Malvern Books

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

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

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

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

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

Costumes highly encouraged.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 in celebrating the launch of Vanessa Couto Johnson’s first full-length poetry collection, Pungent dins concentric (Tolsun Books).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured reader Christia Madacsi Hoffman (below, center) grew up along the banks of the Mystic River in Mystic, Connecticut. Through her Austin-based company, CenterLight Media, Hoffman works as a marketing and editorial writer, graphic designer, and actor. Her early career adventures included antique furniture restoration and leading treks in the high Himalaya. With an accessible and insightful poetic voice, Hoffman’s poetry explores the universal themes of place, beauty, youth, and family. Her personal reflections reveal the depth in our everyday experiences and the significance of our intentions.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Join us in celebrating the release of Larry Mayfield’s second collection, Tributaries and Stepping Stones. Readers include Larry and special guests Teresa Y Roberson, Spirit Thom, Arden Knight, and Gia Scott-Heron. Reed Mayfield, a featured artist in the book, will also attend.

Tributaries and Stepping Stones is a book of free verse poetry, poetic prose, spoken word, and word flow for dreamers. The varied contents includes subjects on love, family, Daoist/Zen principles, nature, and the environment.

Join us in celebrating the launch of mónica teresa ortiz’s new chapbook of crónicas, autobiography of a semi romantic anarchist (Host Publications).

I was really influenced by Eduardo Galeano’s work and then began reading Cameroon scholar Achille Mbembe’s On the Postcolony. The cronicas reflect my exploration of necropolitics, of the state and sovereignty, of trying to exist and survive in a space where queerness is a disruption, against heteronormativity, against heterosexuality, against whiteness, against the state which controls our lives, even what happens to our bodies after we die. I think it hinges on the concept of an afterlife. When I came out to my parents, the person that they knew me to be, no longer existed. I was treated as if I had died. I began thinking, is my queerness my afterlife? Is it a rebirth?

This is how I perceive queer futurity. As Jose Esteban Muñoz says, it is imagining a future that doesn’t exist yet.

We live in a colonized space under capitalism. Our lives and deaths happen within these parameters. The settler colonial state attempts to control how we experience love and loss and grief but it doesn’t have to define it.

mónica teresa ortiz is a poet born and raised in Texas. Her first poetry collection, muted blood, was published by Black Radish Books in 2018. ortiz is the poetry editor for Raspa Magazine, a Queer Latinx literary and art journal.

In association with CAIR Austin, join us in celebrating Muslim Women’s Day with a reading from popular Instagram cartoonist and American-Muslim writer Huda Fahmy, author of Yes, I’m Hot in This: The Hilarious Truth about Life in a Hijab.

At some point in our lives, we’ve all felt a little out of place. Huda Fahmy has found it’s a little more difficult to fade into the crowd when wearing a hijab.

In Yes, I’m Hot in This, Huda navigates the sometimes-rocky waters of life from the unique perspective of a Muslim-American woman, breaking down misconceptions of her culture one comic at a time. From recounting the many questions she gets about her hijab every day (yes, she does have hair) and explaining how she runs in an abaya (just fine, thank you) to dealing with misconceptions about Muslims, Yes, I’m Hot in This tackles universal feelings from an point of view we don’t hear from nearly enough.

Every one of us have experienced love, misunderstanding, anger, and a deep desire for pizza. In Yes, I’m Hot in This, Huda’s clever comics demonstrate humor’s ability to bring us together, no matter how different we may appear on the surface.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

artwork info: “No Traffic” by Makenna Hatter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join us in celebrating the launch of the 2019 summer issue of Kallisto Gaia Press’ literary journal, The Ocotillo Review, which features over 100 pages of literary genius by award-winning writers from around the world and superb new pieces by writers from underserved communities.

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

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

Join us in celebrating the launch of C. S. Woolwine’s debut novel, Cyclic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join us in celebrating Women in Translation Month, with readings and discussion from award-winning poet and acclaimed Spanish translator Liliana Valenzuela, and Marian Schwartz, who translates Russian classic and contemporary fiction, history, biography, criticism, and fine art. Liliana will read from Puro Amor by Sandra Cisneros, and Marian will read from The Man Who Couldn’t Die: The Tale of an Authentic Human Being by Olga Slavnikova.

