Malvern Books

The inaugural event in our Everything is Bigger monthly reading series, hosted by Tyler Gobble. To kick things off, we have readings from Dean Young, Blake Lee Pate, and Vincent Scarpa.

Dean Young is the author of more than ten collections of poetry, including most recently, Fall Higher and Bender: New and Selected Poems, as well as a book of prose on poetry, The Art of Recklessness. He is currently the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin. Additionally, he is this year’s Texas State Poet Laureate.

Blake Lee Pate is co-editor of Smoking Glue Gun Magazine and an MFA candidate in poetry in the New Writers Project at the University of Texas, Austin. She is currently the marketing director for Bat City Review. Her work can be found in Forklift, Ohio; elimae; and decomP, among other places.

Vincent Scarpa is a first-year fiction writer at UT’s Michener Center for Writers. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of the 2012 Norman Mailer College Fiction Prize.

Introducing W. Joe’s Poetry Corner! For the inaugural event in this reading series, we have an evening with poet and visual artist David Thornberry. The event will kick off with our host, W. Joe, interviewing David. Next up, David will give a reading, followed by an audience Q&A. David’s artwork will also be on display in the store.

In association with the New Writers Project at the University of Texas, we’re proud to present a reading with poet Michael Teig. Michael is a founding editor of jubilat, and author of the collections Big Back Yard (2003; selected by Stephen Dobyns as winner of the inaugural A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize) and There’s a Box in the Garage You Can Beat with a Stick (2013).

“… Michael Teig maps the mercurial terrain of the imagination with such equipoise you may forget you’re dreaming just as these pages are so soaked with the miraculous everyday, you may forget you’re awake. Imagine getting a letter from a zinnia. Deft as an owl landing in a blossoming cherry tree, these are gorgeously uncanny and regal poems.”—Dean Young, in praise of There’s a Box in the Garage You Can Beat with a Stick

So nice, we’re doing it twice! (And also: many more times!) This month’s reading will be hosted by the inimitable Tyler Gobble and will feature Claudia Smith, Dan Boehl, and Laurel Hunt.

Claudia Smith grew up in Houston, Texas. Her fiction has appeared in several journals and anthologies over the years, including Nortons’ The New Sudden Fiction: Short Short Stories From America And Beyond and Cinco Puntos/Akashic’s Lone Star Noir. Her collections of short-shorts The Sky is A Well and Put Your Head In My Lap are available from Rose Metal Press and Future Tense Books, respectively; her chapbook The Sky Is Well‘s first printing sold out, but was reprinted in the collection A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness. Her debut collection of short stories, Quarry Light, is now available from Magic Helicopter Press.

Dan Boehl is a founding editor of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry publisher, which put out his book The Kings of the F**king Sea. He helps run the Austin reading series Fun Party.

Laurel Hunt is an MFA candidate at the Michener Center for Writers at UT-Austin. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Smoking Glue Gun; Forklift, Ohio; and Whiskey Island, among other places.

If you’re the cautious type who would like to check out last month’s Bigger fun before you commit, please visit our YouTube channel for footage.

P.S. RAFFLE PRIZES! OH BOY!

For the second installment of W. Joe’s Poetry Corner, we’re delighted to present an evening with Austin poet Cindy St. John. The event will kick off with our host, W. Joe, interviewing Cindy. Next up, Cindy will give a reading from her new chapbook, I Wrote This Poem (forthcoming from Salt Hill), followed by an audience Q&A session.

Cindy St. John holds an MFA from Western Michigan University. She is the author of four chapbooks, including Be The Heat, and her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including H_NGM_N, No Tell Motel, and the Southern Review. She teaches Language Arts at Austin’s Fulmore Middle School and is one of the co-hosts of the Fun Party reading series. In 2013, she was a Millay artist-in-residence.

A reading with poets Peter Streckfus (author of The Cuckoo and Errings) and Rob MacDonald (editor of Sixth Finch).

