Welcome to Malvern Books!
Malvern Books is now closed. Malvern Books was a bookstore and community space in Austin, Texas. We specialized in visionary literature and poetry from independent publishers, with a focus on lesser-known and emerging voices.
An Update from the Manager of Malvern Books
Dear Friends,
We’ve had a wonderful time sharing our favorite books with you over the past nine years, and it’s been an honor to celebrate the work of so many brilliant writers through our readings and events.
Malvern Books is the realization of Joe Bratcher’s vision—Joe dreamt of a bookstore that would carry the books he loved, mostly poetry and fiction from small, independent presses. He wanted to promote writers and translators of books from other countries, while also championing the work of local writers.
When Joe first talked to me about opening Malvern Books, I must admit I was skeptical. I didn’t think we’d find an audience. It was 2012 and everyone was saying that bookstores were dead, Kindle and online shopping were the future. I anticipated many quiet sales days, with Joe and I just sitting there, looking at each other. He told me if that’s how it ended up, well, at least we’d have a chance to chat—and since we always seemed to laugh a lot when we talked, it sounded like a good way to spend some time. And so from then on, whenever we’d have a really slow sales day, with just a few people coming in, we’d look at each other and say, “We’re living the dream!” and we’d laugh.
But back to opening… in early 2013, with the help of our amazing architect, contractor, and interior designer, we created the space that Joe had in mind. We started posting on social media thanks to Tracey, our wonderful digital media manager and first Malvern hire. And we were so grateful to the many enthusiastic writers and readers who expressed their excitement at the imminent arrival of Malvern Books. From the very beginning it felt like we were building a community.
We opened our doors in October 2013, and we were shocked by how many people came by. You showed up and you loved what we had to offer! You constantly surprised and humbled us with your kind words and helpful suggestions. People from out of town would visit the store because a local friend had told them they had to come by, and we received much appreciated shout-outs from the Austin Chronicle and numerous other newspapers and journals.
And then 2020 hit—but even with the pandemic, we had loyal customers who came by for curbside pick ups, signed up for individual shopping appointments, and participated in our Zoom book clubs and events. If we didn’t say it enough, THANK YOU!
All along the way, we were lucky enough to have truly wonderful staff members who loved the books we carried and who helped us build the store we have now. Their work has been invaluable and we could not have done this without them.
On July 28th of this year, we lost Joe. I can’t tell you how hard it has been to try and carry on in this space without him. Our little Malvern world has not been the same since, and, as much as we love this store and our amazing customers, Malvern Books simply cannot continue without our Joe.
Malvern Books will be closing on December 31st, 2022. It has been a wonderful nine years and we thank each and every one of our cherished customers, friends, staff, and suppliers for helping us along the way.
As we move forward, we’ll be sharing our plans with you for sales and specials. For now, we just wanted to let you know this was coming. We hope you all continue to seek out works in translation and books published by small presses—there is so much great stuff out there—and that you continue to support our local independent bookstores, like our dear friends at BookWoman, among others. But, most importantly, we hope to see you in the store sometime soon, to say goodbye and to thank you, both for being the readers that you are and because you have come with us on this incredibly fulfilling journey in Joe’s world.
With heartfelt thanks and wishing you all the best,
Becky Garcia,
Manager, Malvern Books
Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!
This month’s theme is “Sex, Love & Virtual Reality.” Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.
Join us for an evening with award-winning writer Toni Sala, who will be reading from The Boys, an “altogether brilliant” novel that centers around the sudden deaths of two young men in a provincial town in the Catalonian countryside.
Live music from award-winning folksinger Tish Hinojosa will begin at 7pm.
Toni Sala is the author of over a dozen novels and works of nonfiction. In 2005 he was awarded the National Literature Prize by the Catalan government, and he has also received many other honors for his writing. He lives in Barcelona.
Mara Faye Lethem’s translations have appeared in The Best American Non-Required Reading, Granta, The Paris Review, Words Without Borders, and McSweeney’s. She is the translator of Papers in the Wind by Eduardo Sacheri, Wonderful World by Javier Calvo, and others. She lives in Barcelona.
The once-bucolic Catalonian village of Vidreres has been ravaged by a harsh recession, and now two of its young men have died in a horrible car crash. As the town attends the funeral, a banker named Ernest heads to the tree where they died, trying to make sense of the tragedy. There he meets a brutish trucker, who in between Internet hookups and trips to prostitutes has taken a liking to Iona, the fiancée of one of the dead boys. Iona might be just what he needs to fix his tawdry life, but she’s mixed up with an artist who makes frightening projects. Masterfully conjuring the voices of each of these four characters, Toni Sala entwines their lives and their feelings of guilt, fear, and rage over an unspeakable loss.
Long known as one of Spain’s most powerful authors, Toni Sala is at his mischievous best here, delivering a sinister, fast-moving tale laced with intricate meditations on everything from social networks to Spain’s economic collapse to the mysterious end that awaits us all. The Boys is a startlingly honest vision of the things we’ll do in order to feel a little less alone in this world.
WINNER OF THE 2014 PREMIS DE LA CRÍTICA, CATALONIA’S MOST PRESTIGIOUS LITERARY AWARD
“The Boys is a stark tale of confused people trapped in a wrinkle in time, rendered with painful sensitivity and gut-wrenching bleakness. No surprise that Toni Sala has been praised as one of Catalan’s most important writers.” —Counterpunch
“A compelling existential mystery . . . a sort of Catalan answer to Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter, with a closing as haunting as a tale by Poe. Altogether brilliant.” —Kirkus, starred review
“Sala is a master of meditation, and the excitement and intrigue are never sacrificed despite digressive passages on Internet alienation, art, violence, phrases of grief, the Spanish recession, and love. One hopes this tremendous novel, already an award-winner overseas, will receive the attention it deserves here.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
Join three Austin indie authors as they read selections from their novels and discuss how they made the leap to indie publishing.
Authors featured include:
· Anna Castle writes the Francis Bacon mysteries and the Lost Hat, Texas mysteries.
· Adrian R. Hale writes the contemporary romance Drift Heat.
· Sarah Atlas writes the erotic romance All the Beautiful Lies.
This event is organized by Write It Already, a local meet-up that encourages people to write—and finish what they start. There will be light refreshments and books by all three authors for sale at the event.
Anna Castle writes the Francis Bacon mysteries and the Lost Hat, Texas mysteries. She has earned a series of degrees—BA in the Classics, MS in Computer Science, and a PhD in Linguistics—and has had a corresponding series of careers, including waitressing, software engineering, grammar-writing, assistant professor, and archivist. Writing fiction combines her lifelong love of stories and learning. She physically resides in Austin, Texas and mentally counts herself a queen of infinite space.
Adrian R. Hale is a whirlwind of energy and optimism, just as ready to tell you about her books as she is to invite you over for cookies. She is a big dreamer and believes in chasing them down with speed and enthusiasm, much like the characters she writes. You can find her cycling around Austin, running trails, baking gourmet cupcakes, beautifying people for weddings and photo shoots, and traveling all over the country in pursuit of those interests. Once upon a time, Adrian went to college thinking she would be a journalist but dropped out to go to beauty school. Later she wrote a novel about a hair and makeup artist, so things have definitely come full circle!
Sarah Atlas doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t know how to read. She filled her childhood with books and started spinning stories at an early age, writing her first novel with a friend in seventh grade. Her earliest forays into erotica started in college. All the Beautiful Lies, a mainstream erotica, is her first published novel. Sarah lives with her family in Austin, Texas.
Presenting W. Joe’s Poetry Corner, in which our host W. Joe Hoppe interviews a poet, who will then give a reading and answer questions from audience members. W. Joe’s guest this month is Abe Louise Young.
Abe Louise Young is an independent writer, educator and social justice activist. Her work has won a Grolier Poetry Prize, the Hawai’i Review’s Nell Altizer Award, a Narrative Magazine Story Prize, and the Academy of American Poets Prize. Her writing is forthcoming or has appeared in The Nation, WITNESS, New Letters, Feminist Wire and many other journals. She’s the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Heaven to Me (Headmistress Press) and Ammonite (Magnolia Press Collective).
A lifelong social justice advocate, she’s also the author/editor of numerous guides, including Queer Youth Advice for Educators: How to Respect and Protect Your LGBTQ Students; Hip Deep: Opinion, Essays, and Vision from American Teenagers; and an archive of oral histories with Hurricane Katrina survivors, Alive in Truth: The New Orleans Disaster Oral History Project. She is currently at work on a storytelling project about human rights abuses in Texas jails, and a memoir.
Young earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James Michener Fellow, and holds a BA from Smith College.
Get your cones ready for a special Galentine’s Edition of Malvern Books’ newest FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld & Schandra Madha and featuring young women poets and fiction writers from the Austin community. This month’s I Screamers are *KATHERINE NOBLE, JULIE POOLE, & SAM KARAS.*
Following the reading, there will be a (mic-less) open mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us.
And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream? And the photo booth? Oh yeah, it’s gonna be good. Can’t make it this time around? No worries. I Scream Social is every fourth Friday ’til the end of time.
Join us in celebrating the launch of Bruce McCandless’ latest novel, The Black Book of Cyrenaica, a historical horror story involving a supernatural terror that besieges an expedition to save American sailors imprisoned in Tripoli.
We’ll also enjoy live music from two talented musicians, with Jason McKenzie on percussion and Roberto Riggio playing the oud.
Bruce McCandless is an Austin-based writer whose previous credits include Sour Lake, Color War, and what some believe to be the best novel ever written about the University of Texas, The Krottkey Chronicles. McCandless’s Ninth Planet Press (Motto: “Strange Things for Good People”) is an Austin-based independent micro-publisher that uses locally sourced art, design, and web talent to create a uniquely Texan brand of speculative fiction.
Please join us at Malvern Books for Fantastical Fictions, an odd-monthly event focusing on the literary fantastic across genres and cultures hosted by Rebecca Schwarz and Chris Brown. We plan to bring together writers and readers of fantastic literature in Austin by featuring published writers reading from new works and from examples of fantastic literature available on our shelves. Discussion, Q&A sessions, and open mic for works in progress will follow the readings.
Please email us to sign up for our Fantastical Fictions email list if you’d like to receive news about our upcoming fantastic literature events, as well as announcements about new works of fantastic literature in the store.
This month we’re thrilled to welcome writer Marshall Ryan Maresca to our stage.
Marshall Ryan Maresca is a fantasy and science-fiction writer, as well as a playwright, living in South Austin with his wife and son. He is the author of the Maradaine Novels: The Thorn of Dentonhill, A Murder of Mages, and The Alchemy of Chaos. His work also appeared in Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction and Rick Klaw’s anthology Rayguns Over Texas. He also has had several short plays produced.
Join us for a reading with acclaimed poets Chip Dameron and Larry D. Thomas, who will be sharing their recent collections with us.
Chip Dameron is the author of seven collections of poetry and a travel book. His poems and essays on contemporary writers have appeared in such periodicals as Mississippi Review, Southwestern American Literature, San Pedro River Review, Puerto del Sol, Texas Quarterly, and many other journals and anthologies, as well as publications in Canada, Ireland, Nigeria, India, China, Thailand, and New Zealand. Dameron has co-edited two literary magazines, Thicket and Chachalaca Poetry Review, and served on the editorial board of four others. A two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize in poetry and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he lives and writes in Brownsville, Texas.
Larry D. Thomas, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, served as the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate. He has published several award-winning collections of poetry, and his poems have appeared in numerous national journals, including the Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Callaloo, Chattahoochee Review, Christian Science Monitor, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Journal of the American Medical Association, Louisiana Literature, Poet Lore, Puerto del Sol, Review Americana, Right Hand Pointing, San Pedro River Review, Southwest Review, Southwestern American Literature, Texas Review, Town Creek Poetry, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems, the most comprehensive and definitive collection of his poetry to date, was issued by Texas Review Press. Among his many honors/awards are two Texas Review Poetry Prizes, two Western Heritage Awards (Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma), the Violet Crown Book Award (Writers’ League of Texas), nomination for the 2007 Poets’ Prize (Nicholas Roerich Museum), and eight Pushcart Prize nominations.