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

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

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

Join us in celebrating the upcoming launch of visiting poet Sarah Herrin’s chapbook, The Oceanography of Her (Papeachu Press). Sarah will be joined by Christia Madacsi Hoffman.

Sarah Herrin is a poet based in Seattle, Washington. Raised in the Deep South, she escaped to the Pacific Northwest in 2012. She achieved a BFA at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where she studied Sequential Art and Creative Writing. Her work is inspired by world travel, her bisexual identity, mental health, heartbreak and healing, the ocean, and above all—love. She is a gemologist, runner/triathlete, cat mom, wife, and Bowie lover. Sarah is the author of One Thousand Questions (And No Good Answers) and the chapbook The Oceanography of Her, to be released October 2019.

Christia Madacsi Hoffman grew up along the banks of the Mystic River in Mystic, Connecticut. Through her Austin-based company, CenterLight Media, Hoffman works as a marketing and editorial writer, graphic designer, and actor. Her early career adventures included antique furniture restoration and leading treks in the high Himalaya. With an accessible and insightful poetic voice, Hoffman’s poetry explores the universal themes of place, beauty, youth, and family. Her personal reflections reveal the depth in our everyday experiences and the significance of our intentions.

Join us for a reading from final year students in The Michener Center for Writers and the New Writers Project M.F.A. programs in creative writing at UT Austin. Readers include Shaina Frazier, Loan Tran, Darby Jardeleza, Max Seifert, and Desiree Evans (left to right, below).

Shaina Frazier was born in Sacramento, CA but was raised in H-Town. She earned her BFA from the University of Houston in 2015 and is currently a fiction MFA candidate in the New Writers Project at UT Austin. She is currently writing about race and talking nooses and magic and martyrdom.

Loan Tran lives in Austin, TX and likes to browse around bookstores and the produce section of supermarkets. She is in the New Writers Project and writes poems.

Darby Jardeleza is currently in her second year at the New Writers Project. She is from Bluffton, South Carolina, though she most recently moved to Austin from Atlanta, Georgia. She is at work on her first novel thanks to the help and support of the NWP and Michener community.

Max Seifert writes poetry. You can find it in The Adroit Journal, b[OINK] Zine, Gulf Coast, and Tupelo Quarterly. He lives over by Eastwoods Neighborhood Park.

Desiree Evans is a writer, activist, and scholar hailing from south Louisiana. She is currently an MFA Fiction Fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at The University of Texas at Austin. Her writing has received fellowships and support from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA), the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Kimbilio Fiction, and the Hurston/Wright Foundation.

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.

Join us in celebrating the collection America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience. With co-editor Murray Silverstein, as well as Miriam Bird Greenberg, Jesús I. Valles, and Abe Louise Young.

Soon after the 2016 presidential election, Sixteen Rivers Press, a shared-work collective of Northern California poets, conducted a nationally advertised call for submissions, seeking unpublished poems that would “respond to the cultural, moral, and political rifts that now divide our country: poems of resistance and resilience, witness and vision, that embody what it means to be a citizen in a time when our democracy is threatened.” In a matter of weeks, the press received over two thousand poems. The work came from across the country, from red states and blue states, high schools and nursing homes, big cities and small towns. At the same time, the poet-members of the press were asked to nominate poems. These poems could be old or new, published or not, the poets living or dead—anything from anywhere that spoke to this moment in the voice of poetry. In this way, the editors gathered another three hundred poems, ranging from Virgil and Dante to Claudia Rankine and Mai Der Vang, from Milton to Merwin, from Bai Juyi to last Thursday’s just-posted Poem-a-Day. America, We Call Your Name is a blend of poems from these two sources, each of its nine sections a kind of town-hall meeting where citizen-poets gather to raise their voices, now raucous, now muted, now lyric, now plain: voices responding with dissent and consoling with praise, perspective, vision, and hope.