Peter Streckfus’ debut collection, The Cuckoo, was selected by Louise Glück for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Additional honors include fellowships from the Peter S. Reed Foundation and the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, and two Pushcart Prize nominations. In 2013 he was a Rome Prize Fellow in Literature. His work has been anthologized in numerous collections, including Under the Rock Umbrella: Contemporary American Poets from 1951 to 1977 (2006).

In association with the New Writers Project at the University of Texas, we’re proud to present a reading with poet Noelle Kocot.

Noelle is the author of six poetry collections, including Soul in Space (2013) and The Bigger World (2011), and a book of translations of some of the poems of Tristan Corbière, Poet by Default (2011). Her poems have also been anthologized in numerous editions of The Best American Poetry. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the American Poetry Review, among others, and some of her work recently went to Mars on the spaceship MAVEN. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and currently lives in New Jersey.

The irrepressible Tyler Gobble hosts our monthly reading series, Everything is Bigger, which features prose and poetry and prizes! This month’s readers are Trey Moody, Nick Courtright, and Thomas Courtney Vance.

Trey Moody is the author of Thought That Nature (Sarabande Books, 2014), selected by Cole Swensen for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2009, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, and Washington Square. He lives in San Marcos, Texas.

Nick Courtright’s second book, Let There Be Light, is out now from Gold Wake Press. Punchline, his 2012 release, was a National Poetry Series finalist. His poetry has also appeared in many literary journals, including The Southern Review, AGNI, Kenyon Review Online, and Boston Review. In Austin, Texas, he is a freelance writing coach who also teaches university-level Creative Writing, Classicism, Romanticism, and Writing for Publication, among other literature and writing courses.

Thomas Courtney Vance’s writing appears or will appear in Revolution House, North American Review, Independent Ink, and Unstuck. She’s a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.

We’re proud to present a reading with poets Gary Whited and Dave Oliphant. The evening will also feature jazz from Margaret Slovak and Tony Morris, so be sure to come by at 6.30pm for some excellent live music!

Gary Whited (above left) is a poet, philosopher, and psychotherapist. His poetry collection, Having Listened, won the 2013 Homebound Publications Poetry Contest and is being considered for a Ben Franklin Award. “Farm,” one of the poems from the book, has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including The Aurorean, Salamander, and Comstock Review. He is also a contributing author to a collection of essays in honor of his philosophy teacher, Henry Bugbee, titled Wilderness and the Heart: Henry Bugbee’s Philosophy of Place, Presence, and Memory. He is currently working on a new translation of Parmenides’ On Nature.

Dave Oliphant (above right) is the author of several volumes of poetry, including Memories of Texas Towns & Cities (2000) and Backtracking (2004). He has edited numerous anthologies, written many works of criticism, and is an important scholar of Texas Jazz. His translations include Figures of Speech by Enrique Lihn (1999), Love Hound by Oliver Welden (2006), and After-Dinner Declarations by Nicanor Parra (2008).

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. For March 2014, W. Joe’s Poetry Corner welcomes Vicente Lozano to the stage. Lozano is a recipient of a postgraduate fellowship from the Michener Center for Writers, and has also participated in Macondo, Sandra Cisneros’ socially engaged writing community. In 2007 Lozano received a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship from The Texas Institute of Letters. The Vermont Studio Center has gifted him with several artist grants.

Lozano’s obsession has been with his family’s Mexican history in South Texas (though thirty years in Austin have, at times, made him an unavoidable watcher of whiteness and its awkward hat dance with an emerging Latino population). Precisely because Race and History are heavy—the gifts that keep on giving™—he escapes into pop culture, satire, and absurdity as often as he can.

By day he keeps computers from crashing. For the past ten years he has been Systems Administrator for The Undergraduate Writing Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

Join Smoking Glue Gun at Malvern Books for a night of readings by Claire Bowman, Meg McKeon, Taisia Kitaiskaia, and Scott Hammer. Smoking Glue Gun will provide refreshments and the new SGG Spring Chapbooks will be for sale!