Join us for the fifteenth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll then have an open mic for writers who have signed up to read from their unpublished short stories or novels. And finally, we’ll have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: there will be snacks!
This month’s readers will be Joe Giordano and Joseph Pluta.
Joe Giordano was born in Brooklyn. His stories have appeared in more than seventy magazines including Bartleby Snopes, decomP, and Shenandoah. Birds of Passage was published by Harvard Square Editions in October 2015. The novel recalls the Italian immigration experience at the turn of the twentieth-century when New York’s streets were paved with violence and disappointment. Here’s what Kirkus said about Birds of Passage. “This riveting debut novel by Giordano charts the passage of two young Italian men to early twentieth century New York, as they strive to make their mark in the New World…. Part thriller, part love story, part coming-of-age narrative, this book’s appeal reaches successfully beyond the often restrictive confines of its genre. A refreshing rethink of the archetypal mafia novel.”
Joseph Pluta has published 23 books, over 100 short stories, and more than 70 articles in professional academic journals. In addition to his written work, he has served on the faculties of universities in California, Florida, Texas, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Throughout his career, he has consistently been recognized for outstanding teaching. His diverse experiences include Editor of a magazine, host of a radio show, founder and director of a University Honors Program, member of the Board of Directors of the Writers’ League of Texas, and consultant to both foreign governments and American small businesses. Joe grew up in New Buffalo, Michigan and still enjoys traveling throughout the state and Canada. He is retired and currently resides in Austin, Texas.
Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!
This month’s theme is “Arbitrary & Nonsensical.” Spring Break is the perfect time to laugh and awe at the entertaining illogicalness of it all! The line up of featured artists is: UDELLE ROBINSON, CODY COPELAND, BRIAN GROSZ, CAROLYN LINDELL, KENT GROSSWILER, TERESA Y. ROBERSON and THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.
Get your cones ready for Malvern Books’ newest FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld & Schandra Madha and featuring young women poets and fiction writers from the Austin community.
This month’s readers are Kendra Fortmeyer, Melanie Westerberg, and Janalyn Guo. And we’ll also have live music from Jessie Torrisi of The Please Please Me.
Following the reading, there will be a (mic-less) open mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us. And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream? And the photo booth? Oh yeah, it’s gonna be good.
Austin Community Salutes Springtime and the Belle of Amherst. Hosted by W. Joe Hoppe and Brett Reeves.
In this crowd-sourced, participation-based event, we will resurrect the poems of Emily Dickinson, hauling them out of the schools and into the streets. This is church for people who don’t go to church. We will read aloud, sing aloud, and expound aloud, using Ms. D’s poems as our starting point. Participants draw poem numbers from a hat, or may choose their favorite Dickinson poem. When your number’s up, you stand and read.
Sponsored by Brett Reeves Educator and Malvern Books.
Join us for a reading with poets Emily Pérez and Ryan Sharp.
Emily Pérez is the author of the book House of Sugar, House of Stone, as well as the chapbook Backyard Migration Route, which explores her Mexican-American heritage and her childhood in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. She holds degrees from Stanford and the University of Houston, where she was poetry editor for Gulf Coast and taught with Writers in the Schools. Her poems have appeared in journals including Crab Orchard Review, Calyx, Borderlands, and DIAGRAM. She is a high school dean and English teacher in Denver where she lives with her husband and sons.
Ryan Sharp holds an MFA in Writing from Pacific University and is currently pursuing his PhD in poetry and poetics at the University of Texas. His poetry and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals including Berkeley Poetry Review, Callaloo, DIALOGIST, The Ilanot Review, and PANK. He lives in Austin, TX, where he serves as the editor for Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and as the Writers’ Studio Coordinator at Huston-Tillotson University.
Join four Austin indie authors as they read selections from their works and discuss how they made the leap to indie publishing. This event features Jami Crumpton, Steve Statham, Aurelia Maria Casey, and Michael Bunker (left to right, below).
This event is organized by Write It Already, a local meet-up that encourages people to write—and finish what they start. There will be light refreshments and books by all four authors for sale at the event.
Born and raised Texas girl, Jami Crumpton, is an award-winning author as well as a wife, mother, and an actress/comedian. When Love Leads You Home is her debut inspirational romance. Jami has three adult children and lives north of Houston with her husband of 26 years.
Steve Statham is the author of six novels and two short story collections. He has had 12 non-fiction books published on automotive subjects, and was the editor of a classic car magazine for many years.
Aurelia Maria Casey is an author, fashion designer, and engineer, because she loves transforming ideas from imagination to reality. She writes epic fantasy, urban fantasy, science fiction, realist fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. She firmly believes that story can change the world and wants to make the real world a little safer, a little more open-minded, with each story she imagines.
Michael Bunker is a USA Today Bestselling author, off-gridder, husband, and father of four children. He lives with his family in a “plain” community in Central Texas, where he reads and writes books… and occasionally tilts at windmills. In November of 2015, Variety announced that Michael had sold a film/TV option for his bestselling novel Pennsylvania to Jorgensen Pictures. JP is currently developing Pennsylvania for production into a feature film or television series. Michael is writing the first draft of the screenplay. Michael’s latest (and best-rated) novel is Brother, Frankenstein, which was released in late April of 2015.
We’re thrilled to be hosting a series of readings as part of the 24th annual Austin International Poetry Festival.
See the Austin International Poetry Festival website for the schedule of readings (TBA).
We’re thrilled to be hosting a series of readings as part of the 24th annual Austin International Poetry Festival.
See the Austin International Poetry Festival website for the schedule of readings (TBA).
Join us for a reading/performance from Austin playwright and debut novelist Kirk Lynn.
Kirk will present a reenactment of selected scenes from his fantastic debut novel, Rules for Werewolves, which is written entirely in dialogue. This event will feature, among other things, a choral reading, group prayers (prayer requests welcome!), saxophone music, and an audience Q & A.
Kirk Lynn has a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue and a sixth sense for finding the exact point at which absurdity mutates into heartbreak—or vice versa. Rules for Werewolves is a dark, delirious, innovative riot of a novel; a grand blast of chaos across the front lawns of America, and a truly outstanding debut.
—Justin Taylor, author of Flings and The Gospel of Anarchy
Kirk Lynn is one of six coproducing artistic directors of Rude Mechanicals theater collective. He is the head of the Playwriting and Directing Area in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin, and received his MFA from the Michener Center for Writers. Lynn lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, the poet Carrie Fountain, and their children.
We’re thrilled to be hosting a series of readings as part of the 24th annual Austin International Poetry Festival.
See the Austin International Poetry Festival website for the schedule of readings (TBA).
Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!
This month’s theme is “Best Sincerest Lie.” Our lineup of featured artists is: BIRDMAN 313, JENNIFER PREISS, ROBERT BAYLESS, DONNA DECHEN BIRDWELL, NORI HUBERT, CHERI VAUSE, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, and THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.
Join us for an evening with Indonesian author and journalist Leila S. Chudori. Leila will be sharing her historical novel Home (recipient of the 2012 Khatulistiwa Literary Award, Indonesia’s most prestigious literary prize), which explores the lives of Indonesian exiles from the 1965 anti-Communist massacre to the overthrow of Suharto in 1998.
Leila S. Chudori (Jakarta, 1962) is Indonesia’s most prominent and outspoken female author and journalist. She has worked at the renowned Indonesian news magazine TEMPO since 1989, where she is now Senior Editor. A scholarship recipient, she completed university studies at Trent University in Canada and returned to Indonesia in 1988. Chudori started publishing as a child at the age of twelve in children’s magazines, and she is the author of several anthologies of short stories, novels, TV & film scripts, Chudori is considered one of Indonesia’s boldest storytellers.
Join us for the sixteenth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll also have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: we’re offering 20% OFF ALL FICTION TITLES during Novel Night (from 6pm till closing).
This month’s readers will be Liv Hadden and John Herndon. Liv will be reading from her debut novel, In the Mind of Revenge, a thriller set in the near future, while John will share his new novel, One Too Many, about a retired armed robber who just can’t seem to stay away from trouble.
Debut novelist Liv Hadden has her roots in Burlington, Vermont and has lived in upstate New York and Oklahoma, where she went to college at the University of Oklahoma, and earned her degree in Environmental Sustainability Planning & Management. She now resides in Austin, Texas with her husband and two dogs, Madison and Samuel, and is an active member of the Writer’s League of Texas.
John Herndon is a poet, novelist and filmmaker who lives in Austin. One Too Many is his first novel. He has published five books of poetry. Frame Switch, a feature-length found-footage thriller based on his screenplay, is in festival release. He teaches writing and literature at Austin Community College.
Join us for an evening featuring poetry by Tupelo Press 30-30 Project and Conference Participants: Christine Beck, Katy Chrisler, D.G. Geis, Robert Okaji, Pamela Paek, and Ronnie K. Stephens.
Christine Beck was named the fifth Poet Laureate of West Hartford in May of 2015. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree from Southern Connecticut State University and is the author of Blinding Light (Grayson Books, 2013) and I’m Dating Myself (Dancing Girl Press, 2015). Her second chapbook, Stirred, Not Shaken, is forthcoming from Five Oaks Press. She teaches poetry, creative writing and literature at The University of Hartford, Southern Connecticut State University, and in private workshops. She is a former president of the Connecticut Poetry Society and currently directs its monthly series at which poets moderate a discussion about a well-known poet at the Hartford Public Library. She is also a board member of Riverwood Poetry Series, which presents poetry and panel discussions about social justice issues.
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 or is forthcoming in Tin House, Octopus Magazine, The Volta, and The Seattle Review. She currently lives and works in Austin, Texas.
D.G. Geis lives in Houston, Texas. He has an undergraduate degree in English Literature from the University of Houston and a graduate degree in philosophy from California State University. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in 491 Magazine, Lost Coast, Blue Bonnet Review, A Quiet Courage, SoftBlow International Poetry Journal, Blinders, Burningword Literary Journal, Crosswinds, Scarlet Leaf, and Sweet Tree, among others. He will be featured in a forthcoming Tupelo Press chapbook anthologizing nine new poets and is winner of Blue Bonnet Review’s Fall 2015 Poetry Contest. He is editor-at-large of Tamsen.
Robert Okaji lives in Austin with his wife, two dogs and some books. He is the author of the chapbook If Your Matter Could Reform (Dink Press), and a micro-chapbook, You Break What Falls (Origami Poems Project). His work has appeared in Boston Review, Hermeneutic Chaos, Mockingheart Review, Eclectica and elsewhere.
Pamela Paek is an educational research who acts, performs stand-up, and is adored by her 14-year old Goffin’s cockatoo, Chilly. Her poetry has been published in the Squaw Valley Review, GAMBA Zine, Aileron, Lynx Eye, and Apocalypse. She has her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in educational psychology, and a BA in both creative writing and applied mathematics from the University of California, San Diego.
Ronnie K. Stephens is a full-time English teacher. He has identical twins and a brand new baby that take up all the space in his chest. He is currently pursuing an MFA from Wilkes University. His first collection, Universe in the Key of Matryoshka, was published by Timber Mouse Publishing in 2014. His second collection will be released later this year.
d. ellis phelps, poet-novelist and painter, is the author of Making Room for George (Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press, forthcoming, 2016) and of the blog, formidable woman: toward a culture of gentleness. Her poetry, art, and essays appear online and in print, most recently in the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project, Energy Magazine, Poet’s Billow (Bermuda Triangle Prize, 2015), and elsewhere. She holds a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin.