Murray Silverstein is Sr. Editor of America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience (2018), and The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed (2010), both from Sixteen Rivers Press. He is the author of two books of poetry, Master of Leaves (2014) and Any Old Wolf (2007). Any Old Wolf received the 2007 Independent Publisher medal for poetry. He is a retired architect and co-author of four books about architecture, including A Pattern Language (Oxford University Press) and Patterns of Home (The Taunton Press). His poems have appeared in RATTLE, Brooklyn Review, Spillway, California Quarterly, Poetry East, West Marin Review, RUNES, Nimrod, Connecticut Review, Zyzzyva, Fourteen Hills, Pembroke Magazine, Elysian Fields, and other journals. Silverstein lives in Oakland, California.

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.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Esteban Rodríguez’s debut poetry collection, Dusk & Dust, which explores the lives of the generations who have made their homes along the US-Mexico border, in a landscape too often neglected and forgotten. Rodríguez will be joined by Leanna Petronella, Saul Hernandez, and Gabino Iglesias.

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

Leanna Petronella’s debut collection, The Imaginary Age, won the 2018 Pleiades Press Editors Prize. Her poetry appears in Beloit Poetry Journal, Third Coast, Birmingham Poetry Review, Quarterly West, and other publications. She holds a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Missouri and an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. She lives in Austin.

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

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

Join us in celebrating the release of L.B. Deyo’s The God-Damned Fool. the second publication of Austin-based publishing company Persistence of Vision.

Join us for a reading with Texas State University faculty members. Featured readers include Steve Wilson, Kathleen Peirce, Roger Jones, John Blair, and Cecily Parks.

Steve Wilson’s poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies nationwide, as well as in four collections, the most recent titled Lose to Find. His new collection, The Reaches, is due out in November.

Kathleen Peirce is the author of Vault, The Ardors, The Oval Hour, Divided Touch/Divided Color, and Mercy. Among her awards are The Iowa Prize, a Whiting Award, The William Carlos Williams Award, and The AWP Prize. A fellow with The Guggenheim Foundation and The National Endowment for the Arts, she’s been teaching at Texas State University since 1993.

John Blair has published six books, most recently Playful Song Called Beautiful (University of Iowa Press, 2016), and is the recipient of multiple literary awards, including The Drue Heinz Literature Prize and the Iowa Poetry Prize. He directs the undergraduate creative writing program at Texas State University.

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 author Amber Elby to celebrate the release of her third novel, Trouble Fires Burn, a fantasy adventure based on the plays of William Shakespeare. Amber and special guest author Carol Beth Anderson will read excerpts from their novels and answer audience questions. Signed books available for purchase. Family friendly. All ages welcome!

Amber Elby crafts a world that invokes the best of Terry Pratchett, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Neil Gaiman, all rooted in the mythology of Shakespeare. The Netherfeld series is a must read for lovers of magic, the inexplicable, and especially the timeless wonder conjured by the plays of William Shakespeare.
—Montgomery Sutton, Shakespearean Actor, Director, and Playwright 

Amber Elby is the author of three novels based on Shakespeare’s plays: Cauldron’s Bubble, Double Double Toil, and Trouble Fires Burn. In the last millennium, she was born in Grand Ledge, Michigan but spent much of her childhood in the United Kingdom. She began writing when she was three years old and created miniature books by asking her family how to spell every… single… word. Several years later, she saw her first Shakespearean comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, in London. Many years later, she studied Creative Writing at Michigan State University’s Honors College before earning her Master of Fine Arts degree in Screenwriting at the University of Texas at Austin. She enjoys watching Shakespearean performances with her husband and two daughters and divides her time between teaching at Austin Community College, traveling, and getting lost in imaginary worlds.

Carol Beth Anderson is a native of Arizona and now lives in Leander, TX. She has a husband, two kids, a miniature schnauzer, and more fish than anyone knows what to do with. Besides writing, she loves baking sourdough bread, knitting, and eating cookies-and-cream ice cream.