Claire Bowman was born in the cornfields next to the Missouri river. Her mother raised her in the woods. She is an Assistant Poetry Editor for Bat City Review and an MFA Candidate at the Michener Center for Writers. She sometimes loves it all. There are demons in her heart. They never let up.

Meg McKeon holds an MFA in poetry from The New Writers Project at The University of Texas at Austin. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Ghost Town; H_NGM_N; ILK Journal; Blackbird; Spork Press; LEVELER; and Smoking Glue Gun.

Taisia Kitaiskaia was born in Russia and raised in America. Her poems and translations are forthcoming or have appeared in Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Narrative Magazine, and Poetry International, and she is currently a Michener fellow at the University of Texas in Austin.

Scott Hammer is the author of the poetry chapbook Some Body Some Hollow, forthcoming from Horse Less Press. His writing has appeared in places like Smoking Glue Gun, ILK Journal, La Petite Zine, Noo Weekly, The Baltimore Review, Vector Press and others. He is currently writing in Philadelphia.

Join us for an evening with poets Karen Kevorkian and Richard Bailey.

Karen Kevorkian has recently published two poetry collections, Lizard Dream (What Books Press) and White Stucco Black Wing (Red Hen Press). Her poetry and fiction have appeared in several anthologies and journals including Fiction International, Poetry International, Quarterly West, Witness, Volt, Shenandoah, and the Michigan Quarterly, Massachusetts, Antioch, Virginia Quarterly, Agni, Hayden’s Ferry, Los Angeles, and the Mississippi reviews. Educated at the universities of Texas, Virginia, and Utah, she now teaches creative writing in the English department at UCLA and before that in the creative writing program at the University of Virginia. For several years she edited and produced exhibition catalogues for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She has been awarded fellowships from the Wurlitzer, Ucross, Djerassi, and Millay foundations and the MacDowell Colony.

Richard Bailey’s poetry collection REVIVAL was awarded Finalist for the 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award. His poems have appeared in several journals, including The Madison Review, Mudfish, and Whiskey Island Magazine. His play A SHIP OF HUMAN SKIN was a Finalist at Kitchen Dog Theater’s New Works Festival, 2012, and Semifinalist at The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2012, and The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, 2012. His short films have shown in festivals across the country, including SXSW, Black Maria, FOCUS, Social Outcast, Wildcatter Exchange, and at Anthology Film Archives in NYC.

Join us for a reading and celebration as participants of the Free Minds writing workshop and students of the Class of 2014 share their original works of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction.

Members of the Free Minds writing workshop meet over the course of 8 weeks to produce and share writing in a supportive group environment. These workshops are founded on the principle that each person has a unique and powerful voice which deserves to be heard. Our spring workshop has been led by Mary Lavallee, an MFA candidate in UT’s Department of English and an instructor of literature and writing. Students in the Free Minds Class of 2014 will share excerpts from personal narratives, developed with guidance from Project Director Vivé Griffith, poet and graduate of UT’s Michener Center for writers. All are welcome to attend!

Free Minds is a collaboration between Foundation Communities, UT Austin, and ACC which offers educational and creative opportunities to adults who have faced barriers to higher education. To learn more about our free community writing workshops or our two-semester course in humanities, visit Free Minds Austin or call 512.610.7961.

The irrepressible Tyler Gobble hosts our monthly reading series, Everything is Bigger, which features prose and poetry and prizes! This month’s readers are Andrew Zawacki, Laurie Saurborn Young, and Fernando Flores.

Ivy and the Wicker Suitcase has been described as “an Epic Surreal Ear Movie Musical!” It’s an enchanting illustrated tale told with music, dialogue, and sound effects… think Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but with a distinctly Austin twist!

Join us at Malvern Books for a lively evening of Ivy-related fun. Author Brian Beattie will give a recitation of the “epic” poem, “The Backstory Ballad of Ivy Wire,” and we’ll also feature musical performances and an exhibition of original artwork from the book.