Join us in celebrating the Texas Association of Authors’ fifth annual Book Awards Contest.
We’ll have readings and book signings from Texas authors, including:
Kenneth Bennight – Crime Fiction
L E Kinzie – Fiction & Poetry
Cathy Clay – Spiritual
L M Nelson – Romance
Join us in celebrating the Texas Association of Authors’ fifth annual Book Awards Contest.
We’ll have readings and book signings from Texas authors, including:
Mitchel Street – Fantasy
Larry Morris – SciFi
C. M. Bratton – SciFi
Randall Reneau – Suspense
Get your cones ready for Malvern Books’ I SCREAM SOCIAL reading series, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld and Schandra Madha, and featuring young women poets and fiction writers from the Austin community. This month’s I Screamers are local poets Andrea Eames, Jenna Opperman, and Sarah Hackley.
Following the reading, there will be a (mic-less) open mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us. And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream & Sweet Ritual? Oh yeah, it’s gonna be good.
Join us for a reading with poets Lucas Hunt, Carol Denson, Cindy Huyser, and Meg McKeon.
Lucas Hunt was born in rural Iowa, and is the author of Lives (Vagabond, 2006), Light on the Concrete (North Sea, 2011), and The Muse Demanded Lyrics (Pen & Anvil, 2016). He studied at the Iowa Writers Workshop, and MFA program at Southampton College. Hunt has published in the New York Times, East Hampton Star, Clarion, Slice, and received a John Steinbeck Award for poetry. He is the director of Orchard Literary, founder of Hunt & Light, and a professional live auctioneer.
Carol Denson’s poems have appeared in The Adirondack Review, Gulf Coast, J Journal, and Literary Mama, among other journals. Her essay “Transfertle the Plum” on poetry and parenting was published in Rattle’s Single Parents issue. Her work has been supported by the the Jentel Foundation and the Cultural Arts Council of Houston and Harris County. Her chapbook, Across the Antique Surface, was published in 2013.
Cindy Huyser’s chapbook, Burning Number Five: Power Plant Poems, was named co-winner of the 2014 Blue Horse Press Poetry Chapbook contest. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, the 2017 Texas Poetry Calendar, the anthologies In The Words of Women 2016 (Yellow Chair Press) and Untameable City (Mutabilis Press), and in Bearing The Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems, which she is co-editing with Scott Wiggerman of Dos Gatos Press.
Meg McKeon received her MFA from The University of Texas at Austin’s New Writers Project in 2013. After a couple harrying years in the non-profit world, she’s back in grad school again, pursuing an MEd. She lives in Austin, TX and throws pots in her spare time.
Join us in celebrating the release of The Dark Side of the Cross, a mystery novel by James S. Parker.
Author James S. Parker has led a successful business career over the last thirty years in telecommunications. A graduate of Eastern Kentucky University, Jim’s background in the field of Criminology has come alive in his writing, giving authenticity to his storyline and his characters. His first two books, The Dark Side of the Cross and Relic of Darkness, have met with strong critical acclaim. James and his wife, Margaret, presently reside in Austin, Texas, along with their daughter.
We’re celebrating National Poetry Month with a very special edition of W. Joe’s Poetry Corner… it’s poetry karaoke time!
Here’s how poetry karaoke works: you roll a lettered die and then select a poem by a poet whose last name starts with the letter the die landed on—and then you read this poem aloud for everyone to enjoy! Poems can be chosen from a book on our shelves, or from one of the anthologies we’ll provide.
Everyone is welcome to take part, but please note that participants can’t read their own poetry—poetry karaoke is all about introducing people to the poems and poets that have inspired you.
Join us in celebrating the release of Becoming the Virgin, the debut poetry collection from Malvernite Taylor Jacob Pate. Featuring readings from Taylor and assorted Malvern staff members, including Fernando Flores, Schandra Madha, Matthew Hodges, and Stephanie Goehring.
Join us in celebrating the winners of the Texas Association of Authors’ fifth annual Book Awards Contest. We’ll have readings and book signings with the winners, including:
Fairy Tale Fiction – Heart by CM Bratton
Sci-Fi Fiction Series – Evriskon Series by CM Bratton
Mystery Fiction – The Sisters Series by Becki Willis
Suspense Fiction – Forgotten Boxes by Becki Willis
Poetry – Poetry with a Purpose by Jerome Dolenz
Political Fiction – The Contest by Bennett Easton
Sci-Fi Fiction – New Territory by Larry Morris
Women’s Fiction – Johnnie Comes Lately by Kathleen Rodgers
Biography Fiction – Home at Last by Jan Sikes
General Fiction – Yarning by R C Knipstein
Romance – Dark Lord of Kismera by Tamara Hartl
Fantasy Fiction – Gods of Arcadia: Son of Aries (Book Two) by Andrea Stehle
Please join us at Malvern Books for Fantastical Fictions, an odd-monthly event focusing on the literary fantastic across genres and cultures hosted by Rebecca Schwarz and Chris Brown. We plan to bring together writers and readers of fantastic literature in Austin by featuring published writers reading from new works and from examples of fantastic literature available on our shelves. Discussion, Q&A sessions, and open mic for works in progress will follow the readings.
Please email us to sign up for our Fantastical Fictions email list if you’d like to receive news about our upcoming fantastic literature events, as well as announcements about new works of fantastic literature in the store.
This month we’re thrilled to welcome writer Stina Leicht to our stage.
Stina Leicht is a two-time Campbell Award nominee for Best New Writer and a Crawford Award finalist. Her latest novel, Cold Iron, debuted in July 2015 with Simon and Schuster’s Saga imprint. Two other Fantasy novels, Of Blood and Honey and its sequel, And Blue Skies from Pain, are set in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Her Feminist essays were featured in the Hugo Award winning Women Destroy Science Fiction! Issue of Lightspeed Magazine. She is currently working on her newest novel, Blackthorne, a sequel to Cold Iron set to be published in the summer of 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!
Readers/performers include:
Ignacio Carvajal Regidor (poet)
Judith Santopietro (poet)
Jaime Perez Gonzalez (poet)
Nicolas Emilfork (guitar)
Join us in celebrating the release of the latest issue of Hothouse Literary Journal.
Hothouse Literary Journal is the official journal for the UT English Department. They publish poetry, nonfiction, and fiction stories from multiple genres every year. The release event consists of readings from the published authors and a chance to own a free copy of Hothouse.
Join us in celebrating the release of the latest issue of Analecta, the official Literary and Arts Journal at the University of Texas.
An entirely student-run publication, Analecta is produced by a small group of undergraduate students committed to finding exceptional work by both undergraduate and graduate students at UT. Analecta features a manifold collection of poetry, prose (both essays and fiction), dramatic works, and visual arts.
This all-women reading features writers from the Revolution Writing Workshop led by Abe Louise Young. Join us for poetry and prose about mothering, queer and straight parenting, being mothered and unmothered, sex, Mother Earth, river otters and more!
Featuring Abe Louise Young, Angeliska Polachek, Beth Remsburg, Erin Flynn, Jack Darling, Jamie Harris, Margaux Binder, Margaret Halpin, Robin Bradford, Susannah Frischman-Phillips, Tonya Lyles, Vive Griffith, and Melynda Nuss.
Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!
This month’s theme is “Saying the Magic Words.” The featured artists are: SYDNEY CHANDLER, AMY ROSE, ERIK CORREDOR, BRIAN GROSZ, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, ANYAH DISHON, & THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.
Join us in celebrating the release of the Spring 2016 edition of Austin Community College’s journal, The Rio Review. Students featured in this issue will share their fiction, nonfiction, and poetry with us.
Join us for the seventeenth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll also have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: we’re offering 20% OFF ALL FICTION TITLES during Novel Night (from 6pm till closing).
This month’s readers will be Gudjon Bergmann, who will be reading from The Meditating Psychiatrist Who Tried to Kill Himself, and Richard Lee Price, who will be reading from
Troubadours.
Gudjon Bergmann is a veteran nonfiction author and novelist. The Meditating Psychiatrist Who Tried to Kill Himself is his debut novel and was inspired by an acquaintance’s suicide attempt more than fifteen years ago. In addition to being a mystery, the book challenges many of the ideas and stereotypes that people associate with meditation and spirituality. Bergmann was born and raised in Iceland, but moved to the USA in 2010 and became a US citizen in 2013. He publishes a new short story on his website every Friday (look for the #fridayshort).
Richard Price is a musician and professor who lives in Austin. Troubadours draws on his experiences playing salsa in the live music capital of the world and his travels in Mexico. Troubadours is, in many respects, a love song to Austin and the Hill Country.
Join us for a reading with three acclaimed Texas novelists, Mary Helen Specht, Elizabeth Harris, and Thomas McNeely.
Mary Helen Specht’s novel, Migratory Animals, is a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, an Indie Next Selection, and an Austin-American Statesman Selects book. She received the Texas Institute of Letters Steven Turner Award for First Fiction and has been a Fulbright Scholar and a Dobie Paisano Fellow.
Elizabeth Harris’s novel, Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman, winner of the Gival Press Novel Award and an Austin Chronicle Top Read of 2015, was a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction. Her first collection of stories, The Ant Generator, was winner of the University of Iowa Press John Simmons Prize. She taught fiction writing and modern literature for a number of years at the University of Texas at Austin.
Thomas H. McNeely’s first novel, Ghost Horse, was winner of the 2014 Gival Press Novel Award. Library Journal described Ghost Horse “as if Cormac McCarthy and Denis Johnson teamed up to write a 1970’s Texas YA novel that went off the rails somewhere—in a very, very good way.” McNeely has received fellowships from the Dobie Paisano Program, the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently teaches at Emerson College and the Stanford Online Writers Workshop. He will be teaching a workshop on revising fiction, “Losing Yourself, Finding Your Voice: The Art of Revision,” at the Writers’ League of Texas on Saturday, May 14th.
Join us for a reading to celebrate the launch of the latest issue of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review! Readers include: featured poet Sam Sax, Cindy Huyser, Cindy King, and Ann A. Philips.
Cover artwork: Wild Horses by Donna Sharrett
Get your cones ready for Malvern Books’ I SCREAM SOCIAL reading series, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld and Schandra Madha, and featuring young women poets and fiction writers from the Austin community. This month’s readers are Katelin Kelly, Autumn Hayes, and Maggie Ilersich.
Following the reading, there will be a (mic-less) open mic. Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us. And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream & Sweet Ritual? Oh yeah, it’s gonna be good.
Join us for an afternoon with writer and musician Don Paul, who will share with us prose, poems, and songs from his one new book (Animals Are Always Making Music) and four new albums!
Join us in celebrating the launch of two new books: Tony Burnett’s The Reckless Hope of Scoundrels – selected poems 1985-2015 and Carlotta Stankiewicz’s Haiku Austin (love song to Austin / in 17 syllables / wonderful and weird).
Educated at University of North Texas, Tony Burnett is an award-winning poet, journalist, activist, and songwriter. His poetry and short fiction have been published in national literary magazines and anthologies including Sixfold, Connotation Press, Short Story America, Frontier Tales, Texas Poetry Calendar, Poetry @ Round Top anthology, Tidal Basin Review, Red Dirt Review and Toucan Literary Magazine. He is Editor in Chief of Scribe, the online blog of the Writers’ League of Texas with over 6000 subscribers, and serves as Board President of the Writers’ League of Texas. He makes his home in rural central Texas near Temple with his trophy wife, Robin. His hobbies include poking wasp nests with short sticks and wandering aimlessly about.