Join us in celebrating International Translation Day. Jennifer Rose Davis will discuss her new translation of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano De Bergerac (which she is currently directing for a limited Austin run as a co-production between The Archive Theater and The Austin Scottish Rite Theater). Also featuring the presentation of the award of the Harvie Jordan fedora to AATIA Member of the Year. Also worth noting: we’re offering 20% OFF all books in translation all day on Sunday, September 29th!

Jennifer Rose Davis is a writer, director, actress, singer, musician, costumer, mask maker, artist, graphic designer, and all-around Renaissance woman who serves as the Managing Director for The Archive Theater. Her theatrical credits include Music Director, Costumer, and Set Designer for Der Bestrafte Brudermord with The Hidden Room. She was also Associate Costumer The Hidden Room’s The History of King Lear by Nahum Tate, for which she won an Austin Critic’s Table award. Jennifer designed costumes and danced Butoh for Still Now with Shrewd Productions. She created Tudor era costumes for Austin Shakespeare’s staged readings of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII and Hillary Mantle’s Wolf Hall, and Elizabethan costumes for The Merry Wives of Windsor co-produced by Austin Scottish Rite Theater and Weird Sisters. Her latest consuming project was creating costumes for the Zilker Summer Musical, The Little Mermaid.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Stephanie Goehring’s chapbook, from The Water [Inaudible] (Host Publications)—and Malvern’s sixth birthday!

Host Publications is honored to award Stephanie Goehring’s chapbook from The Water [Inaudible] as the recipient of the Fall 2019 Host Publications Chapbook Prize. Our chapbook prize embodies our values as a small, community-oriented press by elevating the voices of women writers. The prize awards publication, $1000, 25 copies of the published chapbook, a book launch at Malvern Books, and national distribution with energetic publicity and promotion.

Stephanie Goehring is the author of several poetry chapbooks. She earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and works at Malvern Books in Austin, TX.

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.

Please join us in celebrating the launch of Alisar Eido’s new novel, Wake of War. With readings from Alisar, and special guests Brennan Utley and Kendall Smith.

Alisar Eido’s third novel, Wake of War, is the final book of The Soulfire Series. Her work spans multiple genres including science fiction, psychological thrillers, dark fantasy, and realistic fiction. The author’s inspiration stems from her many experiences with strange coincidences and unexplainable events, as well as battles with mental illness. She currently resides in Austin, Texas, with her pens and pencils.

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

Kendall Smith is a budding author born and raised in Austin, Texas. In the past, she’s been a ballerina, self-proclaimed chef, an avid gamer and an amateur podcast host. As a writer, she focuses on immersing her audience in realms where diverse experience leads to profound conflicts, the weak are stronger than they seem, the scenery is opulently feral, and fantasies are limitless.

Join us in celebrating the launch of poet Logan Fry’s new collection, Harpo Before the Opus. Logan will be joined by poet Caroline Gormley.

The poems begin where language fails, where speech becomes disembodied, and syntax skids to a stop that dissolves into gesture. Where its form reaches an end, formlessness offers a space ripe with possibility. Here we find Harpo, reaching into the frustrated endpoint of language to find a method for its resurrection. Fry sees that language becomes a tool for alienation and uses the poems in Harpo Before the Opus to excavate paths back to tenderness. These are poems from the edge, pulling language out from its failure and into a fervent interrogation of its possibilities. What was once a tool of capitalistic alienation now serves as material for building connections.

In spiraling explorations of rhetoric, these poems allow language to break from its prescribed structures, and instead, it becomes a gestural embrace of feeling and being. Fry utilizes a Marxist lens to scrutinize and reinvent the use of language. In Fry’s hands, language is rendered a visceral and sensual material, forming poems that are both deeply felt philosophical inquiries and wildly playful exercises of wit.