Brian and the book’s illustrator, Valerie Fowler, will also present a “crankie” show, in which a long illustrated scroll is “cranked” along while a song from the musical is played—a sort of a very low tech, handmade video! And you’ll also have a chance to ask questions of the book’s creators, as well as have copies of the book signed.

Brian Beattie and Valerie Fowler live in Austin with their two teenagers, Felix and Ramona Beattie.

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.) And there will, of course, be fabulous raffle prizes for a few lucky readers.

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 for an evening with poets Nicolas Hundley and Samira Noorali.

Nicolas Hundley is the author of The Revolver in the Hive, published by Fordham University Press and winner of the 2012 Poets Out Loud Editor’s prize. His work has appeared in FIELD, Massachusetts Review, Crazyhorse, New Orleans Review, Gulf Coast, Verse, POOL, LIT, Conduit, Salt Hill, Seattle Review, and others. He attended the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He works and teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.

Samira R. Noorali is an Austin-based writer. She has been published in Poetry Nook Magazine, won awards for appellate advocacy while a Juris Doctor candidate at University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, and has served as a news writer for ITL News. In 2013, she published A Simple Rebirth, an anthology of illustrated poems. Most recently, she has written a play based on A Simple Rebirth, which is set for a June reading with Shunya Theater in Houston.

Hosted by Tyler Gobble and featuring Katherine Noble, Corey Miller, Alen Hamza, W. Joe Hoppe, Tiff Holland, Lisa Olstein, and Tomas Morin.

To close the book on National Poetry Month, Everything is Bigger host Tyler Gobble is throwing a special shindig called Poets Picking Poets. It’s inspired/modeled after that McSweeney’s anthology called Poets Picking Poets, except as a reading.

Here’s how it’s gonna go:

– Two flights of readers, four poets per flight
– Malvern employee Katherine Noble and W. Joe’s Poetry Corner host W. Joe Hoppe were chosen to start each flight
– Each poet picked a poet to follow them
– Each poet will read four poems—one by his/herself, one by someone/anyone else, another by his/herself, and one by the poet they picked

We’re delighted to present an evening with writers Gregory Robinson and Adeena Reitberger.

Gregory Robinson lives in Boulder City, Nevada with his wife Joan and his dog BinBin. He is currently Chair of the Humanities Department at Nevada State College. When he is not writing, he is hiking around the desert, doing iaido, or (of course) watching movies.

Adeena Reitberger was born in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. Her stories and essays have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Mississippi Review, Cimarron Review, Nimrod International Journal, Sierra Nevada Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Austin, Texas, and is the coeditor of American Short Fiction.

Come hear readings from the authors whose work is featured in Hothouse Literary Journal‘s Spring 2014 issue and be the first to get a copy! As the official literary journal of UT’s Undergraduate English Department, Hothouse is a collection of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction written by English majors. Copies of the journal are FREE and there will also be an electronic version released. This is a literature event you won’t want to miss!

The captivating Tyler Gobble hosts our monthly reading series, Everything is Bigger, which features prose and poetry and prizes. This month’s intrepid readers are Tim Earley, Jess Stoner, and Will Clark.

Join us for an afternoon with novelist Larry Brill, a twenty-five-year veteran of TV news and former Austin TV news anchor. Larry will sign copies of his latest novel, The Patterer, a comic odyssey through the world of 18th-century London trash journalism, but based on Brill’s 20th-century experiences in the business. Along with a reading by one of the characters in his novel, Larry will be joined by Austin’s own Next Chapter Improv Group. The actors will call on writers in the audience to read a single page from their own work and then create a comedy sketch on the spot based on that reading.

Larry Brill spent twenty-five years as a television news anchor and reporter in four states, picking up numerous awards along the way. After leaving the business in 2000, Larry penned his first novel, Live At Five, a gentle lampooning of the TV news business. His second novel, The Patterer, carried that theme back in time, to imagine the hilarious possibilities of how today’s news clichés might look to a theater audience in 18th-century London.