Carlotta Eike Stankiewicz is an Austin-based writer and poet. She has performed in Austin’s Listen To Your Mother Show (2012) and recently read her piece “The Salon” at Austin’s One Page Salon on March 2, 2016. Her blog features both humorous rhyming verse and free verse. A single mom of two teenage daughters, she funds their activities by working as an advertising Creative Director, most recently at GSD&M, for national brands like Zales, AT&T, and John Deere. Haiku Austin is her first book, and features both her poetry and her photography.
Join us for an afternoon with poets Brandon Lamson and Brian Nicolet.
Brandon Dean Lamson teaches literature and creative writing in the Honors College at the University of Houston. His first book, Starship Tahiti, won the Juniper Prize for Poetry and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press. Beginning on Rikers Island, the book traces a creation myth in reverse, moving from prison to the spacious arches of Grand Central Station and finally to the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. Themes of violence, race, and identity are explored in various real and imagined settings where inmates read Antigone, Howlin’ Wolf sings in a black barbershop, and Metallica records burn on a Viking altar. He is also the author of a chapbook entitled Houston Gothic (LaMunde Press, 2007) and his recent work has appeared in Poetry Daily, Brilliant Corners, NO INFINITE, Synecdoche, and Buddhadharma Quarterly. An avid yogi, he teaches meditation and leads workshops in yoga and poetry. Currently, he is finishing a second book of poems titled Mountains Walking that explores ecological crises in Western Appalachia and a memoir based on his prison teaching experience titled Caged.
Brian Nicolet holds an MFA from the University of Houston and has received scholarships to Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers’ conferences. His poems and reviews have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, and Subtropics, among other publications. He works and teaches at Austin Community College.
Join us in celebrating the launch of The Beatest State in the Union, a new anthology of Texas Beat writers.
The Beatest State in the Union is a 325-page large format seminal anthology of Texas writing that includes many of the iconic beat writers writing and being in Texas and traces their influence on other writers up to the present time. This event will be a celebration of writers in the anthology from Austin, San Antonio, and College Station. We will read selections from iconic beats in the anthology and other works by the writers in the anthology. The anthology includes fiction, memoir, poetry, and some journalism.
Readers include Joe Hoppe, PW Covington, Lorraine Caputo, Lyman Grant, Mick White, Janet McCann, Manuel Martinez, Thom the World Poet, Chris Carmona, and Ricardo Acevedo.
It’s poetry karaoke time! Held on the first Monday of each month, Malvern Karaoke Mondays is a fun FREE event featuring adventurous verses, snack surprises, and a monthly haiku competition.
Here’s how poetry karaoke works: you roll a 20-sided lettered die and select a poem by a poet whose last name starts with the letter the die landed on—and then you read this poem aloud for everyone to enjoy. (Poems can be chosen from a book on our shelves, or from one of the anthologies we’ll provide.) Everyone is welcome to take part, but please note that participants can’t read their own poetry—poetry karaoke is all about introducing people to the poems and poets that have inspired you.
And if you fancy yourself as a haiku whiz, you should enter our monthly haiku contest, judged by our curmudgeon-in-chief, Dr. Joe (and/or a guest judge of his choosing). For this month’s contest you’ll need to provide the first and third lines that best accompany this second line:
Time’s river asbestos flows
COMPETITION CONDITIONS: Haiku must be submitted to info@malvernbooks.com by midnight on Sunday, June 5th. We’ll announce the winner at the event on Monday. Prize = $10 Malvern Gift Card (which must be picked up in-store) and you’ll be listed in our BOOK OF HAIKU WINNERS. All decisions final. No crying!
Join us for the eighteenth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll also have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: we’re offering 20% OFF ALL FICTION TITLES during Novel Night (from 6pm till closing).
This month’s Novel Night has a sci-fi/fantasy twist! Our readers will be Donna Dechen Birdwell and Chris Rogers. Donna will be reading from Shadow of the Hare—Recall Chronicles, Vol. II, and Chris will be reading from Emissary.
Anthropologist Donna Dechen Birdwell creates a dystopian world with sensitivity and insight deriving from years of observation and dedicated study of the human condition. “We are our stories,” she says. “Our most precious human quality is our fertile imagination.” Donna is also an artist, a former journalist, and a native Texan.
Chris Rogers wrote her first romance novel in 1989, then promptly decided this was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life even if she never made a dime at it. To make time for studying the craft of writing, she folded her marketing business and took a job at a bank. Two novels later, all three rejected because they had “too much mystery,” she realized romance wasn’t her genre. By 1996, Chris had finished five novels, two screenplays, a handful of short stories and a short play—and this was her year to finally achieve notice as a writer. One of her short mysteries won a notable national contest and was published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Her ten-minute play also won a contest and was produced at Stages Theater in Houston. And most important, she acquired an agent who sold her Dixie Flannigan mystery series to Bantam Books. The first three books in that series were published in print, electronic and audio formats and were translated into three languages. After Amazon dazzled the publishing world, Chris became a ghostwriter for a number of years before deciding to join the world of Indie writers. Since then she has published four short story anthologies, four books on writing, and four novels in various genres.
Please join us for a celebratory reading by the writers of S. Kirk Walsh’s nine-month Fiction Writing Workshop (Sept-June). Short excerpts from novels and stories will be read.
Participating writers include Cristina Adams, Dena Afrasiabi, Kalli Angel, Nicole Beckley, Megan Coxe, Julien Devereux, Katherine Moore, Victoria Rossi, Kirk Wilson, Karen Valby, and Ryan Vaughn. This accomplished group of writers features published fiction and nonfiction writers and poets and translators. For the past nine months, they have participated in an intensive fiction workshop, drafting and revising novels and short stories throughout the year. Come and celebrate their wonderful work and distinctive voices with this end-of-the-workshop reading.
Refreshments and sweets will be served.
Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!
This month’s theme is “This Changes Everything.” Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.
Join us for an evening with renowned Korean writer Jung Young Moon, who will be reading from his new novel, Vaseline Buddha (Deep Vellum Publishing), translated from the Korean by Yewon Jung.
Vaseline Buddha is a tragicomic odyssey told through free association. The story opens when our sleepless narrator thwarts a would-be thief outside his moonlit window, then delves into his subconscious imagination to explore a variety of geographical and mental locations—real, unreal, surreal—to explore the very nature of reality: from a treacherous flight in the mountains of Nepal to a park bench in Budapest to a bizarre conversation in Amsterdam to an encounter with an inflatable rubber dolphin floating in a small river in provincial France.
One achieves a kind of serenity when we delve into this book. I find that eccentrics like Jung are needed in literature.
—Achim Stanislawski
Jung Young Moon was born in Hamyang, South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea in 1965. He graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in psychology, and made his literary début in 1996 with the novel, A Man Who Barely Exists. Jung is also an accomplished translator who has translated more than forty books from English into Korean, including works by John Fowles, Raymond Carver, and Germaine Greer. In 2005 Jung was invited to participate in the University of Iowa’s prestigious International Writing Program, and in 2010 he spent three months in a residency at the University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Korean Study. In 2012 he won three of Korea’s most prestigious literary awards for his novel A Contrived World, just out from Dalkey Archive in spring 2016, who also published his short story collection A Most Ambiguous Sunday and Other Stories in 2014. His works have been translated into numerous languages, and he is widely read in France and Germany, where he enjoys tremendous critical acclaim and popular appeal.
Yewon Jung was born in Seoul, and moved to the US at the age of 12. She received a BA in English from Brigham Young University, and an MA from the Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.
This event is part of a nationwide tour arranged by publishers Deep Vellum and Dalkey Archive (who recently released Jung’s novel A Contrived World) and the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.
Join us in celebrating the launch of Bill Shaw’s new book, Conspiracy II, the third novel in the author’s Pistol Thicket trilogy. With readings from Bill Shaw and Frank R. Southers, who will be signing copies of his most recent book, “Senator White”: A Novel.
About Conspiracy II:
There is more than folk wisdom in the saying that “Opposites Attract,” but that phrase is put to its sternest test in the case of Myrna Minkoff and Ignatius P. Reilly, two twenty-something college grads. Myrna, an Ivy Leaguer, is the lovely scion of a wealthy Long Island family and a staunch supporter of the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, while I.P. is an All-American football player from the Louisiana Baptist Academy. I.P. is a Donald Trump operative from New Orleans whose religious, social, and economic status is scarcely closer to Myrna’s than it is to a distant galaxy…
About “Senator White”: A Novel:
Ginny Hopkins, pregnant and married for over two years to Peter Hopkins, learns that she is not truly divorced from Hugh Robles because of her lawyer’s goof. Now, she’s charged in criminal court with Bigamy, a felony with a minimum two-year sentence in State Prison. To get justice, Ginny files a complaint with the Texas Grievance Committee in San Antonio against her lawyer, Senator Tony White. The Grievance Committee prosecutor owes his job to Senator White and fears Ginny will reveal the complaint to the media to hurt Senator White’s re-election campaign… will Ginny Hopkins find justice against powerful Senator White?
Bill Shaw and his wife of 50 years, Monica, live in Austin, Texas, close to their three daughters and five grandchildren. Bill is the retired Woodson Professor of Law and Ethics in Business at the McCombs School, the University of Texas, Austin. He holds degrees from Louisiana Tech, Tulane, and The University of Texas at Austin. He taught graduate and undergraduate students at Texas for over 35 years, retiring in 2007. Professor Shaw published over 50 scholarly articles on law and ethics during his career as well as four books. He served as President of The Academy of Legal Studies in Business and as Editor-in-Chief of the American Business Law Journal.
Frank R. Southers is well-qualified to write about the Texas Lawyer Disciplinary System because he served in San Antonio on the Grievance Committee for ten years, the last six as Chairperson. Since then he has represented complainants, accused lawyers, and witnesses. As an Adjunct Professor of Law for twenty years at St. Mary’s University School of Law, Mr. Southers taught Workers’ Compensation, Personal Injury Law, Personal Injury Practice, and Legal Malpractice. He graduated from St. Mary’s University with a B.A. in English and graduated magnum cum laude from St. Mary’s University School of Law at age 22. He co-authored a legal treatise, “Texas Workers’ Compensation Desk Book,” and has written many legal articles covering such topics as Evidence, Trial Practice, Civil Procedure, Medical Malpractice, Mediation, Legal Malpractice, and Grievance Law. Now, Southers has turned to writing fiction, especially about lawyers. The Grievance Committee—Book One was his debut novel. Since then, he has written four other indie novels. Although raised in San Antonio, Southers now resides in Austin with his wife, Dr. Linda R. Southers, PhD. and their two dogs.
It’s Bloomsday! Join us for a celebration of the life of writer James Joyce. Featuring live Irish music from Serge Laîné and Larry Rone (pictured below, from Poor Man’s Fortune), readings from Ulysses with an introduction by Joyce aficionado Peter Q, the moderator of the Finnegans Wake Reading Group, plus spirited discussion (audience participation welcome!)… and suitably Irish snacks, including Guinness cake!
Bloomsday, named for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses, is observed around the world on June 16th, as this is the date during which the events of Ulysses are relived (16th June, 1904). Fun fact: Joyce apparently picked June 16th as it was the date of his first date with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle.
Poor Man’s Fortune combines Breton, Cajun, Scottish, French & Irish music with original tunes and even more original ideas. This is World Music in a world of its own. Jigs, reels, polkas, 2-steps and waltzes. Breton plinns, an dros, ridées & gavottes. Made-up folk dances, songs of joy, sadness and murder… all featuring an assemblage of traditional and modern instruments, including dulcitare, wooden flute, accordion, pennywhistle, bombarde, bagpipes & hurdy-gurdy. Poor Man’s Fortune is at their best live on a stage in front of a crowd of any manner of music lover. Folkies, punks, rockers, mods, mockers, your teenage son’s friends, and your in-laws, no one is immune to a PMF stage show. Rock and roll energy with the precision of a string quartet.Join us for an evening with Matthew Freeman, who will be reading from his fifth book of poetry, Everything I Love Restored, which was recently published by Coffeetown Press.
