Jack Jones Literary Art’s Tiphanie Yanique Fellow. In 2015, she was an invited participant in Callaloo’s Creative Writing Workshop, in Barbados. Her essays about arts and culture, race, and immigration have appeared in The Guardian, Hyperallergic, Time Magazine, and USA Today, among other outlets. She was born and raised in Montreal, and now makes her home in Austin, Texas.
Deborah Roberts (American, b. 1962) is a mixed media artist whose work challenges the notion of ideal beauty. Her work has been exhibited internationally across the USA and Europe. Roberts’ work is in the collections of Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles, California; Block Museum of Art, Evanston, Illinois; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey; and The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, New York. Roberts is the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2016) and Ginsburg-Klaus Award Fellowship (2014). She received her MFA from Syracuse University, New York. She lives and works in Austin, Texas. Roberts is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.
Chaitali Sen is a writer and educator based in Austin, Texas. She is the author of the novel The Pathless Sky, and numerous stories and essays which have appeared or are forthcoming in Catapult, Colorado Review, Ecotone, LitHub, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, New Ohio Review, and other journals. She is the founder of the interview series Borderless: Conversations on Art, Action, and Justice.
In association with VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities), we’re delighted to present an inclusive (mic-less) open mic for writers and musicians. Everyone is welcome to join us for this fun and friendly free afternoon suitable for performers of all ages and abilities. And it’s our 5th birthday, so be ready to celebrate!
Footage from previous Lion & Pirate open mic events can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1m7v4L8.
Everyone is welcome to attend the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by John Herndon. An open mic follows the featured reader, so bring poems, stories, scripts, rants, raves or midnight confessions to share, or just come to listen and enjoy.
This month’s featured reader is Sasha West.
Sasha West’s first book, Failure and I Bury the Body, won the National Poetry Series and the Texas Institute of Letters First Book of Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review Online, West Branch, Southern Review, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. Her awards include a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Fellowship, Inprint’s Verlaine Prize, Rice University’s Parks Fellowship, and a Houston Arts Alliance grant.
You’re invited to join us for another Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series! The theme of this month’s reading is “Walk on the Wild Side,” and the readers are Tomás Q. Morín, Carrie Fountain, Sarah Bird, and Eliza Gilkyson (left to right, below).
Founded in 2010 by Peg Alford Pursell, Why There Are Words is an award-winning literary reading series that takes place every second Thursday in the San Francisco Bay Area, and beginning in 2017, will take place at 5 more national locations: New York City, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland, and Austin. Each reading event presents a range of writers, including those who have published books and those who haven’t. All writers share the criterion of excellence. The guiding idea behind the series is that good work is timeless and needs to be heard regardless of marketing or commercial concerns. If you’re interested in reading or would like more information, please contact Alison: wtawaustin@gmail.com.
Tomás Q. Morín is the author of Patient Zero and A Larger Country. He translated Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu and with Mari L’Esperance co-edited Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine. He is at work on a memoir about fathers. He teaches at Drew University and in the low residency MFA program of Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Carrie Fountain’s poems have appeared in Tin House, Poetry, and The New Yorker, among others. Her debut collection, Burn Lake, was a National Poetry Series winner and was published in 2010 by Penguin. Her second collection, Instant Winner, was published by Penguin in 2014. Fountain’s debut novel, I’m Not Missing, was published in July, 2018 by Flatiron Books (Macmillan). Born and raised in Mesilla, New Mexico, Fountain received her MFA as a fellow at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. Currently writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University and Visiting Professor at the Michener Center, she is the host of NPR’s This Is Just to Say, a radio show and podcast where she has intimate conversations with America’s most influential poets. Fountain lives in Austin with her husband, playwright and novelist Kirk Lynn, and their two children.
Sarah Bird is the author of nine novels and one book of non-fiction. Her latest novel, Above the East China Sea, was long-listed for the Dublin International Literary Award; was an ALEX Award nominee; winner of the 2016 Texas Philosophical Society Literary Award; a Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice; a Seattle Times Best Book of the Year; a Tucson Book Festival Great Books for Book Club selection; and a Marie Claire Best Summer Reads. Sarah has been an NPR Moth Radio Hour storyteller, and a writer for Oprah’s Magazine and the NY Times Sunday Magazine. During her ten-year screenwriting career, Sarah was hired to write for Paramount, CBS, Warner Bros, National Geographic, ABC, TNT, as well as several independent producers. Her latest novel, Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen, inspired by the true story of Cathy/Cathay Williams, the only woman to serve with the fabled Buffalo Soldiers and the first woman to enlist in the peacetime U.S. Army, has been selected to be a lead Fall 2018 title.
Eliza Gilkyson is a twice Grammy-nominated (2006/2015) singer songwriter and activist who is one of the most respected musicians in Folk, Roots and Americana circles. Her songs have been covered by Joan Baez, Bob Geldof, Tom Rush and Rosanne Cash and have appeared in films, PBS specials and on prime-time TV. A member of the Austin Music Hall of Fame, and a recent inductee into the Austin Songwriter Hall of Fame, she has won countless Folk Alliance and Austin Music awards, including 2014’s Songwriter of the Year. Eliza’s music has always offered a vivid reflection of the times we live in, full of joys and sorrows, each song a window into a life of struggle and triumph in a world she feels is “poised on the edge of moral, economic and environmental bankruptcy.” Her new CD released in summer 2018 from Red House Records, is titled Secularia.
VSA Texas (The State Organization on Arts and Disability) and the Pen2Paper Creative Writing Contest (a project of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities) invite you to a very special edition of the Lion and Pirate Unplugged Open Mic. As well as our regular Open Mic event for performers of all ages and abilities, this month we are delighted to have a special guest, Elizabeth L. Sammons, who will share with us her debut novel, The Lyra and the Cross.
Friendship, forgiveness and faith set the groundwork of The Lyra and the Cross, a historical novel depicting the political and spiritual unrest in the first-century Roman Empire. Drawing on five years of historical research and on her own cross-cultural experience as journalist, Peace Corps volunteer and interpreter, Ohio author Elizabeth Sammons depicts a world as full of interfaith conflict and difficult choices as our own. Amidst familiar characters from the New Testament, readers will find stories of a slave turned freedman, a Greek orphan adopted into life as a Jew and two bittersweet love stories set against a background of cross-cultural conflict comparable to events we witness in the 21st century.
Elizabeth L. Sammons is a two-time recipient of the Ohio Arts Council’s Artists with Disability Access Program Award. She lives in Worthington, Ohio, holds an M.A. in journalism from Ohio State University, and has lived in five foreign countries. Her love of both scripture and Greek mythology dates back to childhood. To her knowledge, this is the only modern English-language novel featuring St. Stephen as its protagonist.
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 guest is Monica Muñoz Martinez.