Larry was crowned the “Worst Writer in America” twenty years ago as the winner of a tongue-in-cheek competition to intentionally write the WORST opening sentence to an imaginary novel based on that famous line “It was a Dark and Stormy Night….” The small amount of fame that followed gave him a new goal: with two books published and inching towards the bestseller list, he has set his sights on becoming the first author to officially go from worst to first.

The Next Chapter Improv is a group of twelve gifted actors from around the country now living in Austin. Their weekly performances received rave reviews during the 2013 season at The Institution Theater, and the recent Improv Play Festival. The concept is simple: a published author reads a short segment from his or her book, and based only on that, the actors create a sketch to advance the story in any way they see fit.

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. This month, Joe will play host to poet Cindy Huyser. Cindy’s poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Tri-State University TriAngle, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, GrrlTalk: An Anthology of Writing by the Austin WriterGrrls, and San Pedro River Review. She co-edited the Texas Poetry Calendar from 2008 through 2013, and has read her work at a number of venues across Texas.

Join us for an evening with writers Lowell Mick White and Ken Fontenot. Be sure to come by at 6.30pm for live music from TOPSY; the reading will begin around 7pm.

Lowell Mick White is the author of two novels, Professed and That Demon Life, and a story collection, Long Time Ago Good. Awarded the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters, White lived in Austin for twenty-five years, at various times working as a cab driver, as a shade tree salesman, and as an Internal Revenue Service bureaucrat. Formerly NEA Artist-in-Residence at the federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, he is currently Assistant Professor of English at Pittsburg State University, where he teaches creative writing and literature.

Ken Fontenot has an MA in German Language and Literature from UT Austin. His most recent book of poems, In a Kingdom of Birds, won the 2013 Texas Institute of Letters award for best book of poems. His novel came out in 2010 from Slough Press. It’s called For Mr. Raindrinker.

Join us for a reading to celebrate the launch of the latest issue of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review! Featuring keynote poet Laurie Ann Guerrero (winner of the 2012 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize and author of the collection A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying), along with writers Ken Fontenot, Jonathan Moody, Anis Shivani, Scott Wiggerman, and Steve Wilson. We’ll also showcase work from photographer Joel Salcido, whose current touring exhibit is “Aliento A Tequila.” Southern funk band Westgate Revival will open the program with blues and jazz.

Join us for an evening with writers Lauren Becker, Josh Denslow, and Tyler Gobble. Lauren will read from her new short story collection, If I Would Leave Myself Behind, and sign copies of the book.

Lauren Becker recently moved to Austin from Oakland, California. She has worked as an attorney, a health care policy analyst and advocate, a freelance writer, and a disability specialist. Her fiction has appeared at Tin House online, Hobart, the Los Angeles Review, Pedestal Magazine, Wigleaf, [PANK], and NANO Fiction. Her non-fiction has been featured on The Rumpus and The Nervous Breakdown. She is editor of the online literary journal, Corium Magazine.

Josh Denslow’s stories have appeared in Third Coast, Black Clock, Cutbank, Pear Noir!, and Wigleaf, among others. He is a staff editor at SmokeLong Quarterly and an Associate Editor at Unstuck. He has written and directed five short films, and he plays the drums in the band Borrisokane.

Tyler Gobble is a proud Hoosier in Austin, TX. He runs the Everything is Bigger reading series at Malvern Books, and his first book will be out from Coconut Books in the fall. He likes bacon, disc golf, and tank tops, in no particular order. More at tylergobble.com.

Texas Association of Authors celebrates the winners of their third annual Book Awards Contest with a weekend of readings at Malvern Books.