Matthew Freeman’s newest collection presents a romantic vision wherein the environment can range from ecstatic to sinister. Steeped in urban shamanism, the poems reflect a desperate search for the American Sublime, the author’s search for the clarity of salvation, his love of language, and his hope that the poor and destitute will not be forgotten.
Matthew Freeman discovered he was a poet when as a teenager he was ruined with love. So began a journey that would leave him expelled from school and committed to an asylum, suffering with schizophrenia. After beginning his recovery he got his BA in English from St. Louis University, where he was given the Montesi Prize, and received his MFA from the University of Missouri, where he won the Graduate Poetry Prize.
David Jewell and Brian Cutean combine their many years of elliptical storytelling and feverish brainmindhearts to present an afternoon of music, spoken word, and analogious sonic surprise at Malvern Books.
David Jewell (above left) is poet, storyteller, author, actor and stream of consciousness visionary imagineer who chronicles the 21st century mind and its many idiosyncracies. He and his writing have appeared in two Richard Linklater movies, Before Sunrise and Waking Life, and he’s shared shows with Laurie Anderson and Leon Redbone. His books are time bombs already detonating in another generation and hIs bio says he was “born in blank and lives in and.”
Brian Cutean (above right), a teller of offbeat street-tales filled with wordplay-metafable and songs from a colorful guitar, was a mainstay of Austin music in the 1980’s and 90s. He performed often at The Cactus Café, Chicago House, Maggie Mae’s, The Other Side, Folkville Ice Cream and other long gone venerable venues. Now hailing from the Pacific Northwest, he’s celebrating the release of his 9th nationally-released recording, The Sound Of Photosynthesis, on Burnttoothbrush Records. The record includes a musical version of an ee cummings poem and a song tribute to Austin bassist Robert Vignaud, who accompanied Cutean in concert and on recordings for more than 30 years.
Join us in celebrating the launch of Adam Crittenden’s debut full-length poetry collection, Blood Eagle. With readings from poets Adam Crittenden, Daniel Roessler, and Nick Courtright (left to right, below).
Adam Crittenden is partial to happiness, even/especially during times of impending doom (mythological, Biblical, psychological, imaginal). Give this book a chance to show you its necessities, to demonstrate what ink and paper can continue to do that flesh and blood cannot. In a century where a face can be successfully transplanted, why not a voice? Who doesn’t want to be remade? Go ahead. Traipse into this twisted forest (before the first light bulb falls), and you might well agree that “we should have left / after the first few minutes / but by now it is too late.”
~Timothy Liu, author of Don’t Go Back to Sleep
Adam Crittenden holds an MFA in poetry from New Mexico State University, where he was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. He also serves as an editor for Lingerpost and Puerto del Sol. His work has appeared in decomP, Bayou Magazine, Metazen, Barn Owl Review, Whiskey Island, and other journals. Blood Eagle is his first full-length book of poetry and is available now from Gold Wake Press. Currently, he teaches writing in Albuquerque at Central New Mexico Community College.
Daniel Roessler is a poet and an aspiring mystery/thriller author who currently resides in Austin, Texas. He is a member of The Writer’s League of Texas, the Academy of American Poets, and an active participant in the Writer’s Digest Poetic Asides community, placing in several contests. Daniel has previously published one nonfiction book, numerous magazine articles, and a three-part guest blog series for Writer’s Digest on nature poems.
Nick Courtright’s second book, Let There Be Light, called “a continual surprise and a revelation” by Naomi Shihab Nye, came out in February 2014, and his debut full-length, Punchline, a National Poetry Series finalist, was published in 2012. He is an editor and book designer for Gold Wake Press, and the founder and editor of Atmosphere Press. His poetry has appeared in many literary journals, including The Southern Review, Kenyon Review Online, Boston Review, and The Iowa Review, among numerous others, and essays and other prose of his have been published by such places as The Huffington Post, The Best American Poetry, Gothamist, and SPIN Magazine.
Join us in celebrating the recent release of We’ll Live Tomorrow, the debut novel from journalist and aid worker Will Everett.
“Everett’s novel … is about the goals, hopes, faults, and occasionally the success of what he calls Big Aid—in this instance, a postwar reconstruction project more costly than the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II and perhaps even more ambitious.” —Houston Chronicle
“An insightful, impressively broad glimpse of a formidable mission.” —Kirkus Reviews
We’ll Live Tomorrow follows Hunter Ames, an American aid worker grappling with a dark family history and a growing midlife malaise. In an aid compound in southern Afghanistan, under the watchful eyes of the Taliban, he meets the mysterious Karimullah, an exploited “dancing boy” hunted by his master. These two lost souls strike up an unusual friendship in war-torn Afghanistan—Karimullah looking for sanctuary after years of abuse at the hands of a violent master, and Hunter trying to come to terms with his own tragic past. But menacing forces surround them, imbuing their friendship with the promise of salvation and the prospect of tragedy.
While the novel explores a wide range of human-interest issues, such as the doldrums of middle age and the aftershocks of family tragedy, Everett says he had a larger purpose in writing this novel when he did. “Through the book and its layered characters, I hope to give readers an intimate look at a country the U.S. has spent so much time supporting, yet many know little about.”
A native of Texas, Will Everett has reported from the Middle East, South Asia and West Africa for National Public Radio, the BBC, Newsweek and other outlets. With Walter Cronkite he wrote and produced the 2006 documentary World War One Living History Project, honoring the last surviving veterans of World War I. His work has been recognized by the Society for Professional Journalists, the New York Festivals and the National Headliner Awards. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. His choral collaboration with Joseph Martin, The Message, was published by Hal Leonard in 2015.
On June 26th Malvern Books will join the world in observation of International Day in Support of Victims of Torture with presentations and discussion. Come join Celia VanDeGraaf, Joe Bratcher, Christopher Brown, Taylor Pate, and Matthew Hodges as we celebrate the survival of victims of torture and wonder in dismay that this practice continues. A significant portion of the event will center on discussion of the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture.
The literary community at Malvern Books and the fine arts community at Bone Black Gallery are teaming up to welcome artist and author Kristina Hagman to Austin. Hagman will be presenting her new book, The Eternal Party, at Malvern Books on July 1st, 7pm. And at Bone Black Gallery on July 2nd, 7-9pm, there will be a reception and artist’s talk for 36 Views of Mt. Rainier, her suite of intricate woodblock prints.
In The Eternal Party Kristina recounts the multigenerational stories that led to huge stardom, not just once but twice, as both her grandmother Mary Martin (who played Peter in Peter Pan; Maria in The Sound of Music; and many more well-known roles) and her father, most famously known for two very different roles, first, as the comedic character of Tony Nelson in I Dream of Jeannie and later as the villainous J.R. in Dallas. The book is as much a spiritual search for truth as it is an exposé on celebrity life. At her father’s side on his deathbed, Kristina heard her father keep repeating “forgive me” before he passed. Searching for clues as to what he meant, Kristina delves into her father’s past and details life within fame. Determined to tell her story, Hagman overcame struggles with dyslexia and ADHD to complete the book.
Hagman’s life path veered from that of her father and grandmother and she became a successful visual artist, having honed her skills in the arts community of Santa Fe. Hagman’s work has been displayed at the Pacific Asia Museum (Pasadena, California), Cullom Gallery (Seattle, WA), Antioch University (Seattle, WA), The Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Ketchum, Idaho, KIWA Kyoto International Woodprint Association, Kyoto, Japan and many others. Her work has also been included in more than 40 multi-artist exhibits since 1985. Her suite of woodblock prints, 36 Views of Mt. Rainier, is inspired by Hokusai’s collection Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, of which the piece The Great Wave is most well known. Hagman utilizes Mt. Rainier as a point of entry into exploring landscape from many angles. Works like Dawn embody a sense of calm and natural beauty, showing Mt. Rainier as one of America’s purple mountain majesties. In Rainier From Queen Anne we see the mountain as just one peak amongst many in a crowded city scape. Hagman produces these works using a blend of traditional and modern woodblock techniques.
Brian Foley (The Constitution, Black Ocean 2014) is coming to ATX in July! Join us for a reading with local writers Stephanie Goehring, Travis Tate, and Marlon Hedrick (plus post-reading drinks at ye olde Spiderhaus).
Bring friends. Buy books. Be happy.
BRIAN FOLEY is the author of The Constitution (Black Ocean, 2014), as well several chapbooks, including Puritan Landfill (Black Cake, 2015) and TOTEM (Fact-Simile Editions, 2014). His poems have appeared in jubilat, Boston Review, Verse Daily, Denver Quarterly, & The Volta. He was selected as a 2014 New American Poet by the Poetry Society of America. He was born and raised in Massachusetts. He lives in Denver, where he is currently at work on his PhD in Poetry & Poetics at the University of Denver.
STEPHANIE GOEHRING is the author of two poetry chapbooks and serves on the advisory council for Conflict of Interest, which covers the Austin visual art and literary communities. She also slings books at Malvern Books and can be found online at StephanieGoehring.com.
TRAVIS TATE is a playwright, poet, and performer from Texas. He is an MFA candidate at the Michener Center for Writers at The University of Texas at Austin studying playwriting and poetry. He has performed on stage as a “giant robot,” “one eyed Bretchian fool” and “citizen of a Berlin night club.” Tate received his BA in Theatre and Dance from The University of Texas at Austin in 2012.
MARLON HEDRICK is a poet from Saipan currently invested in reconfiguring the island as mainland.
Austin Writers Roulette features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who love to perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!
This month’s theme is “Twisted Legacy.” Spinning tangled tales, the featured artists will be: BIRDMAN 313, KATHLEEN MAJORSKY, HOPE RUIZ, MAGIC JACK ATX, BRIAN GROSZ, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, and THOM THE WORLD POET. An open mic will follow intermission. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.
Join us for the nineteenth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll also have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: we’re offering 20% OFF ALL FICTION TITLES during Novel Night (from 6pm till closing).
This month our readers will be Myra Mcilvain and Elizabeth Thomas. Myra will be reading from her newest book, The Doctor’s Wife, a work of historical fiction set in nineteenth-century Texas. Elizabeth will be reading from Arden’s Act, her historical romance set in seventeenth-century London.
Myra Hargrave McIlvain is a teller of Texas tales. Whether she is sharing the stories in her books, her lectures, or her blog, she aims to make the Texas story alive. She has free-lanced as a writer of Texas historical markers, written articles for newspapers all over the country and for magazines such as Texas Highways. The Doctor’s Wife is her eighth book—another Texas story. McIlvain lives in Austin with her husband Stroud. Her children are grown, and she enjoys the company of a houseful of grands.
Elizabeth Thomas was born in Mt. Clemens, Michigan. She earned a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her first job after leaving U of M was as an editor and writer for the Gale Group’s Contemporary Authors. For a few years Elizabeth lived in Tucson, Arizona, where her children, Lisa and Joseph, were born. In 1996 she moved to Cedar Park, Texas, a suburb of Austin, where she still resides. In the Austin area, she worked for Barrett Kendall Publishing, and continued to work on her own writing projects. When Barrett Kendall began a precipitous decline, Elizabeth realized she had to change careers, and in 2005 graduated as a registered nurse from Austin Community College. Elizabeth has won prizes in numerous writing competitions, and has had a short story published in Mytholog. Her full-length play, The Circle, has received a stage reading in Birmingham, Michigan, and full production as a special event by the Way Off Broadway Community Theater in Leander, Texas.