Monica Muñoz Martinez is the Stanley J. Bernstein Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University and an Andrew Carnegie fellow. She an award-winning author, educator, and public historian. Her research specializes in histories of violence, policing on the US-Mexico border, Latinx history, women and gender studies, and public humanities. Her first book The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas (Harvard University Press, Sept 2018) is a moving account of a little-known period of state-sponsored racial terror inflicted on ethnic Mexicans in the Texas–Mexico borderlands. She is currently at work on Mapping Violence, a digital research project that recovers histories of racial violence in Texas between 1900 and 1930. Martinez is also a founding member of the non-profit organization Refusing to Forget that calls for public commemorations of anti-Mexican violence in Texas. Born and raised in Uvalde, Texas, Martinez received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University.
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.
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 Jennine “Doc” Krueger, a poet and playwright who graduated from Huston-Tillotson University in Austin and, having earned advanced degrees, now teaches English and Creative Writing at her alma mater. With influences from slam and hip hop, she has won five awards from the National Poetry Slam and her play “The Coven” was recently produced for Frontera Fest Fringe Festival.
You’re invited to join us for another Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series! This month’s theme is “Alchemy” and the readers are Joe Nick Patoski, Hugh Fitzsimons III, Bronte Treat, Elizabeth Harris, Dena Afrasiabi, and Gurf Morlix.
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.
A staff writer for Texas Monthly magazine for eighteen years, and a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, Joe Nick Patoski (top row, left) has authored and co-authored biographies of Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Selena, and the Dallas Cowboys, directed a film on the Texas musician Doug Sahm, and collaborated on books about the Texas Mountains, the Texas Coast, and Big Bend National Park. His tenth book is Austin to ATX: The Hippies, Pickers, Slackers & Geeks Who Transformed the Capital of Texas.
Hugh Fitzsimons III (top row, middle) is a third-generation rancher from Dimmit County, Texas, and a director of the Wintergarden Groundwater Conservation District. He is currently expanding into the cultivation of environmentally beneficial restorative plants and crops. His first book, the memoir A Rock Between Two Rivers, was published in 2018 by Trinity University Press.
Bronte Treat (top row, right) is a writer based in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in Sorin Oak Review, Peach Fuzz Magazine, and Women of Venus. She studied Rhetoric and Writing at St. Edward’s University, where she was an editor of Arete Academic Journal. Her work is concerned with family history and identity.
Elizabeth Harris’s novel, Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman, winner of the Gival Press Novel Award and an Austin Chronicle Top Read of 2015, was a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction. Her first collection of stories, The Ant Generator, was winner of the University of Iowa Press John Simmons Prize. Harris (bottom row, left) taught fiction writing and modern literature for a number of years at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. She and her husband divide their time between the Texas coast and Austin.
Dena Afrasiabi (bottom row, middle) is an editor and fiction writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Toast, and Fiction Southeast, among other publications. Her writing has received fellowship support from the Millay Colony, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts as well as the National Endowment for the Arts. She’s currently at work on a novel.
Gurf Morlix (bottom row, right) won mainstream recognition during his time as Lucinda Williams’ guitar player, musical director and producer. After they had a falling out over the band’s musical direction, Morlix moved on and became a freelance producer. Since then, he’s helmed projects by a diverse set of country and Americana artists including Robert Earl Keen, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Slaid Cleaves and Mary Gauthier, as well as his own records. His new recording is Impossible Blue 2019.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In association with Art Spark Texas (formerly VSA Texas) 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 we also have two featured guests: Spirit Thom and The Old Hats.
Spirit Thom is a co-Founder of the Austin International Poetry Festival. He is an improvising bard who works with WORDJAZZ LOWSTARS, and used to tour with MOTHER GONG, KANGAROO MOON, etc. He had his own bands FUTURE NOW in England, and WE ARE ALIVE! in Australia—and Thom believes his best poem will be his next poem. He appreciates and respects THE LION & THE PIRATE, THE OLD HATS, and Malvern Books.
The Old Hats perform Original American Music and Authentic Frontier Jibberish.
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 Britta Jensen, who will be reading from Eloia Born, a Young Adult science fiction novel.
Britta Jensen’s debut novel Eloia Born was long-listed for the 2016 Exeter Novel Prize. The sequel, Hirana’s War, releases in early summer 2020. Her stories have been shortlisted for the 2017 Henshaw Press and Fiction Factory prizes and she was published in the following anthologies: Stories for Homes, volume 2 and Sakura Dreams. Britta’s plays have been performed in New York City, Japan and South Korea. She holds a BA in Acting Performance from Fordham University and an MA in Teaching of English Literature from Columbia University and has taught in schools and therapeutic settings for fifteen years. Britta spent twenty-two years overseas in Japan, South Korea, and Germany before moving to Austin, Texas.
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 Oscar Cásares.
Oscar Cásares is the author of Brownsville, a collection of stories that was an American Library Association Notable Book of 2004, and is now included in the curriculum at several American universities, and the novel Amigoland. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Copernicus Society of America, and the Texas Institute of Letters. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he teaches creative writing at the University of Texas in Austin, where he lives. (Author photo credit: Joel Salcido.)
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.
You’re invited to join us for another Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series! This month’s theme is “Silver Linings” and the guests are Kathryn Schwille, Kristen Staby Rembold, Mark Solomon, Marian Szczepanski, and musical duo Joanna Howerton and Michael Cross.
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.
Kathryn Schwille (top left) is the author of the novel What Luck, This Life, set in East Texas around the time of the Columbia shuttle disaster. It was selected by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as one of the best southern books of 2018. Her short stories have appeared in New Letters, Memorious, Crazyhorse, Literary Hub, and other journals, and have been cited twice for Special Mention in the Pushcart Prize. She lives in North Carolina and teaches at Charlotte Center for Literary Arts.
Kristen Staby Rembold’s (top center) most recent book is Music Lesson, poetry, published in 2019 by Future Cycle Press. She is also the author of two poetry chapbooks, Leaf and Tendril and Coming into This World, and a novel, Felicity, winner of Mid-List First Fiction Series Award. Her poems have appeared in many periodicals including Crab Orchard Review, Green Mountains Review, Literary Mama, Smartish Pace, and New Ohio Review. She has taught poetry and fiction writing at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, and is former co-editor of IRIS: A Journal About Women. She holds degrees from Northwestern University and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
Mark Solomon (top right) has lived in NYC since 1941. Since 1973 his poems have appeared in Broadway Boogie, TriQuarterly, Hanging Loose, BOMB, The Marlboro Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, and Southern Poetry Review. A chapbook, Her Whom I Summoned, and My True Body, his first full-length collection, are available through Havel.Havulim@gmail.com
Marian Szczepanski (bottom left) is the author of the historical novel Playing St. Barbara (High Hill Press, 2013), which Huffington Post called “a stunning debut novel that shimmers with unforgettable characters while casting necessary light on a dark chapter in American history.” She has won awards for short fiction and magazine writing and holds an MFA in fiction from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is a faculty member at Houston’s Writespace creative writing center and has also taught for the Texas Writers League (Austin), Gemini Ink (San Antonio), Village Writing School (Eureka Springs and Rogers, AR), University of Pittsburgh’s Writers Café, and St. Francis University (Loretto, PA). She divides her time between Houston and Hood River, Oregon.