Saturday’s Reading Schedule:

• 1.15pm—Myra Hargrave McIlvain, author of Stein House (General Fiction winner)
• 2.15pm—Jedah Mayberry, author of The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle (Multi-Cultural Fiction winner)
• 3.15pm—Robert Stevens, author of Master Robert (Civil War Historical Fiction winner)
• 4.15pm—R. Flowers Rivera, author of Troubling Accents (Poetry winner)

Texas Association of Authors celebrates the winners of their third annual Book Awards Contest with a weekend of readings at Malvern Books.

Sunday’s Reading Schedule:

• 1.15pm—Elizabeth A. Garcia, author of One Bloody Shirt at a Time (Police/Crime Fiction winner)
• 2.15pm—Howard Webb, author of Loup Garou (Supernatural Fiction winner)
• 3.15pm—Marjorie Brody, author of Twisted (Young Adult Fiction winner)
• 4.15pm—L. A. Starks, author of Strike Price (Mystery/Thriller Fiction winner)
• 5.15pm—Kenneth Womack, author of Playing the Angel (Contemporary Fiction winner)

W. Joe is back for another round of poetry karaoke!

Here’s how it 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.) And there will, of course, be fabulous raffle prizes for a few lucky readers.

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 for the launch of All the Unspeakable Things, a collection of poetry and shorter pieces by Marty Lloyd Woldman.

Marty Woldman is a Texas-born writer, performer and philosopher. Traveling far beyond his native borders, he has spent his entire life writing, wandering and performing, and will spend the rest of his life doing the same. Marty has been featured in publications ranging from innovative indie rag Raw Paw to the Texas capital staples The Austin Chronicle and Austin Daze. Austin’s world-renowned performance venues (Emos, Red Eyed Fly, Ruta Maya) have been his forge and witnessed his fury for more than a decade as a spoken-word host, feature and walk-on performer.

The works of Marty Woldman are honest to absurdity, cohesively surreal, and just as blissfully contradictory as the man. His words present an influence of the masters delivered with a flawless lack of pretension, finely honed by real-world grit.

Join us for an evening with noir writers Tom Zigal and Rod Davis. They will be sharing work from their recent New Orleans-based novels: Rod Davis will read from South, America and Tom Zigal will read from Many Rivers to Cross. There will also be live music from Americana roots duo Mark Viator and Susan Maxey. Music starts at 6.30pm; the readings will begin around 7pm.

Tom Zigal (above left) was born in Galveston, Texas, in 1948 and grew up in nearby Texas City. He attended high school in Louisiana and received degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and Stanford University. He has been publishing short stories, reviews, and essays for forty years, and he is the author of three popular crime novels featuring Kurt Muller as the sheriff of Aspen, Colorado. He has completed two novels of a trilogy-in-progress set in New Orleans—The White League and Many Rivers to Cross, which won the 2014 Jesse Jones Award for Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters. Zigal lives in Austin with his wife and stepchildren.

Rod Davis (above right) was the recipient of the fiction award in the 2005 PEN Southwest Book Awards for Corina’s Way. Davis is also the author of American Voudou: Journey into a Hidden World, a study of West African religion in the United States. A six-part series on the Texas-Mexico border, “A Rio Runs Through It,” appears in Best American Travel Writing 2002, and his PEN/Texas-award-winning essay, “The Fate of the Texas Writer,” is included in Fifty Years of the Texas Observer. His most recent novel, South, America, has been described as “a triumph of Southern noir” and compared to the works of James M. Cain and Mickey Spillane. Davis is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, PEN Center USA, and the National Book Critics Circle. National professional honors have included a fellowship at the Yaddo Colony, a Lowell Thomas Award (Bronze) for personal commentary on post-Katrina New Orleans, and Gold and Silver Awards for feature writing from the City/Regional Magazine Association (CRMA). He has taught writing at the University of Texas at Austin and Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Join us for an afternoon with Sarah Stark, author of the novel Out There. Sarah will give a reading, answer questions, and sign copies of the book.