Join three Austin indie authors as they read selections from their works and discuss how they made the leap to indie publishing. This month’s guests are James Lopez, Alex Bexar, and Catherine De Young (left to right, below). James will be reading from Sound and Fury / Shakespeare Goes Punk, a collection of alt-punk short stories based on Shakespeare’s works. Alex will be reading from her young adult science fiction title, Now You’re Dead. And Catherine will be sharing her two memoirs, Life In The Trenches: A Retrospective and Life In The Trenches: My Stories.
This event is organized by Write It Already, a local meet-up that encourages people to write—and finish what they start. There will be light refreshments and books by the authors for sale at the event.
H. James Lopez was born on a Navy ship in the Caribbean Sea outside of Barranquilla. He is a construct of too much sun, too much alcohol, and not nearly enough time on land. Since 2009 he has been writing fiction in all the forms which come to mind. Current complete works include two books on Military/Urban fiction including The Blue Star Workaround and The Vegas Slingshot. Also a High Fantasy novel in review and a book about steam warfare in Texas at the time of the Republic.
Alex Bexar, not your typical little girl growing up in the rural South. While most little girls her age were playing with their dolls and wearing frilly dresses, Alex spent her time listening to her uncles and older cousins tell stories about their experiences in the military, reading books about space travel, and watching scary movies. When school was out for the summer, Alex, her friends, and cousins would go out into the woods to plan secret missions and rescue kidnapped spies. Since childhood, Alex has been writing and telling stories to entertain friends and family. Today, Alex Bexar lives in Central Texas and has retired from a career in contract management.
While studying at Parsons School of Design-Los Angeles, Catherine DeYoung created socio-anthropological vignettes of life in the city through her photography. The next ten years she worked in various photographic roles in Hollywood, government/aerospace, and also litigation graphics. After joining the crime lab of a major metropolitan police department, Catherine spent the next six years investigating over 6,000 crime scenes. Now, living back in Texas, she writes about her life in crime. Rumor has it that she inspired a certain character on a certain television show after Hollywood writers came to visit the crime lab.
Get your cones ready for another round of Malvern Books’ FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld & Schandra Madha. Featuring young women writers from the Austin community (and beyond!), this month’s I Screamers are E. KRISTIN ANDERSON, SARAH FRANCES MORAN, & SAMANTHA DUNCAN.
And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream & Sweet Ritual?
~7pm – Ice cream & Open Mic! Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us.
~8pm – Let the reading begin!
Can’t make it this time around? No worries. I Scream Social is every month ’til the end of time.
Join us in celebrating the launch of Nathan Brown’s latest poetry collection, My Salvaged Heart: Story of a Cautious Courtship. With readings from Nathan Brown and Katherine Hoerth.
Naomi Shihab Nye recently said about My Salvaged Heart: “Brave new world! The sizzle of couplings and uncouplings—attraction and romance, ineffable magnetism, mysterious as ever—but doused with a savory dose of Nathan Brown humor, a tilted long-ranging eye that sees the next bend in the road even when he’s standing right here, firmly planted.”
Nathan Brown (pictured above; photo by Rodney Bursiel) is an author, songwriter, and award-winning poet living in Wimberley, Texas. He holds a PhD in English and Journalism from the University of Oklahoma where he taught for seventeen years. He served as Poet Laureate for the State of Oklahoma in 2013/14 and mostly travels now, performing readings and concerts, as well as speaking and leading workshops in schools, libraries, and community organizations on creativity and creative writing. Nathan has published twelve books. Most recent is My Salvaged Heart: Story of a Cautious Courtship. Karma Crisis: New and Selected Poems, was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Oklahoma Book Award. His earlier book, Two Tables Over, won the 2009 Oklahoma Book Award. He’s taught memoir, songwriting, performance, and creativity workshops for the Sisters Folk Festival in Oregon, the Taos Poetry Festival, the Woody Guthrie Festival, the Everwood Farmstead Foundation in Wisconsin, as well as Blue Rock Artist Ranch near Austin, Texas.
Katherine Hoerth is the author of four poetry books. Her most recent book, Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots (Lamar University Literary Press, 2014) won the Helen C. Smith Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her work has been included in journals such as Concho River Review, Pleiades, and Tupelo Quarterly. She teaches writing at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and serves as poetry editor of Amarillo Bay and Devilfish Review.
Please join us at Malvern Books for Fantastical Fictions, an odd-monthly event focusing on the literary fantastic across genres and cultures hosted by Rebecca Schwarz and Chris Brown. We plan to bring together writers and readers of fantastic literature in Austin by featuring published writers reading from new works and from examples of fantastic literature available on our shelves. Discussion, Q&A sessions, and open mic for works in progress will follow the readings.
Please email us to sign up for our Fantastical Fictions email list if you’d like to receive news about our upcoming fantastic literature events, as well as announcements about new works of fantastic literature in the store.
This month’s guest is Rick Klaw, editor of The Apes of Wrath, a provocative short story anthology that delves into our fascination with and dread of our simian cousins.
“This impressive anthology includes eighteen short stories by authors ancient (Aesop) and recent (Karen Joy Fowler, Mary Robinette Kowal), as well as three original articles tracing apes in literature, comics, cinema, and theater…. A powerful exploration of the blurry line between animal and human.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“These are all fine additions to any fantasy lover’s library…. Climb up into your tree, peel a banana, and enjoy the treats herein.” —Sci Fi Magazine
Professional freelance reviewer, geek maven, and optimistic curmudgeon, Rick Klaw recently edited Joe Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard and the acclaimed anthologies The Apes of Wrath and Rayguns Over Texas. His countless reviews and essays have appeared in numerous publications including The Austin Chronicle, Blastr, San Antonio Current, Kirkus Reviews, SF Signal, SF Site, The Horn, The San Antonio Business Journal, Geek Dad, Steampunk, and Cross Plains Universe. Many of these were collected in his book Geek Confidential: Echoes from the 21st Century.
It’s poetry karaoke time! Held on the first Monday of each month, Malvern Karaoke Mondays is a fun FREE event featuring adventurous verses, snack surprises, and a monthly haiku competition.
Here’s how poetry karaoke works: you roll a 20-sided lettered die and select a poem by a poet whose last name starts with the letter the die landed on—and then you read this poem aloud for everyone to enjoy. (Poems can be chosen from a book on our shelves, or from one of the anthologies we’ll provide.) Everyone is welcome to take part, but please note that participants can’t read their own poetry—poetry karaoke is all about introducing people to the poems and poets that have inspired you.
And if you fancy yourself as a haiku whiz, you should enter our monthly haiku contest, judged by our curmudgeon-in-chief, Dr. Joe (and/or a guest judge of his choosing). For this month’s contest you’ll need to provide the first and third lines that best accompany this second line:
rats live on no evil star
COMPETITION CONDITIONS: Haiku must be submitted to info@malvernbooks.com by midnight on Saturday, July 30th. We’ll announce the winner at the event on Monday. Prize = $10 Malvern Gift Card (which must be picked up in-store) and you’ll be listed in our BOOK OF HAIKU WINNERS. All decisions final. No crying!
Join us in celebrating the launch of Christopher Carmona’s debut short story collection, The Road to Llorona Park.
The Road to Llorona Park is a collection of short fiction about the changing world of la frontera/the borderlands of the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. The stories center around the current times when the political upheavals of Mexico began to effect peoples lives on both sides of the border.
“Carmona is a gifted storyteller. The stories in this collection are thematically courageous and the characters are tender, funny, harsh and loving all at once. He has written a vibrant and honest portrayal of a place with complicated characters who face an unjust system and world. These necessary stories will burn in your memory for a long, long while.”—Angie Cruz, author of Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee
Christopher Carmona was the inaugural writer-in-residence for the Langdon Review Writers Residency Program in 2015. His story, “Strange Leaves,” was the third finalist in the Texas Observer Short Story Contest of 2014. He was also a Pushcart Prize nominee in 2013. He has been published in numerous journals and magazines including Trickster Literary Journal, Interstice, vandal., Bordersenses, and the Sagebrush Review. His first collection of short stories, entitled The Road to Llorona Park, was published by Stephen F. Austin University Press in 2016. He has recently edited an anthology called Outrage: A Protest Anthology about Injustice in a Post 9/11 World for Slough Press and was a co-editor for The Beatest State In The Union: An Anthology of Beat Texas Writing. He was also a co-author for a scholarly conversation book entitled Nuev@s Voces Poeticas: A Dialogue about New Chican@ Identities and he has two collections of poetry: beat and I Have Always Been Here. Finally, he is the Artistic Director of the Coalition of New Chican@ Artists.
Join us in celebrating the launch of Twenty Girls to Envy Me (University of Texas Press), an English-Hebrew poetry collection from the Israeli writer Orit Gidali. This event will feature readings and a discussion with the book’s translator, Marcela Sulak. Marian Schwartz will also read from her recent translation of Calligraphy Lesson (co-translated with Leo Shtutin, Sylvia Maizell, and Mariya Bashkatova), the first English-language collection of short stories by Mikhail Shishkin.
Twenty Girls to Envy Me: Selected and New Poems of Orit Gidali features three dozen poems by the extraordinary Israeli writer Orit Gidali (b. 1972; pictured above), a unique voice among her contemporaries. Gidali’s work appears to focus on the domestic, but for her, the domestic sphere is the stage on which the drama of the geopolitical is reworked on an individual scale. The domestic is always inhabited by the Other, who in these deeply personal poems appears in various guises: a Palestinian mother, biblical figures, the poet’s own deceased mother, and her husband’s first wife. Gidali creates a space in her world to imaginatively reconfigure the current political impasses of the region through a focus on relationship and openness. Gidali’s poems, beautifully captured in English by Marcela Sulak, present a world beset by danger and uncertainty, yet they nonetheless cry out for community, connection, cooperation, and coexistence.
Orit Gidali has published three collections of poetry, as well as a children’s book. She teaches at Tel Aviv University and organizes workshops in collaboration with the author Eshkol Nevo.
Marcela Sulak is the author of two collections of poetry, Decency (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) and Immigrant (Black Lawrence Press, 2010) and one poetry chapbook, Of all the things that don’t exist, I love you best (Finishing Line Press, 2008). She has co-edited Family Resemblance. An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres (Rose Metal Press, 2015). Her four book-length poetry translations from Hebrew, Czech, and French include Twenty Girls to Envy Me (University of Texas Press, 2016), A Bouquet of Czech Folktales by Karel Jaromir Erben (Twisted Spoon Press, 2012), May by Karel Hynek Macha (Twisted Spoon Press, 2005, 2010), and Bela-Wenda. Poems from the Heart of Africa by Mutumbo Nkulu-N’Sengha (Host Publications, 2011). She is an Associate Professor of English at Bar-Ilan University, and she is an editor at The Ilanot Review. She also hosts a weekly literary podcast on the online radio station TLV.1 called “Israel in Translation.”
Marian Schwartz has translated Russian classic and contemporary fiction, history, biography, criticism, and fine art for over forty years. She is the principal English translator of the works of Nina Berberova and has retranslated half a dozen Russian classics, including Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. In addition to half the stories in Calligraphy Lesson: The Collected Stories of Mikhail Shishkin, she also translated Shishkin’s novel Maidenhair for Open Letter Books. Forthcoming in January 2017 is her translation of Andrei Gelasimov’s novel Into the Thickening Fog.
Join us for the twentieth event in our Novel Night series, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. We’ll also have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. Also worth noting: we’re offering 20% OFF ALL FICTION TITLES during Novel Night (from 6pm till closing).
This month our readers will be Marcia Feldt and D. Ellis Phelps. Marcia will be reading from her debut novel, The Oys & Joys, which has been described as “Golden Girls meets Sex and the City.” D. Ellis Phelps will be reading from her book, Making Room for George, a story of a woman whose life takes a surprising turn when her father-in-law comes to stay.
Marcia Feldt is an Amazon bestselling author of her debut novel, The Oys & Joys. Marcia enjoys performing onstage, traveling anywhere at anytime (flying over Mt. Everest, a favorite so far), and writing her next novel.