Joanna Howerton grew up in a musical family in the beautiful hills of Kentucky. In the Blues, she found her true voice and style and honed her vocal skills and played with various R&B and jazz ensembles in New Orleans and Austin. Her partnership and duo with Michael Cross has been transformative, inspiring the creation of a sound that bridges their past and current influences.
Michael Cross, a talented vocalist, lyricist, composer and seasoned recording artist, has toured nationally and internationally. Recording projects include TX Blues Voices, and his own album Blues Lovin’ Man. Michael’s latest collaboration with Joanna Howerton has inspired new material and their duo is steadily building an enthusiastic following.
Join us for an evening with Austin-based poet Usha Akella, who will be in conversation with Chaitali Sen.
Usha Akella has authored four books of poetry and one chapbook, and has scripted and produced one musical drama. Her latest poetry book was published by Sahitya Akademi, India’s highest literary authority, in 2019. She recently earned an 2018 MSt. in Creative Writing from Cambridge University, UK. Her work has been included in the Harper Collins’ Anthology of Indian English Poets. She was selected as a Creative Ambassador for the City of Austin for 2019 and 2015, and has been published in numerous literary journals. She is the founder of ‘Matwaala,’ the first South Asian Diaspora Poets Festival in the US. She has won literary prizes (Nazim Hikmet award, Open Road Review Prize, and Egan Memorial Prize), and earned finalist status in a few US based contests. She has written a few quixotic nonfiction prose pieces published in The Statesman and India Currents. She is the founder of the Poetry Caravan in New York and Austin, which takes poetry readings to the disadvantaged in women’s shelters, senior homes, and hospitals. Several hundreds of readings have reached these venues via this medium.
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.
In association with Art Spark Texas (formerly VSA Texas) 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. For more information, contact Samantha Wells at Samantha.wells@austincc.edu.
This month’s featured reader is Héctor Aguayo.
Héctor Aguayo has been published in literary magazines like Al Principio, El Cid, Reporte Austin, Rainbow Groove, and The Rio Review. He understood that by using his voice he would bring representation to the Chicano experience and the struggle of neither identifying as North American nor Mexican. He’s also a LGBTQIA advocate pursuing inclusivity.
Join us for a conversation between visiting translator Rosalind Harvey and host Sean Manning as they discuss topics such as translating voices, particularly in regards to her latest work Juan Pablo Villalobos’ The Other Side, a collection of stories from Central American teen refugees crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Their conversation will also be recorded for Adriana Pacheco’s Hablemos Escritoras podcast.
Rosalind Harvey (above left) is an award-winning literary translator, and has taught translation at undergraduate and postgraduate level at the universities of Roehampton, Bristol, and Warwick. Her translation of Juan Pablo Villalobos’ debut novel Down the Rabbit Hole was shortlisted for the 2011 Guardian First Book Award and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize, and her translation of his work I’ll Sell You A Dog was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and commended for the 2018 Valle-Inclán prize. She has worked on books by Guadalupe Nettel, Elvira Navarro, Enrique Vila-Matas, Héctor Abad Faciolince, and Alberto Barrera Tyszka, amongst others. She is a founding member and chair of the Emerging Translators Network, an online community for early-career literary translators, and speaks regularly on the topic of getting into the profession and surviving. She is a 2016 Arts Foundation Fellow, and in 2018 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is currently working on a collection of Peruvian short stories and an Argentine play, and her latest publication is a YA title by Villalobos about the journeys made by teenage Central American immigrants when they cross over illegally to the United States. She lives in Coventry in the West Midlands.
Sean Manning (above center) is a Lecturer who teaches courses on language, literature, and writing in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin, where he received his PhD in Spanish and Latin American Literature. He is also a literary translator and has translated numerous works including Eduardo Lalo’s The Elements, Azahara Palomeque’s American Poems, Carlos Pereda’s Lessons in Exile, and a collection of short stories from Lorenzo García Vega titled Falconry With Puppets. He is currently working on translations of Carlos Pereda’s latest book Destructions and Nomadic Thought and a novel by Argentine writer Diego Vecchio. He also co-edited No dicen nada, cantan, an anthology of poetry from the late Uruguayan poet and U.T. professor Enrique Fierro set to be published this year by Mexico’s Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Dr. Adriana Pacheco (above right) was born in Puebla, Mexico and is a naturalized American Citizen. She sits on and is former Chair at the International Board of Advisors at University of Texas-Austin. She is Affiliate Research Fellow at Llilas Benson, and co-founder of the Nineteenth-Century scholar section of LASA. Her research in the construction of feminine subjectivity from the nineteenth century onwards from the perspective of critical and postcolonial theories and cultural and historiographic studies has earned her multiple scholarships and grants. A Texas Book Festival Feature Author (2012), Dr. Pacheco has several publications in collective books and magazines like Revista de Estudios Hispánicos and Letras Libres, among others. Currently she is working on the book “Virile Angels,” Much More Than “Angels of the Home.” Female Education in Mexican Nineteenth-Century Catholic Newspapers and a collective Para seguir rompiendo con la palabra. Dramaturgas, cineastas, periodistas y ensayistas mexicanas contemporáneas. She is founder and producer of Hablemos Escritoras podcast and Proyecto Escritoras Mexicanas Contemporáneas.
Hablemos Escritoras podcast is a weekly podcast that focuses on the work, influences, publications, awards, and trajectory of contemporary female writers and translators of Spanish, and explores topics related to literature, culture, and society. In its more than 70 episodes it has interviewed authors from around the world. It can be heard on Soundcloud, Applepodcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.
In association with Art Spark Texas (formerly VSA Texas) 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.
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 Varian Johnson.
Varian Johnson is the author of nine novels, including The Parker Inheritance, which was named a Coretta Scott King Honor Book, an Odyssey Honor Audiobook and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor Book; and The Great Greene Heist, which was named to over twenty-five state reading and best-of lists. He received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where he now serves as a member of the faculty. Varian lives outside of Austin, TX with his family.
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.
Everyone is welcome to attend the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by Charlotte Gullick. 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 Ehigbor Shultz.
Ehigbor Shultz (B.A. Plan II Honors, Neurolinguistics, English, Cert. Chemistry, Pre-Medical studies, UT Austin ’16) is a multi-ethnic writer. Although she is now based in Austin, she has travelled and lived in many different places around the world and is multilingual as a result. She writes African mythology based YA epic fantasy, YA and adult contemporary fiction, thriller mysteries, and heartfelt poetry. She writes for all the unseen, marginalized girls and women who grew up seeing too much of the world’s pain and receiving its burdens. You may not know her name in publishing, but she hopes one day you will. She hopes that those who read and hear her work can take a piece of it with them and allow it to color their worlds and perspectives. She’s always up for a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, and is happy to provide you one as well, should you so need it.