Logan Fry is the author of Harpo Before the Opus—selected by Srikanth Reddy as winner of Omnidawn’s 2018 1st/2nd Book Prize. He is founding editor of Flag + Void, and his poetry has appeared in venues including Fence, Prelude, New American Writing, West Branch, Denver Quarterly, Boston Review, and the Best American Experimental Writing anthology. He lives in Austin and teaches at Texas State University.

Caroline Gormley is an editor of Flag + Void. She attended Pratt Institute and Brooklyn College and currently works for an in-house creative agency. She has come out of poetry retirement for this very special reading with her husband, Logan.

Join us in celebrating the recent release of Vincent Cooper’s poetry collection Zarzamora. Vincent will be joined by Claudia Delfina Cardona and Laura Villareal.

Vincent Cooper is Chicano poet from Los Angeles, Ca. He is the author of Where the Reckless Ones Come to Die and Zarzamora—Poetry of Survival. His poetry can be found in Big Bridge Magazine, Huizache #6 and 8, AMP, Voices De La Luna, The Acentos Review, Riversedge Journal and Abstract Magazine. He currently resides in the westside of San Antonio.

Claudia Delfina Cardona is a tejana poet proudly born and raised in San Antonio. She received her MFA in Poetry at Texas State University this past spring. She is also the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Chifladazine, an online and print publication that is dedicated to showcasing the creative work of Latinas and Latinxs. Her work can be found in Cosmonauts Avenue, Tinderbox Journal, and Apogee Journal.

Laura Villareal earned her MFA from Rutgers University-Newark. She is the author of The Cartography of Sleep. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Black Warrior Review, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She has received scholarships from Key West Literary Seminar and The Highlights Foundation.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Christopher Carmona’s new novel El Rinche: The Ghost Ranger of the Rio Grande. With readings from Christopher and his brother, author Juan P. Carmona.

El Rinche is a reimagining and flip of the script of an American popular culture icon. This novel tells the story a light-skinned Mexican American named Ascencion “Chonnie” Ruiz de Plata. He disguises himself as the ghost of a Texas Ranger on the South Texas border of Mexico now known as The Rio Grande Valley between 1905-1921. Together with his partner, the Native American Tal’dos, a Japanese ninja master, and the most successful U.S. Marshall of all time, Bass Reeves (the real lone ranger), Chonnie takes on the superhero persona of “El Rinche” to fight the villainous Texas Rangers and save the local peoples of the area.

Christopher Carmona is the author of The Road to Llorona Park, which won the 2016 NACCS Tejas Best Fiction Award and was listed as one of the top 8 Latinx books in 2016 by NBCNews. He was the inaugural writer-in-residence for the Langdon Review Writers Residency Program in 2015. He has three books of poetry: 140 Twitter Poems, I Have Always Been Here and beat. He co-edited The Beatest State In The Union: An Anthology of Beat Texas Writings with Chuck Taylor and Rob Johnson and Outrage: A Protest Anthology about Injustice in a Post 9/11 World with Rossy Evelin Lima. He has also co-written Nuev@s Voces Poeticas: A Dialogue about New Chican@ Poetics. Currently, he is working on 280: Poems from the Twitterverse and a series of YA novellas entitled El Rinche: The Ghost Ranger of the Rio Grande. The first book in this series is out now and is a 2019 Texas Institute of Letters Best Young Adult Book Finalist. He teaches at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Brownsville in Mexican American Studies and Creative Writing.

A September morning in 1989 changed the city of Alton’s history forever. At 7:34 a.m., a Dr. Pepper truck collided with Mission School Bus no. 6. After the bus and its occupants plunged into a water-filled caliche pit, 21 students lost their lives. Thirty years later, a new book reveals the impact of the Alton Bus Crash. The resulting aftermath was a small South Texas community flooded with reporters and lawyers. The heavily scrutinized legal battle divided the city, but it did ultimately produce changes in school bus safety that continue to save lives today. Juan P. Carmona navigates the complicated legacy of the tragic accident and its aftermath.

Juan P. Carmona is a Social Studies teacher at Donna High School and a Dual-Enrollment History Instructor through South Texas College. He graduated with honors from the American Military University with a Master’s degree in American History and was the recipient of the 2018 James F. Veninga Outstanding Teaching Humanities Award by Humanities Texas. His primary field of research is the history of South Texas borderlands.