Out There is the story of a young Army veteran of Native descent (Jefferson Long Soldier) who returns home safely to New Mexico after two tours of duty in Iraq convinced that the book he carried with him (One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez) saved his life. But when he can’t get the medical care he needs to heal from the dark memories of war, he borrows his cousin’s motorcycle and rides south across the border to Mexico in search of the famous writer behind the magic of the life- saving classic novel. Humorous, redemptive, and awash in magical realism, Out There exalts the process of healing, the power of literature and the very real possibility of hope and love emerging from tragedy. It is also a beautiful homage to García Márquez, who recently passed away at the age of 87.

Sarah Stark grew up in the Austin, Texas area among readers and teachers and football enthusiasts. After graduating cum laude with a B.A. in Foreign Service from Baylor University, she earned an M.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. Afterwards she worked as a foreign policy analyst in Washington, D.C., writing about international security issues, including nuclear nonproliferation and peacekeeping. For the last fourteen years Sarah has made her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she currently teaches literature and creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA).

Join us for an evening with writers Pam Jones and Kelly Luce.

Pam Jones (left) is an East Coast native, now planting her roots in Austin, Texas with her husband and cat. She studied Creative Writing at Hampshire College, and has held down a variety of jobs, at YMCAs, at an art gallery, even as an artists’ model. Her writing has appeared in Otoliths e-magazine as Pam Hopkins. The Biggest Little Bird is her first novel.

Kelly Luce (right) grew up in Brookfield, Illinois. After graduating from Northwestern University with a degree in cognitive science, she moved to Japan, where she lived and worked for three years. Her work has been recognized by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Ragdale Foundation, the Kerouac Project, and Jentel Arts, and has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, and other magazines. She lives in Santa Cruz, California, and Austin, Texas, where she is a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas and fiction editor of Bat City Review. Her first book, the short story collection Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail, will be released shortly.

Join us for an evening with acclaimed poets Marcela Sulak and Jenny Browne.

Marcela Sulak is the author of Immigrant (Black Lawrence Press, 2010) and the chapbook Of All the Things that Don’t Exist, I Love You Best (Finishing Line Press, 2008). She has translated three collections of poetry: by Karel Hynek Macha, K.J. Erben, and Mutombo Nkulu-N’Sengha. She is co-editor of Family Resemblances: An Anthology and Exploration of Eight Hybrid Literary Forms (forthcoming from Rose Metal Press). She is also an editor of The Ilanot Review and Tupelo Quarterly, and hosts the weekly TLV1 radio show “Israel in Translation.” Her essays have appeared in the Iowa Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Rattle, among others. She is currently the Director of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University.

Jenny Browne is the author of three collections of poems: At Once, The Second Reason, and Dear Stranger. Recent poems and essays have appeared in numerous venues, including American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, The New York Times, Tin House and Zocalo Public Square. A former James Michener Fellow at the University of Texas-Austin, she is the recipient of two Texas Writers League Fellowships and a 2012-13 NEA Literature Fellowship. For many years she worked as poet in residence for the Texas Commission on the Arts, and with the University of Iowa’s International Writers Program. She currently lives in downtown San Antonio, Texas, and teaches at Trinity University.

Join us for an evening of readings with visiting poets Joshua Marie Wilkinson and Zach Schomburg.

Zachary Schomburg (above right) is the author of The Man Suit; Scary, No Scary; Fjords Vol. I, and The Book of Joshua (all from Black Ocean). He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he runs Octopus Books and the Bad Blood Series.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson’s recent books are Meadow Slasher, The Courier’s Archive & Hymnal, Swamp Isthmus, and Selenography (all from Black Ocean and Sidebrow Books). He lives in Tucson, where he edits The Volta and Letter Machine Editions and teaches poetry at the University of Arizona.

Mathias Svalina is the author of three books: Destruction Myth, I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur, and The Explosions. Big Lucks Books will publish his book Wastoid this fall. He is a co-editor for Octopus Books and teaches writing in universities, community centers, and prisons in Denver.