Join us for a night with spoken word artists Joaquín Zihuatanejo and Taria Person.
Joaquín Zihuatanejo is a brilliant poet. His testimonials and songs and explorations are multilingual, structurally adventurous. The wide range of forms and dictions makes visible his ravenous curiosity and intellect. His language, rippling with the loss of a father and racial and cultural tensions, resists one-dimensional answers. His nouns and verbs wonder, croon, weep, question, and roar. The deep attention to language and to the shaping of language infuses the work with a riveting self-awareness of the self—in this case, a Mexican American man unafraid to remember, to love. Beautifully crafted and richly imagined, Arsonist is a remarkable debut. —Eduardo C. Corral, author of Slow Lightning
Joaquín Zihuatanejo received his MFA in creative writing with a concentration in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work has been featured in Prairie Schooner, Sonora Review, and Huizache, among other journals and anthologies. His poetry has been featured on HBO, NBC, and on NPR in Historias and The National Teacher’s Initiative. He was the winner of the Anhinga-Robert Dana Prize for Poetry. His book, Arsonist, was published by Anhinga Press in September of 2018, and was short-listed as a Finalist for both the Writers’ League of Texas Best Book Poetry Prize and the International Latino Book Award Best Book Poetry Prize. Joaquín has two passions in his life, his wife Aída and poetry, always in that order.
Taria Person is an alumna of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where she received a dual B.A. in English Creative Writing: Poetry, and Interdisciplinary Studies: Africana Studies. She is the author of Rainbow Elephant and At the Summit, and her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including: O’ Woman a Tapestry of Loving You, and Voices of Warriors: Poems of Hope & Healing. Taria Person won first place at the regional Big Ears: Spoken Word Expo/The 5th Woman Poetry Slam (2017), the Regional Southern Fried Hip-Hop Slam (2013), and Knoxville Poetry Slam (2012). Also, she has been an actress and Production Stage Manager for The Carpetbag Theatre Inc., during its original series of stage productions that have been funded by The Roy Cockrum Foundation, in celebration of (CBT’s) 50th Anniversary. Recently, Person has been commissioned to write a book of poetry by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation; won an Artistic Professional Development grant from Alternate Roots for her original stage play, Hangers; and became a member of the 5th Woman Touring Collective.
In association with Art Spark Texas (formerly VSA Texas) 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.
This month we have two featured guests: Skip Bellon and David Romero.
Skip Bellon writes, “I am lucky enough to have had 3 distinctly different families. My biological family, the dairy farm next door with 5 sons (my home away from home), and a nursery/summer camp where I lived from 8am to 5pm every summer weekday from the age of 2 until I turned 13, and was too old to attend anymore. Shout out to Mr John and Mrs Lee, the owner/operators. My mother and father worked hard, and a lot, which left me plenty of time to read and fall in love with words. My camp time gave me lots of experience observing people and families. Farm life taught me what was really true in the world and that’s where I developed a strong love for animals, which was fostered to a large extent by my father. A strong love of animals was the single thing my father and I had in common. I struggled through my teens and then discovered my potential (in life) during my 5 years in the US Navy. I have been observing and writing poems ever since. I added short stories to my repertoire around my mid-forties, and now I enjoy writing stories more than poetry, but still write both. Writing, my life long hobby, is currently trying to work its way into the main arena. Its only obstruction now is me.”
David Romero is a local singer/songwriter influenced by English, Irish, Scottish, and American folk music. He sings in Spanish as well and plays acoustic guitar, dulcimer, and other stringed instruments often accompanied by his wife Ann Marie on flute. His song “Absence Inside” was featured in VSA Texas’ 2017 Veteran music compilation The Re-Integration Project {Sounds}.
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 Charlotte Gullick. 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 we’re proud to present Professor Joe Hoppe’s Poetry & Prose Class reading their work as the final literary event of 2019.
You’re invited to join us for another Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series! This month’s theme is Reconciliation and our guests are Sandra Sidi, Carrie Fountain, Josh Denslow, and The Flyin’ A’s (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.
Sandra Sidi writes fiction and nonfiction. She was a military analyst in Baghdad in 2007 and 2008. She is an MFA Candidate at Texas State University San Marcos, and holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Yale University. Her first piece, “Get A Weapon,” was published in The Atlantic and is forthcoming in Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: An Anthology by Kendall Hunt Publishing. She is working on a novel about Israeli soldiers.
Carrie Fountain is a poet and novelist, and serves as the 2019 Texas Poet Laureate. She is the author of two poetry collections, Instant Winner and Burn Lake, winner of the 2009 National Poetry Series Award, and the YA novel I’m Not Missing. Her first children’s book, The Poem Forest (Candlewick Press, 2020) tells the story of American poet W.S. Merwin and the palm forest he grew from scratch on the island of Maui. Her poems have appeared in Tin House, Poetry, and The New Yorker, among many others. She is the host of KUT’s This Is Just to Say, a radio show and podcast where she has intimate conversations on the writing life with other poets and writers. Fountain is writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University, and lives in Austin, TX.
Josh Denslow’s short stories have appeared in print and online in such fine places as Barrelhouse, Third Coast, Cutbank, Wigleaf, and Black Clock, among many others. NOT EVERYONE IS SPECIAL, his debut short story collection, will be published in 2019 by 7.13 Books. Along with his wife and his brother-in-law, he plays drums in the band Borrisokane. KUTX called us “synth-punk gloom-wonders” and the band was hailed by the Austin Chronicle as one of the Best New Local Acts of 2013. They are currently recording thier first full-length album.
The Flyin’ A’s perform Americana with a Texas Kick. This husband and wife duo hails from Austin, Texas. You can hear their Texas roots in all they do. The high energy duo is famous for their top-notch songwriting, breathtaking harmonies, and exceptional live performance. Their latest album You Drive Me Crazy was selected to be on the 2017 first round Grammy Ballot and has taken them on tour around the US, UK, and the EU, and now they are headed to NZ for the first time. From Stuart Adamson’s outstanding lead guitar work and gritty vocals to Hilary Claire Adamson’s powerhouse vocal gymnastics and lilting harmonies, it is no wonder this duo is quickly gaining momentum both at home and abroad. They combine the best of Texas country, southern blues, folk and gospel to create an original sound that is all their own.
In association with Art Spark Texas (formerly VSA Texas) 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.
In association with Art Spark Texas (formerly VSA Texas) 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 Charlotte Gullick. 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 Jeremy Garrett.
Jeremy Garrett is the writer-in-residence at the Katherine Anne Porter House in Kyle, TX. His fiction and essays have appeared in Gargoyle, The Susquehanna Review, and phati’tude, among others, and his story “The Exhausted Pose” won an Esoteric Award in LGBT fiction from Carve Magazine. He is currently at work on a novel.
Everyone is welcome to attend the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by Charlotte Gullick. 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 Tommy Mouton.