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.

Join us in celebrating the release of Jessica Reisman’s first short story collection, The Arcana of Maps.

The Arcana of Maps should be at the top of everyone’s must-read lists. Jessica Reisman’s unique lyrical voice powers some of the finest short fiction of this (and really any) century.”—Richard Klaw, editor of Rayguns Over Texas and The Apes of Wrath

This first collection of Jessica Reisman’s stories roves the liminal spaces between now and not-quite-now, dream and waking, futures far flung and fantastic. Here are tales of adventure and transformation, clockwork detectives and polar bears, a wild sea on a space station, alien salvage and revenants. Featuring 16 previously published works and one unique to the collection, these stories open obscure doors into fantastic otherwheres and whens, conjuring worlds with deft and evocative lyricism.

Jessica Reisman‘s stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her far future science fiction adventure novel Substrate Phantoms came out from Resurrection House Books in 2017. She grew up on the east coast of the U.S., was a teenager on the west coast, and now lives in Austin, Texas. She’s been a writer, animal lover, reader, and movie aficionado since she was a wee child.

Join us in celebrating the recent launch of John Domini’s fourth novel, The Color Inside a Melon. With readings from John and special guest Lowell Mick White.

The Color Inside a Melon appeared this summer. Blurbs came from Salman Rushdie and Marlon James, and the Washington Post praised the book as “sage” and spry,” The Millions as “stunning” and “poetic.” Set in Naples, Italy, the novel completes a loose trilogy. Domini also has three books of stories, the latest MOVIEOLA!, which The Millions called “a new shriek for a new century.” His criticism has appeared in the New York Times and elsewhere, and is collected in The Sea-God’s Herb. His awards include an NEA Fellowship and an Iowa Major Artist Grant.

Lowell Mick White is the author of six books: novels Normal School and Professed and Burnt House and That Demon Life, and story collections Long Time Ago Good and The Messes We Make of Our Lives. A winner of the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, White teaches at Texas A&M University.

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 in celebrating the launch of Esteban Rodríguez‘s new poetry collection, Crash Course. With readings from Esteban and special guest ire’ne lara silva.

Esteban Rodríguez is the author of the collections Dusk & Dust (Hub City Press 2019), Crash Course (Saddle Road Press 2019), In Bloom (SFASU Press 2020), and (Dis)placement (Skull + Wind Press 2020). His poetry has appeared in Boulevard, The Rumpus, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. He is the Interviews Editor for the EcoTheo Review, an Assistant Poetry Editor for AGNI, and a regular reviews contributor for PANK and Heavy Feather Review. He lives with his family in Austin, Texas.

ire’ne lara silva is the author of three poetry collections, furia (Mouthfeel Press, 2010) Blood Sugar Canto (Saddle Road Press, 2016), and CUICACALLI/House of Song (Saddle Road Press, 2019), 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.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Roberto Ontiveros’ debut story collection, The Fight for Space.

In his debut collection, The Fight for Space, Roberto Ontiveros explores the modes of art and obsession with eleven stories that run from fabulist comedy to surrealist noir. The tales—focusing on the inner lives of adult caregivers, delivery drivers, and painters—trace how the ubiquity of media (the world of sitcoms, talk radio, and superhero comics) comes to flood the working class with a dream-like dread. In this book, a budding con artist tries to sell a house that does not belong to her, an anti-social memoirist pens the fates of his friends, and a comic book-obsessed warehouse employee follows a man who wears a gas mask. Atmospheric and erotic, the stories in The Fight for Space recall the literary mysteries of James M. Cain by way of Twin Peaks.

Roberto Ontiveros is a fiction writer, artist, literary critic and journalist. Some of his work has appeared the Threepenny Review, the Santa Monica Review, the Believer Magazine, and Huizache. He is working on a novel and a collection of interlinking stories. He is the proud father of Maximo Spinoza Ontiveros.