D. Ellis Phelps’ recent publications include the novel Making Room for George; Moon Shadow (Sanctuary Press, 2016); art, essays, and poetry in Voices de la Luna (forthcoming, August 2016); Tupelo Press 30/30 Project (March 2016); Energy magazine, Nov/Dec 2015; and Poet’s Billow (Bermuda Triangle Prize for Poetry, 2015).
Join us for a reading with a rad lineup of poets both touring and local. Featuring Jon Nakai Valjean, Elijah Pearson, alli simone defeo, EE Jarvie, and EVIL MTN—a bunch of post-alt-lit poets trying to make a living in this topsy turvy world. This poetry event will be heavily influenced by positivity, love, and nature.
JON NAKAI VALJEAN is the long lost son of nic cage. born of pure declaration stealing adrenaline, under a blood moon on a friday. has a special connection to bread. favorite movie: con air (no relation)
EVIL MTN is an evil mtn @evilmtn
EE JARVIE is a poet living in austin, tx. they spew nonsense/feelings/
ELIJAH PEARSON (@smallpuddle) is 21 which means they can Legally drink hahahahaha wild so chill and cool.
ALLI SIMONE DEFEO is a traveling poet and visual artist. they are a lover of horses and carry 25 stones in their backpack because they are a magician. they are also known as the fastest poet alive.
Austin Writers Roulette is an uncensored, theme-inspired spoken word and storytelling event. It features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!
This month’s theme is “New Unwritten Rules.” The featured artists are: DONNA DECHEN BIRDWELL, HOPE RUIZ, UDELLE ROBINSON, BRIAN GROSZ, TERESA Y. ROBERSON and THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.
Join us in celebrating the recent publication of Bernard Pearce’s The Deed To My Bones, a collection of poems, photos, and visual art. Featuring spoken word and poetry readings from Bernard Pearce, Jim Trainer, and Brian Grosz.
Bernard Pearce (above left) is a Louisiana native born in the rural community of St. Martin Parish. He attended St. John’s College in Santa Fe, and returned to Louisiana to pursue a life immersed in music and art. He has owned and operated several music and arts venues in Lafayette, Louisiana. Bernard has recorded and released two full-length recordings with his band One Man Machine and has toured internationally with this group. He has participated in a residency sponsored and organized by The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in New York City. Bernard has also read at the Allen Ginsberg memorial. Bernard has recently published a collection of poems, photos, and visual art entitled The Deed to My Bones.
Jim Trainer’s (above center) work has appeared in Raw Paw 6: Alien, The Waggle, Philadelphia Stories, Divergent Magazine, Anthology Philly, The Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, Verbicide Magazine, A Series of Moments and PoetryInk. The release of September, his second full-length collection of poetry, coincides with the founding of Yellow Lark Press. Trainer lives in Austin, Texas where he serves as curator of Going For The Throat, a weekly publication of cynicism, outrage, correspondence, and romance.
Brian Grosz (above right) is a storyteller, actor, voiceover artist, painter, graphic designer, chef, cooking instructor, musician, tattoo enthusiast and an aging Eagle Scout trapped in a punk rock ethos. Squalor, his premiere collection of poetry and essays is out now. He currently calls Austin his home but still talks like a New Yorker—loud, fast, and crass.
Join us for a brand-new FREE monthly reading series, Malvern’s Multi-Verse, in which we explore the infinite possible (multi)verses of Austin’s boundless poetic universe!
Held on the fourth Tuesday of every month and hosted by François Pointeau, Malvern’s Multi-Verse will feature readings from guest poets, plus a Q & A session. Space-time might be flat and stretch out infinitely, but Malvern’s Multi-Verse is well-rounded, lasts for about an hour, and includes free cookies! Yes indeed, it’s the best of all possible worlds…
This month François will be talking with local poets Michael Gilmore and Richard Cole.
Michael Gilmore was born on Port Royal Island, South Carolina and as a child grew up on Marine Corps, Navy, and Army bases from coast to coast. After serving in the Army himself, he moved to Austin and attended the University of Texas. In the 80’s he co-founded and co-edited Aileron, a literary journal, publishing the likes of David Weavil, Christopher Middleton, Daisy Aldan, and Charles Bukowski. It was at this time, his own first book of poetry, Lyrika, was published. In 1989, he married and moved, first to Taipei, then New York City, Iowa, and Hsin Chu, before returning to Austin in 1999, where he has since resided. In 2008, Dalton Publishing released Restless Astronomy, new and selected poems. He currently works for the University of Texas.
Richard Cole was born in Krum, Texas. He has published two books of poetry, The Glass Children (The University of Georgia Press) and Success Stories (Limestone Books). His third book, Song of the Middle Manager, was recently accepted by Kalos Press and will be released in 2017. He is also the author of a memoir, Catholic by Choice (Loyola Press). Honors include an NEA fellowship, a Loft Mentor Series award, and a Bush Foundation grant. His poems and essays have been published in the New Yorker, Poetry, Hudson Review, Sun Magazine, Denver Quarterly, and Image Journal—Good Letters. Cole is also a painter. His oil paintings have appeared in Windhover Journal and several galleries in Austin. Cole works as a freelance business writer. He has never taken a writing workshop, though he has taught quite a few.
In association with Bat City Review, join us in celebrating the launch of Susan Briante’s new poetry collection, The Market Wonders. Susan will be joined by writers Rebecca Liu, Corey Miller, and Maya Perez.
In The Market Wonders, the Market itself becomes a thinking person: lover, parent, poet, philosopher. . . . Briante pushes the poetic domain beyond the lyric, beyond traditional subjects like nature (although the poet’s consciousness omits nothing: cardinals in a tree, for instance), and into enumeration as meditation, money movement as an overarching shared consciousness. Briante turns the expectations of poetry upside down when she explains “I wish more poets would write about money,” and a fairytale narrated in footnotes suddenly has exact measurement thrust into it. By the end of the book, we see how financial theories, rightly or wrongly applied can distort the ordinary acts of living, impoverish entire communities. There is nothing, however, impoverished about The Market Wonders, a work rich with marvels drawn from our ordinary world.
Photo of Susan Briante: Cybele Knowles
Susan Briante’s most recent book The Market Wonders (Ahsahta Press) was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. The Kenyon Review calls it “masterful at every turn.” She is also the author of the poetry collections Pioneers in the Study of Motion and Utopia Minus (an Academy of American Poets Notable Book of 2011), both from Ahsahta Press. Of Utopia Minus, Publisher’s Weekly declared: “this book finds an urgent language for the world in which we live.” Briante also writes essays on documentary poetics as well as on the relationship between place and cultural memory. Some of these can be found in Creative Non-Fiction, Rethinking History, Jacket2 and The Believer. Her poems and essays been collected in the anthologies The Force of What’s Possible, The Volta Book of Poets, Devouring the Green, The Arcadia Project: the North American Postmodern Pastoral, Starting Today: Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days, The Sonnets: Rewriting Shakespeare, and An Introduction to the Prose Poem.
A translator, she lived in Mexico City from 1992-1997 working for the magazines Artes de México and Mandorla. Her translations have appeared in the journals Bomb, Bombay Gin, Translation Review and Review: Latin American Literature and Arts (among many others) as well as in the anthologies Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry and Hotel Lautreamont: Contemporary Poetry of Uruguay.
Briante has received grants and awards from the Atlantic Monthly, the MacDowell Colony, the Academy of American Poets, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund and the US-Mexico Fund for Culture. New work has been published in Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, Guernica and The Progressive. Her research and teaching interests include poetry and poetics, cross-genre writing, experimental autobiography, documentary studies, affect theory, and translation. She is an associate professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Arizona.
Rebecca Liu is a third year poet at the Michener Center for Writers. Her recent poems can be found in Boston Review, VOLT, Web Conjunctions, and Gulf Coast.
Corey Miller was born in southern Illinois and holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers. Poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Kenyon Review, Boston Review, Gulf Coast and elsewhere.
Maya Perez is a screenwriter and fiction writer. Her short stories have appeared in The Masters Review and Electric Literature and she is co-editor of the books On Story: Screenwriters and Their Craft and the upcoming On Story: Screenwriters and Filmmakers on Their Iconic Films, both from University of Texas Press. Maya is also a producer for the Emmy Award-winning television series On Story: Presented by Austin Film Festival, now in its sixth season on PBS. She is a graduate of Vassar College and the Michener Center for Writers.
Get your cones ready for another round of Malvern Books’ FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld and Schandra Madha, and featuring young women writers from the Austin community (and beyond!). This month’s I Screamers are *ELLIE FRANCIS DOUGLASS, DANIELLE ZACCAGNINO, & MEG GRIFFITTS.*
And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream & Sweet Ritual?
~7pm – Ice cream & Open Mic! Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us.
~8pm – Let the reading begin!
Can’t make it this time around? No worries. I Scream Social is every month ’til the end of time.
Join us for a reading with UT Austin faculty members. Readers include Deb Olin Unferth, Edward Carey, Lisa Olstein, and Laurie Saurborn (left to right below).
Deb Olin Unferth is the author of three books. Her next book, a collection of stories, is coming out in March of 2017 from Graywolf. Her fiction has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Granta, Vice, Tin House, and McSweeney’s. She is an associate professor at the University of Texas in Austin, and she teaches a workshop at a penitentiary in southern Texas.
Edward Carey is the author of the novels Observatory Mansions and Alva and Irva the Twins who Saved a City, and of the Iremonger Trilogy, all of which he illustrated. His work has been translated into sixteen languages. Born in England he now finds himself in Austin, Texas.
Lisa Olstein is the author of three poetry collections, most recently LITTLE STRANGER. This fall Essay Press will release THE RESEMBLANCE OF THE ENZYMES OF GRASSES TO THOSE OF WHALES IS A FAMILY RESEMBLANCE, a winner of their 2015 chapbook contest. A new full-length collection, LATE EMPIRE, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2017.
Laurie Saurborn is the author of two poetry collections, Industry of Brief Distraction and Carnavoria, and a chapbook, Patriot. An NEA Creative Writing Fellowship recipient, her short stories, poems, reviews and photographs have appeared or are forthcoming in such publications as American Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, The Southern Review, and Tupelo Quarterly. Laurie teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also directs the undergraduate creative writing program. She is currently at work on a collection of stories.
It’s poetry karaoke time! Held on the first Monday of each month, Malvern Karaoke Mondays is a fun FREE event featuring adventurous verses, snack surprises, and a monthly haiku competition. And this month we have a special musical guest: come by at 6.45pm for live folk/blues from award-winning singer/songwriter Anji Kat with Christopher Cesta.
Here’s how poetry karaoke works: you roll a 20-sided lettered die and select a poem by a poet whose last name starts with the letter the die landed on—and then you read this poem aloud for everyone to enjoy. (Poems can be chosen from a book on our shelves, or from one of the anthologies we’ll provide.) Everyone is welcome to take part, but please note that participants can’t read their own poetry—poetry karaoke is all about introducing people to the poems and poets that have inspired you.
And if you fancy yourself as a haiku whiz, you should enter our monthly haiku contest, judged by our curmudgeon-in-chief, Dr. Joe (and/or a guest judge of his choosing). To enter, please supply the first and third lines to complete this second line (and remember, the first and third lines must each be five syllables!):
Second line: Melting in the summer heat
COMPETITION CONDITIONS: Haiku must be submitted to info@malvernbooks.com by midnight on Sunday, September 4th. We’ll announce the winner at the event on Monday. Prize = $10 Malvern Gift Card (which must be picked up in-store) and you’ll be listed in our BOOK OF HAIKU WINNERS. All decisions final. No crying!