Tommy Mouton is a Southern writer and a writing coach. A former John Steinbeck Fellow (2013-2014), his work appears in Auburn Avenue, Reed, and Callaloo. A dynamic dramatic reader, his work has been featured in venues hosted by KKUP 91.5 “Out of Our Minds” Poetry Radio, Sacramento Stories on Stage, LitQuake, Center for Literary Arts, Poetry Center San José, and a host of others. Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, raised in the unincorporated community of Moss Bluff (the principal setting of his memoir-in-progress and the inspiration for much of this work), Tommy recently, as of July 2018, relocated to Austin from San José, CA—with his wife and three children. He currently teaches creative writing and composition at Huston-Tillotson University. This is his first Austin reading invitation.
Malvern Books is proud to present an evening (via Zoom; details to come) with Cotton Mather guitarist and prize-winning poet Harold Whit Williams, who will be reading from his new book and performing songs from his new solo album, both titled My Heavens.
Worth noting: All royalties from the download or stream of My Heavens goes to Color of Change.
Williams returns to form on this, his fifth poetry collection. The very idea of a paradise—beyond sky or upon earth or within each moment—is poked and prodded with both sharp cynicism and wide-eyed wonder alike. Addressing grief, the day in/day out depictions are deeply distilled, the lines sober yet also playful, loose and languid. Nostalgia without sentimentality. Dreamlike visions without surrealism. These poems settle down across the kitchen table from a reader for a little give and take, a little what’s it all about? “The transubstantiation, the utter mystery,” Williams writes, “I swallow it all/And expect nothing in return.”
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Join Zoom Meeting:
Meeting ID: 282 978 3950
Password: 788597
One tap mobile:
+13462487799,,2829783950#,,,,0#,,788597# US (Houston)
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kbigMUsjuS
The Lion & the Pirate set off on their next online adventure, hope you’ll be aboard!
We’ll start with two featured readers (TBA), and then it will be your time to shine. As always, we’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems or prose… anything you can perform!
Accessibility adventure note: we’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. As we found last time, Rev isn’t great for music, so we’ll screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e (and let us know if you have questions).
* * *
Join Zoom Meeting:
Meeting ID: 282 978 3950
Password: 788597
One tap mobile:
+13462487799,,2829783950#,,,,0#,,788597# US (Houston)
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kbigMUsjuS
The Lion & the Pirate set off on their next online adventure, hope you’ll be aboard!
We’ll start with featured reader and L&P regular, Edith Tapia “Blackbird”!
About: Edith was born in her beloved country Mexico. She started to participate in local events since elementary school, like “Civil Mondays,” writing patriotic and traditional poems to perform for government members. In middle school, Edith competed in a statewide poetry contest, winning second place. In high school, she won second place in a nationwide poetry contest. The Sonora University awarded her an honorable mention for her participation in their literary regional contest with the piece “Plegarias de Una Luna Enamorada,” and Edith was published in their anthology, Realidad Aleatoria.
Now living in the USA, Edith attends open mics sharing her bilingual work. She has been featured twice for the “Austin Poetry Society” monthly event in 2018 and also published in their anthology in 2020. She has won the Ekphrastic challenge in the “Hearsay Poetry” open mic three times and been published on hearsaypoetry.com
Read Edith’s poems at https://medium.com/@blackbird.ville and https://www.wattpad.com/user/EBlackbird.
Then it will be your time to shine. As always, we’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems or prose… anything you can perform!
Accessibility adventure note: we’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so we’ll screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e (and let us know if you have questions).
* * *
ZOOM link to be posted closer to the event.
The Lion & the Pirate set off on their next online adventure, hope you’ll be aboard!
We’ll start with two featured readers (TBA), and then it will be your time to shine. As always, we’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems or prose… anything you can perform!
Accessibility adventure note: we’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so we’ll screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e (and let us know if you have questions).
ZOOM link to be posted closer to the event.
Five brown authors of Hispanic, Filipino, and South Asian origins discuss what it is like being brown in America, how that has shaped their writing, and informed their latest books. We’ll talk about growing up brown and the experience of finding a place (physical or state of mind) to be brown in America through our work, relationships, family, community, etc.
This discussion will take place via Zoom and will be moderated by Martha Anne Toll. The panelists are: Donna Miscolta (Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories); Grace Talusan (The Body Papers); Sejal Shah (This Is One Way to Dance); Sopan Deb (Missed Translations); and Jenny Bhatt (Each of Us Killers: Stories).
Martha Anne Toll (top left) is the 2020 Winner of the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction. Her debut novel, Three Muses, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing, Fall 2022. Her fiction has appeared in Catapult, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, eMerge, Slush Pile Magazine, Yale’s Letters Journal, Inkapture Magazine, Referential Magazine, and Poetica E Magazine. Martha’s essays and reviews appear regularly on NPR and in The Millions; as well as in the Washington Post, Washington Post’s The Lily, The Rumpus, Bloom, Scoundrel Time, Music & Literature, Words Without Borders [forthcoming], After the Art, Narrative Magazine, [PANK] Magazine, Cargo Literary, Tin House blog, The Nervous Breakdown, Heck Magazine, and the Washington Independent Review of Books. Her personal essay, “Dayenu,” was selected for an anthology featuring a range of well-known writers such as Lidia Yuknavich, Kwame Alexander, Dani Shapiro, and Ada Limón.
Donna Miscolta’s (top middle) third book of fiction Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories, about lessons a young Mexican American girl learns in a world that favors neither her race nor gender, was published by Jaded Ibis Press in September 2020. Her story collection Hola and Goodbye, winner of the Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman and published by Carolina Wren Press (2016), won an Independent Publishers award for Best Regional Fiction and an International Latino Book Award for Best Latino Focused Fiction. She’s also the author of the novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced from Signal 8 Press (2011), which poet Rick Barot called “intricate, tender, and elegantly written – a necessary novel for our times.” Recent essays appear in pif, Los Angeles Review, and the anthology Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19 and a short story is forthcoming in Latinx Subjectivities: A multi-genre anthology.
Grace Talusan’s memoir, The Body Papers, is a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, a winner in nonfiction for the Massachusetts Book Awards, and winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. Her short story, The Book of Life and Death, was chosen for the 2020 Boston Book Festival’s One City One Story program and was translated into several languages, including Tagalog. Currently, Talusan is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University.
Sejal Shah (bottom left) is the author of the debut essay collection, This Is One Way to Dance (University of Georgia Press, 2020). Her stories and essays have appeared in Brevity, Conjunctions, Guernica, the Kenyon Review Online, Literary Hub, Longreads, Poets & Writers, and The Rumpus. The recipient of a 2018 NYFA fellowship in fiction, Sejal recently completed a story collection and is at work on a memoir about mental health. She teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University and lives in Rochester, New York.
Sopan Deb (bottom middle) is a writer for the New York Times. Before joining the Times, he covered Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign for CBS News. He is also a New York-city based comedian. He is the author of the memoir Missed Translations: Meeting The Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me.