Join us for another installment of Novel Night, a monthly celebration of all things prose! This month we have something rather special: we’re hosting the launch of Joe Kilgore’s latest novel, A Farmhouse In The Rain (shortlisted for the Writers’ Village International Novel Award). We’ll also have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles and invite questions from the audience. And jazz guitarist Margaret Slovak will get the evening off to a great start with live music.
Also worth noting: we’re offering 20% OFF ALL FICTION TITLES during Novel Night (from 6pm till closing).
A Farmhouse In The Rain is a novel of war and peace, crime and punishment, love and loss, and eventually hope. It’s a sweeping saga of three American soldiers and the women they love before, during, and after World War II.
During the war, the three are given shelter by a French woman. The next morning she is found dead and the trio realize they were the only ones in the house. No one admits guilt yet the event affects them radically and leads to big questions. Who will survive the war? Who will survive the peace? Who will reunite with the love each left behind? And who will be unmasked as the murderer on that fateful night at A Farmhouse In The Rain?
Filled with suspense, sacrifice, and subplots that interlock smoothly, the author’s dark chronicle of lives bound together by fate is a solid addition to the WWII thriller genre. —The US Review
Joe Kilgore is the author of over twenty short stories and four novels. His short stories have been published in magazines, creative journals, anthologies, and online literary publications. Before turning to fiction, he had a long and successful career with international advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather. In addition to his fiction, Joe writes for Austin advertising firm, Bazzirk, Inc., and also serves as a professional book reviewer. He lives in Lakeway with his wife, Claudia, an accomplished artist.
This month we have a special edition of Fantastical Fictions—we’re celebrating the publication of Nisi Shawl’s alternate history/steampunk/historical fantasy novel Everfair. Join Nisi and host Christopher Brown for a reading and discussion.
Nisi Shawl’s Everfair is a book with gorgeous sweep, spanning years and continents, loves and hates, histories and fantasies. Set against the big canvas of King Leopold’s horrific rule in the Congo, her engaging, passionate characters struggle to make the right choices in a world that is almost ours, but not quite. Everfair is sometimes sad, often luminous, and always original. —Karen Joy Fowler
Everfair is an alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium’s disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Fabian Socialists from Great Britain join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo’s “owner,” King Leopold II. This land, Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated. Shawl’s speculative masterpiece manages to turn one of the worst human rights disasters on record into an exciting exploration of the possibilities inherent in a turn of history.
Nisi Shawl is a writer of science fiction and fantasy short stories and a journalist. They are the co-author (with Cynthia Ward) of Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction. Their short stories have appeared in Asimov’s SF Magazine, Strange Horizons, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. Their story collection Filter House co-won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 2009 and their stories have been shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and the Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award.
Fantastical Fictions is an odd-monthly event focusing on the literary fantastic across genres and cultures. Please email us to sign up for our Fantastical Fictions email list if you’d like to receive news about our upcoming fantastic literature events, as well as announcements about new works of fantastic literature in the store.
Austin Writers Roulette is an uncensored, theme-inspired spoken word and storytelling event. It features a different monthly theme and line up of artists who perform their original written works such as poetry, essays, spoken word, singer-songwriting, or excerpts from novels for 5-8 minutes (1200 words or fewer). Interested artists who would like to perform for an upcoming event can email their submission to mathdreads@yahoo.com. Or you can show up during the day of the event and sign up for the open mic after all the featured artists perform. And of course, performance art lovers are always welcome!
This month’s theme is “Cultural Mosaic.” The diverse collection of cultural storytellers is: HOPE RUIZ, LUUK BERTUS, KAMILA FORSON, DANIEL DAVILA, MAGIC JACK ATX, VELMA M. ROBERSON, TERESA Y. ROBERSON, BRIAN GROSZ, & THOM THE WORLD POET. Visit the Austin Writers Roulette website for more information.
Join us in celebrating the launch of Kimberly Lambright’s new poetry collection, Ultra-Cabin (2015 winner of the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award). With readings from Kimberly Lambright and Ben Kopel.
About Ultra-Cabin:
Combining the raw confessional with post-ironic deconstruction, the poems in Ultra-Cabin catalog the uneven hardships of language and connection with so much triumph and backdoor playfulness that you may find yourself moved and utterly abandoned to your greater self.
“Artful and wry, smart and moving—Kimberly Lambright’s poems are made of such carefully rendered moments that the mundane becomes very wonderfully strange. Ultra-Cabin is a book that will knock you out and invite you in, sometimes in the same brilliant breath.”—Kathryn Nuernberger
“I am stunned by Kimberly Lambright’s verbal acuity, its lightning shifts and sudden, diamond-like stillnesses. And there are images in this book that would wake Breton from the dead. Hats off to this uniquely adventurous and mature first volume.”—Christopher Howell
“Emotive and cerebral, giving way to the surrealities of intuition and pushing back with a keen intelligence.” —Ruth Williams
Kimberly Lambright is a poet and scholar living in Austin, Texas. She studied cultural theory at NYU and creative writing at Eastern Washington University. She’s a MacDowell Colony fellow and her poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, ZYZZYVA, Sink Review, Bone Bouquet, The Boiler, Wicked Alice, and Big Bridge. Her first full-length collection of poems, Ultra-Cabin (2016), is the winner of the 2015 42 Miles Press Poetry Award.
Ben Kopel is the author of VICTORY, which came out from H_NGM_N Books in 2012. He teaches classes on composition, creative writing, literature, and media studies at Skybridge Academy, an independent school in Dripping Springs. He is sporadically at work on a new collection of poems possibly titled Sutras of Love & Hate.
Join us for an afternoon with writer Dave Oliphant, who will be reading from his new poetry collection, María’s Book (Alamo Bay Press). Dave will also be sharing poems from the new edition of Figures of Speech (Host Publications), his translation of renowned Chilean poet Enrique Lihn’s collected work. And we’ll get the afternoon off to a great start with live music from jazz guitarist Margaret Slovak (from 3.30pm).
A book forty-one years in the making, written between 1975 and 2016, Dave Oliphant’s María’s Book presents what Douglas Flaherty has called “a delicately passionate record of an internationally conspired love affair. Oliphant’s poems to his wife are valentines for the ages.” With its publication in 2016, María’s Book marks the golden anniversary of Dave and María’s marriage.
Enrique Lihn’s writings, both creative and critical, are considered in Chile some of the most significant in the country’s distinguished literary history. This bilingual volume is the most complete collection of Lihn’s work in English. As well as some of Lihn’s familiar poems, this volume includes representative poems from a number of his later books, previously uncollected pieces, and selections from his final moving sequence, Diary of Death.
Get your cones ready for another round of Malvern Books’ FREE reading series, I SCREAM SOCIAL, hosted by Malvern’s own Annar Veröld and Schandra Madha, and featuring young women writers from the Austin community (and beyond!). This month’s I Screamers are Julie Howd, Claire Bowman, and Paz Pardo.
And did we mention the free cool confections from Amy’s Ice Cream & Sweet Ritual?
~7pm – Ice cream & Open Mic! Bring old stuff, new stuff, silly stuff, whatever stuff. Just read stuff to us.
~8pm – Let the reading begin!
Can’t make it this time around? No worries. I Scream Social is every month ’til the end of time.
Join three Austin indie authors as they read selections from their works and discuss how they made the leap to indie publishing. This month’s guests are Christy Esmahan, Aaron S. Gallagher, and Carolyn Cohagan (left to right, below). Christy will be reading from Sinco, a love story set in Spain. Aaron will be reading from Magician, Martyr, and Bleecker, his urban fantasy and detective novels. And Carolyn will be introducing us to Time Zero, a Young Adult Dystopian novel.
Christy Esmahan grew up in Cincinnati. She attended Miami University, then received a doctorate from the Universidad de Leon in Spain. She lived in the Basque Country and worked at an American International School for four years. Her first three novels are based on her experiences there. Bueno, her first novel, was a semi-finalist for the 2014 Elixir Press Fiction Award and Sinco, her second novel, is a finalist for this year’s International Latino Book Awards.
Aaron S. Gallagher was born in Syracuse, New York. He started writing when he was five years old. He has written eleven novels and six books of poetry, and has been published in Analog Science Fiction & Fact and Ares Magazine. He writes mystery, crime, urban fantasy, straight fiction, and thrillers.
Carolyn Cohagan began her writing career on the stage. She has performed stand-up and one-woman shows at festivals around the world from Adelaide to Edinburgh. Her first novel, The Lost Children, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2010, became part of the Scholastic Book Club in 2011, and was nominated for a Massachusetts Children’s Book Award in 2014. Carolyn recently moved back to her hometown of Austin, where she founded Girls With Pens, a creative writing organization dedicated to fostering the individual voices and offbeat imaginations of girls ages 8-17.
This event is organized by Write It Already, a local meet-up that encourages people to write—and finish what they start. There will be light refreshments and books by the authors for sale at the event.
Join us for an evening with poets Tracey Knapp, Patrick Ryan Frank, and Kimberly Lambright.
Tracey Knapp is the author of Mouth, winner of the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award in 2014. She has received scholarships from the Tin House Writers’ Workshop and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fund. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2008 and 2010, Five Points, Red Wheelbarrow Review, The New Ohio Review, The Minnesota Review, The Carolina Quarterly and elsewhere. She lives in San Francisco.
Patrick Ryan Frank is the author of the poetry collections The Opposite of People and How the Losers Love What’s Lost, which won the 2010 Intro Prize from Four Way Books. He studied poetry at Northwestern University, Boston University, and the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. He was recently a Fulbright Fellow to Iceland, and he currently lives in Austin, Texas.
Kimberly Lambright is a poet and scholar living in Austin, Texas. She studied cultural theory at NYU and creative writing at Eastern Washington University. She’s a MacDowell Colony fellow and her poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, ZYZZYVA, Sink Review, Bone Bouquet, The Boiler, Wicked Alice, and Big Bridge. Her first full-length collection of poems, Ultra-Cabin (2016), is the winner of the 2015 42 Miles Press Poetry Award.
Join us in celebrating the 90th birthday of esteemed poet, translator, educator, and editor Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth. We’ll be rejoicing with music, cake, poetry, friends, readings, and assorted literary shenanigans. Everyone is welcome for what is sure to be a wonderful afternoon.
Dr. Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth is an acclaimed poet, translator, educator, and editor. He was born in Mexico City in 1926, the son of an army officer of Spanish descent and a musician mother of German descent. In 1940 he left Mexico for Texas, making the United States his permanent home. He received a B.A. from the University of Texas in 1950 and a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1973, and is professor emeritus of Spanish at The University of Texas at Austin, where he taught for more than thirty years. He has written numerous critical studies and has been published extensively in anthologies and magazines. He is the author of the poetry collections Looking for the Horse Latitudes (Host Publications) and Between Day and Night: New and Selected Poems, 1946-2010 (Tamu Press), and the translator of Natural Selection (Host Publications), the collected works of Uruguayan poet Enrique Fierro.
Join us for a FREE monthly reading series, Malvern’s Multi-Verse, in which we explore the infinite possible (multi)verses of Austin’s boundless poetic universe!
Held on the fourth Tuesday of every month and hosted by François Pointeau, Malvern’s Multi-Verse will feature readings from guest poets, plus a Q & A session. Space-time might be flat and stretch out infinitely, but Malvern’s Multi-Verse is well-rounded, lasts for about an hour, and includes free cookies! Yes indeed, it’s the best of all possible worlds…
This month’s Malvern’s Multi-Verse features young writers from the Barrio Writers Creative Writing Program. We will have an interview with Austin Barrio Writers leaders Leticia Urieta and Marilyse Figueroa followed by poetry from some of the young writers and a panel discussion with the poets about the Barrio Writers program.
Barrio Writers (BW) is a creative writing program founded by author Sarah Rafael García, which provides free college level writing workshops to teenagers in underserved communities.