Jenny Bhatt (bottom right) is a writer, literary translator, and book critic. She’s also the host of the Desi Books podcast. Her debut story collection, Each of Us Killers, launched last month in the US with 7.13 Books. Her literary translation, Ratno Dholi: Dhumketu’s Best Short Stories, from Gujarati to English, is out this month with HarperCollins India. Her non-fiction writing has appeared or will be coming soon in NPR, The Washington Post, BBC Culture, The Atlantic, Longreads, Literary Hub, Poets & Writers, and several more.
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Join Zoom Meeting:
Meeting ID: 282 978 3950
Password: 788597
Join us for a reading from Rachel Genn, whose second novel, What You Could Have Won, will be released by And Other Stories in early November.
This event will take place via Zoom; see details below. The novel can be purchased via our online store, or call us on 512-322-2097 to arrange curbside pick up.
“A captivating portrait of regret, addiction, and the will to survive.” —Publishers Weekly
Fame is the only thing worth having. Love is temporary brain damage. Or so thinks Henry Sinclair, a failing psychiatrist, whose career-breaking discovery has been pinched by a supervisor smelling of nipple grease and hot-dog brine. An emotional miser and manipulator par excellence, desperate for the recognition he’s certain his genius deserves, Henry claws his way into the limelight by transforming his girlfriend—a singer-in-ascendance, beloved for her cathartically raw performances—into a drug experiment. As he systematically works to reinforce feelings of worthlessness while at the same time feeding off Astrid’s fame, and as Astrid collapses deeper into dependence, what emerges is a two-sided toxic relationship: the bullying instincts of a man shrunk by an industry where bullying is currency, and the peculiar strength of a star more comfortable offloading her talent than owning her brilliance.
Pinging between their apartment in New York (where they watch endless episodes of The Sopranos), a nudist campsite in Greece (where the tantalizingly handsome Gigi thwacks octopuses into the sand), and a celebrity rehab facility in Paris (founded by the cassock-wearing and sex-scandal plagued ‘artist’ Hypno Ray), What You Could Have Won is a relationship born of regrettable events, and a novel about female resilience in the face of social control.
Rachel Genn is a neuroscientist, artist and writer who has written two novels: The Cure (2011) and What You Could Have Won (2020). She was a Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence (2016), creating The National Facility for the Regulation of Regret, which spanned installation art, VR and film (2016-17). She has written for Granta, 3:AM Magazine, and Hotel, and is working on Hurtling, a hybrid collection of essays about the neuroscience, art and abjection of artistic reverie. She’s also working on a binaural experience exploring paranoia, and a collection of non-fiction about fighting and addiction to regret. Genn works at the Manchester Writing School and the School of Digital Arts, both at Manchester Metropolitan University, and lives in Sheffield.
Join Zoom Meeting:
Meeting ID: 282 978 3950
Password: 788597
Ready for the Lion & Pirate in 2021? We are! Start the new year off with your inclusive open mic pals (and tell Laura happy birthday)!
We’ll start with two featured readers, and then it will be your time to shine. As always, we’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems or prose… anything you can perform!
Accessibility adventure note: we’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so we’ll screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e (and let us know if you have questions).
Zoom Info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85323118334
Meeting ID: 853 2311 8334
Password: 146923
Join the Lion & Pirate inclusive open mic in February for our SIXTH birthday (what??? It’s true)! BYOCake!
Our featured performer this month is Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson! The San Antonio, TX 2020-2023 Poet Laureate, Andrea teaches poetry workshops, mentors, builds up and encourages artists to pursue their art, and gives them platforms to showcase their talent. Her debut book, entitled She Lives in Music, published on Flower Song Press, was released on Valentine’s Day 2020. Her album She Tastes Like Music is available on all music streaming platforms.
Then it will be your time to shine! Sign up to PERFORM by noon, Feb. 6th: https://forms.gle/ztjmnhAHRfZCe3Wt5
As always, we’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems or prose… Anything you can perform!
Accessibility adventure note: we’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so we’ll screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e (and let us know if you have questions).
ZOOM link to be posted closer to the event; please check the Facebook event for the link.
Join the Lion & Pirate for their next inclusive open mic! This month, they’re pleased to present featured readings by winners from the 2020 Pen2Paper creative writing contest.
Then it will be your time to shine! As always, they’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems or prose… anything you can perform!
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
ZOOM link to be posted closer to the event; please check the Facebook event for the link.
This month, we’re pleased to present featured readings by winners from the 2020 Pen2Paper creative writing contest, Edie Bakker and Lucia Gagliese!
Edie Bakker (3rd Place in Poetry for “Grappling with Dissociative Identity Disorder”) was raised in Papua New Guinea, the daughter of anthropologist/missionaries. Edie led two expeditions to save a rainforest and wrote about them for National Geographic magazine. She has a Bachelor’s in Anthropology and has the equivalent of an FMA. Edie has written seven books, short stories, and poems.
Lucia Gagliese (2nd Place in Fiction for “The Caregiver”) is a clinical psychologist and professor at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her work focuses on pain, aging, and end of life care. She studied creative writing at the Humber School for Writers and her fiction has appeared in The Healing Muse and is forthcoming in The Leaf. “The Caregiver” is a health narrative that integrates her clinical and research interests with her personal experience of losing a friend to ALS.
After Edie and Lucia, it will be your time to shine! Sign up to PERFORM by noon Apr. 30: https://forms.gle/ryoqXSaLbuEi7jQR6. As always, we’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems or prose… anything you can perform!
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
ZOOM link to be posted closer to the event; please check the Facebook event for the link.
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic!
This month, we’re pleased to present featured readings by winners from the 2020 Pen 2 Paper creative writing contest: Jasmine Ledesma (1st Place in Non-fiction for “How Sad, How Lovely”) and Pat Hulsebosch (2nd Place in Non-fiction for “Watch Closely”)!
Then it will be your time to shine! Sign up to PERFORM by noon, June 5th at https://docs.google.com/…/1FAIpQLSdK9xgG9ftI22…/viewform. As always, we’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems or prose… anything you can perform!
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
ZOOM link to be posted closer to the event; please check the Facebook event for the link.
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic! This month, we’re pleased to present featured performances by Pen 2 Paper alum, writer, and performer Maria Palacios!
After Maria, it will be your time to shine! As always, we’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems, or prose… anything you can perform!
Sign up by noon, July 2nd, at: https://forms.gle/CL22HgqutgtoNrDu8.
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
ZOOM link to be posted closer to the event; please check the Facebook event for the link.
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic! As always, after our featured performer, it’s your time to shine! We’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems, or prose… anything you can perform!
Sign up to perform here by noon, July 31st.
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
ZOOM link to be posted closer to the event; please check the Facebook event for the link.
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic! As always, after our featured performer, it’s your time to shine! We’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems, or prose… anything you can perform!
Sign up to perform here by noon, September 3rd.
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
ZOOM link to be posted closer to the event; please check the Facebook event for the link.
Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom for the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by Charlotte Gullick.
This month’s featured reader is Eva Shelton, winner of The Insider Prize for Incarcerated Writers in Texas awarded by American Short Fiction.
Eva Shelton is 43 years old and was born and raised in Graham, Texas. In the third grade she started writing stories and poems for school and for fun. At the age of 25 she found herself headed to prison. She would spend the next eighteen years of her life surrounded by razor wire and amputated from societal norms. To pass the time she worked and she wrote. Her writing was her emotional release. She created worlds she could live in and her friends existed in ink on lines. She was released from prison on March 9th of this year and she finally took a deep, gasping breath of relief. She has had to learn to live in a world of technology and overwhelming choices as if she were Rip Van Winkle rising from slumber. The Insider Prize by American Short Fiction is her first monetary award for her writing.
Zoom Info:
https://austincc.zoom.us/j/91931157006?pwd=N3FTbDFROEpSZTNEaDQxTXJyalNGQT09
Passcode: 504435
Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom for the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by Charlotte Gullick.
This month’s featured reader is Stephanie Macias.
Stephanie Macias is a writer, artist, and musician living in Austin, TX. She is currently an MFA candidate in the New Writers Project at the The University of Texas at Austin. She is at work on a novel and a collection of short stories.
Zoom Info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86887318364?pwd=M2hreGFQRTlsR0c3VkpDL2VkbjRrZz09
Meeting ID: 868 8731 8364
Passcode: 914142
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic! As always, after our featured performer, it’s your time to shine! We’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems, or prose… anything you can perform!
The sign up form and Zoom link will be posted soon on Facebook.
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom for the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by Charlotte Gullick.
This month’s featured reader is Kendra Christel.
Kendra Christel is a writer, actress, and singer from Austin, Texas. She considers herself a Jill of all trades. She began performing at the age of 3 as part of the Joyce Willett Dance Company. She began writing at age 8, winning a college scholarship in an essay contest, and began singing in her church’s adult choir at age 11. An alumna of Texas State University with a B.A. in Mass Communications and Journalism, Kendra served as an E-Board member of the only Black theater group on campus, Ebony Players. Kendra is also an alumna of the University of Georgia, having earned her M.F.A. in Screenwriting. As a Screenwriter, Kendra has placed as a semi-finalist in the Final Draft Big Break screenwriting competition 2020, the Oscar’s Nicholl Fellowship 2021, and the 2nd round of the 2021 Austin Film Festival. Her novel, Abela, was a featured reading at the Diverse Literary Voices of Austin 2019 conference. As an actress and singer, she was also named Broadway World Austin’s Performer of the Decade and Vocalist of the Decade for her role as Deloris Van Cartier in Sister Act. The newest member of the St. Stone family, she enjoys performing drag as a friend of the Royal Court of Austin to help raise money for HIV/AIDS awareness. She currently resides in the Atlanta area.
Zoom Info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82680032230?pwd=bk8ySVZtbkxCTUljZ0thMlZJUFgxQT09
Meeting ID: 826 8003 2230
Passcode: 171138
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic! As always, after our featured performer, it’s your time to shine! We’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems, or prose… anything you can perform!
The sign up form and Zoom link will be posted soon on Facebook.
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom for the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by Charlotte Gullick.
This month’s featured reader is Maurice Chammah.
Maurice Chammah is a writer and journalist, and the author of Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty, which was published earlier this year. He works for The Marshall Project, a non-profit news outlet that covers the U.S. criminal justice system, where he was on a team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. He helps organize The Insider Prize, a contest for incarcerated writers, sponsored by the magazine American Short Fiction. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Zoom Info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82105197585?pwd=V0x0RHN4UXJuWURIK1JadWc2QzZCQT09
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic! As always, after our featured performer, it’s your time to shine! We’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems, or prose… anything you can perform!
For our featured performance to kick off the year, we’re welcoming back Oli Steck, a musician, actor, and entertainer. He plays various instruments, with various styles of music, with many different groups. He honed his timing, sense of music, entertainment, and theater, by playing in the streets, clubs, theaters, homes and spaces of the United States, Mexico, Canada, and Europe. Since 2002, he has lived and performed mainly in Austin, Tx. Some of the performers he works with locally are Bob Schneider, Slaid Cleaves, Guy Forsyth, Rey Arteaga, and the Moon Tower Brass Band. Catch Oli working as a solo performer streaming 2 live shows from his homepage on Facebook: “The Squirrel Show” (Thursdays at 7:30pm CST), and “The Kids’ Show” (Saturdays at 10am).
The sign up form and Zoom link will be posted soon on Facebook.
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom for the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by Charlotte Gullick. This month’s featured reader is Dalia Azim.
Dalia Azim was born in Canada and raised in the United States. Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Aperture, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Glimmer Train (where she received their Short Story Award for New Writers), Other Voices, and The Washington Post, among other places. Her first book, Country of Origin, will be published by A Strange Object/Deep Vellum in March 2022. Dalia is the manager of special projects at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas; she previously worked as a researcher at the Dedalus Foundation and as a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York City. She graduated with a dual degree in art and literature from Stanford University and grew up in Colorado.
Zoom Info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88095180404?pwd=bTRLVGNpOXdqREdiQWJCNEVMUlJmQT09
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic! As always, after our featured performer, it’s your time to shine! We’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems, or prose… anything you can perform!
The sign up form and Zoom link will be posted soon on Facebook.
Are you performing with an instrument or accompanying music? Optimize your sound: https://pfs.org/zoomperformance/
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom for the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by Charlotte Gullick. This month’s featured reader is Adam Soto.
Adam Soto is the author of the novel This Weightless World. He earned his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently lives with his wife in Austin, Texas, where he is a teacher and the web editor of American Short Fiction. His second book, a collection of ghost stories entitled Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, will be released this fall.
Zoom Info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87969885873?pwd=K2FtK2JzNUdNR3JOVmRMSDYzQzl4Zz09
Meeting ID: 879 6988 5873
Passcode: 648283
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic! As always, after our featured performer, it’s your time to shine! We’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems, or prose… anything you can perform!
The sign up form and Zoom link will be posted soon on Facebook.
Are you performing with an instrument or accompanying music? Optimize your sound: https://pfs.org/zoomperformance.
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom for the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by Charlotte Gullick. This month’s featured reader is Scott Semegran.
Scott Semegran is an award-winning writer of eight books. BlueInk Review described him best as “a gifted writer, with a wry sense of humor.” His latest novel, The Benevolent Lords of Sometimes Island, is about four middle school friends who sneak away to an abandoned lake house to evade the wrath of high school bullies, only to become stranded on the lake’s desolate island. It won First Place in the 2021 Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards for Middle-Grade/Young Adult Fiction. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, four kids, two cats, and a dog. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in English.
Zoom Info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86910316763?pwd=dFBlS1NhYXNPNjA5ZHZWc0dTNUpIUT09
Meeting ID: 869 1031 6763
Passcode: 360355
This month’s open mic takes place on May 1, or May Day, a celebration of the season of spring! We can’t think of a better featured artist to commemorate this occasion than our dear friend, nature lover, and poet, Birdman 313!
After Birdman, it’s your turn on the mic! As always, we’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems or prose… anything you can perform!
The sign up form and Zoom link will be posted on Facebook.
Are you performing with an instrument or accompanying music? Optimize your sound: https://pfs.org/zoomperformance.
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom for the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted this month by Ursula Pike.
This month’s featured reader is Crisosto Apache.
Crisosto Apache is originally from Mescalero, New Mexico (US), on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, and currently lives in the Denver metro area in Colorado, with their spouse. They are Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné (Navajo) of the Salt Clan born for the Towering House Clan, and is Assistant Professor of English at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design. They hold an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Crisosto’s debut collection is GENESIS (Lost Alphabet, 2018). Crisosto’s second forthcoming collection is Ghostword, out by Gnashing Teeth Publication mid-2022. Some of the poems in this collection have appeared in The Rumpus, Loch Raven Review, Poetry Foundation’s POETRY Magazine, ANMLY Magazine, Digging Through The Fat, and McGraw Hill Publishing.
Zoom Info:
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic! As always, after our featured performer, it’s your time to shine! We’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems, or prose… anything you can perform!
The sign up form and Zoom link will be posted on Facebook.
Are you performing with an instrument or accompanying music? Optimize your sound: https://pfs.org/zoomperformance.
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic! As always, after our featured performer, it’s your time to shine! We’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems, or prose… anything you can perform!
The sign up form and Zoom link will be posted on Facebook.
Are you performing with an instrument or accompanying music? Optimize your sound: https://pfs.org/zoomperformance.
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic! As always, after our featured performer, it’s your time to shine! We’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems, or prose… anything you can perform!
The sign up form and Zoom link will be posted on Facebook.
Are you performing with an instrument or accompanying music? Optimize your sound: https://pfs.org/zoomperformance.
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom for the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by A.R. Rogers.
This month’s featured reader is Bianca Alyssa Pérez.
Bianca Alyssa Pérez was born and raised in Mission, Texas, a small southern town bordering Mexico. She holds her MFA in Poetry from Texas State University, where she also teaches. She is the 2022-2023 Clark House Writer-In-Residence. Her chapbook, Gemini Gospel, is forthcoming March 2023 from Host Publications.
Zoom Info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82503058833?pwd=QUowNXNXVU1NTzEyd2UwVjl6bnlIZz09
Meeting ID: 825 0305 8833
Passcode: 706497
Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom for the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by A.R. Rogers.
This month’s featured reader is Chaitali Sen.
Chaitali Sen is the author of the novel The Pathless Sky (Europa Editions 2015) and the short story collection A New Race of Men from Heaven, which won the Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction and will be published by Sarabande Books in January 2023. Her stories and essays have appeared in Boulevard, Ecotone (receiving a special mention in the 2019 Best American Short Stories Anthology), Shenandoah, New England Review, New Ohio Review, Colorado Review, Electric Literature, LitHub, Los Angeles Review of Books, Catapult, and many other publications. Kirkus Reviews called The Pathless Sky “a searingly vivid portrayal of the depths of human emotions-from the first glow of young love to the deeper strength of middle-aged commitment. A poignant and sophisticated work couched in lyrical, effervescent prose.” It was a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best First Fiction, and included on Idra Novey’s Buzzfeed list “10 Books That Challenge Our Political Landscape by Inventing New Ones,” Library Journal’s “Top Fall Indie Fiction,” and Mic.com’s “25 Essential Reads to Make Women’s History Last Longer than a Month.”
A graduate of the Hunter College MFA in Fiction, she is the founder of the interview series Borderless: Conversations on Art, Action, and Justice. She has been a frequent panelist, presenter, and instructor for Writers League of Texas, Grub Street’s Muse & Marketplace Conference, Texas Book Festival, and The Asian American Writers Workshop, and was a featured writer at the New Voices Festival at Ithaca College in 2017 and the first annual Tasveer South Asian Literary Festival in Seattle in 2019.
Zoom Info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88074697794?pwd=K2RmU3VCS2tnc0VZZGduTElHcTZZdz09
Meeting ID: 880 7469 7794
Passcode: 526776
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic! As always, after our featured performer, it’s your time to shine! We’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems, or prose… anything you can perform!
The sign up form and Zoom link will be posted on Facebook.
Are you performing with an instrument or accompanying music? Optimize your sound: https://pfs.org/zoomperformance.
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom for the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by A.R. Rogers.
This month’s featured reader is Raul Garza.
Raul Garza is a Latinx playwright who has drawn acclaim for telling stories that resound with authenticity and sense of place. He boldly explores the intersection of popular culture and cultural identity, and incorporates music, spirituality, and the power of nostalgia into works that span time and location. When not writing, Raul vibes on kundalini yoga, devours pop culture, and travels beyond his means.
Zoom Info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83090059893?pwd=ek5JYjh5UEkyZjhWS0x5SllFa0NaQT09
Meeting ID: 830 9005 9893
Passcode: 853283
Join the Lion & Pirate for our next inclusive open mic! As always, after our featured performer, it’s your time to shine! We’re open to work in any genre: music, spoken word, improv, skits, storytelling, dance, poems, or prose… anything you can perform!
The sign up form and Zoom link will be posted on Facebook.
Are you performing with an instrument or accompanying music? Optimize your sound: https://pfs.org/zoomperformance.
Accessibility adventure note: they’ll be using Rev for closed captions during the event. Rev isn’t great for music, so they will screen-share the lyrics of anything musical. You can still see the performer during songs, just follow these instructions for side-by-side screen sharing: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004802843-Side-by-Side-Mode-for-Screen-Sharing#h_7ebd355a-bdc4-489c-8193-63c4b063774e.
Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom for the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department’s Literary Coffeehouse, hosted by A.R. Rogers.
This month’s featured reader is Natalie Lima.
Natalie Lima is a Cuban-Puerto Rican writer from Las Vegas, NV and Hialeah, FL. Her essays and fiction have been published in Longreads, Guernica, Brevity, The Offing, Catapult, Sex and the Single Woman (Harper Perennial, 2022), Body Language (Catapult, 2022), and elsewhere. Her writing has been honored in Best Small Fictions (2020), and noted twice in Best American Essays (2019 and 2020). She has received fellowships from PEN America Emerging Voices, Letras Boricus/the Mellon Foundation, Bread Loaf, Tin House, the VONA/Voices Workshop, the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, and a residency from Hedgebrook. Natalie teaches creative writing at Butler University as Assistant Professor in the Department of English. She is currently working on a memoir and an essay collection.
Zoom Info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87692384191?pwd=Z3BUU0JBVGEwK0pOVFVPeGx0NGhwdz09
Meeting ID: 876 9238 4191
Passcode: 324161