Join us in celebrating the release of Next Stop, Heaven, the third book in Ron Jaeger’s
Trilogy of Light series. Ron will be joined by Austin poet Jan Marquart, founder of the About The Author Network.

Ron Jaeger wrote the three novels of the Trilogy of Light (The Secret of the Bermuda Triangle; Sharing a Man; and Next Stop, Heaven) over five years—but it was only after he had published the second novel that he realized he had written an unintended trilogy. One theme in particular runs through all three novels: We all have genius, inner light, but we seldom bring it out in creative acts because we have been bludgeoned into conformity.

Jan Marquart is a psychotherapist and author of eleven books. She believes in the power of personal story and helps those who come to her uncover, discover, and recover from personal narratives. Jan has a private practice in Austin and is CEO and Founder of About the Author Network, which helps those interested in writing keep their pens moving. Jan also teaches writing classes for Story Circle Network and has published essays, poems, stories, and articles for in print and online publications.

Join us for an evening with writers Harold Whit Williams and David Longoria. We’ll kick things off at 7pm with music from Harold and Jon Bookout, followed by readings from Harold and David.

Harold Whit Williams is guitarist for the critically acclaimed rock band Cotton Mather. He is recipient of the Mississippi Review’s 2014 Poetry Prize, and his newest collection, Backmasking, is winner of the 2013 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize from Texas Review Press. His first collection, Waiting For The Fire To Go Out, is available from Finishing Line Press, and his poems have appeared in numerous literary journals.

David Longoria was born in Houston, Texas. He is a singer, songwriter, and poet living in Austin, Texas. Influenced by the songs of Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, Hank Williams, etc., Longoria plays guitar and harmonica. In 2002 Longoria formed The Black, a country rock band performing with as few as two and as many as ten members. He has performed or toured with the Trail of Dead, Yo La Tengo, James Hand, Deertick, Fiery Furnaces, Joe Ely, Shiva’s Headband, The Sword, and Voxtrot.

Join us for an evening with writers Samuel Snoek-Brown and Zoë Miller.

Samuel Snoek-Brown writes and teaches in Portland, Oregon. He also works as production editor for Jersey Devil Press. His work has appeared in Bartleby Snopes, Ampersand Review, Fiction Circus, Eunoia Review, Red Fez, SOL: English Writing in Mexico, and others. He’s the author of the flash fiction chapbook Box Cutters, and of the novel Hagridden, for which he received a 2013 Oregon Literary Fellowship.

Zoë Miller grew up in Los Angeles. She received her BA in Liberal Arts from The New School University in New York City as a Riggio Honors Fellow, and completed her MFA in Fiction at the University of Minnesota. Her short stories have appeared in 12^th Street, Front Porch, and Fields Magazine. She lives in Austin, Texas.

Join us for an evening with writers Eric Shonkwiler, Ray Shea, and special guests.

Eric Shonkwiler (above left) has had writing appear in Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, Fiddleblack, [PANK] Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere. He received his MFA in Fiction from University of California-Riverside, where he was the recipient of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellowship Award, and is the Regional Editor for Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as a former reader for [PANK] and former Editor-in-Chief and fiction editor for CRATE: The Literary Journal of UCR. He is the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel, Above All Men, a 2014 Midwest Connections Pick released in March from MG Press. Critics have called Above All Men “sparse and poetic” (Frank Bill) and “stark and plainspokenly honest” (Sundog Lit), and have said it “weaves a compelling narrative together with tightly written prose that makes the realities of the post-collapse society profoundly acute” (CCLaP).

A native of Boston and New Orleans and a graduate of Rice University, Ray Shea (above right) has lived in Austin for most of the last two decades. His writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Hobart, apt, Sundog Lit, Fourteen Hills, and elsewhere. His essay “Forensic Biography and the Art of the Screenwriter” was recently a finalist for the Phoebe 2014 Annual Creative Nonfiction award judged by Cheryl Strayed. He is currently at work on a collection of personal essays and a book-length memoir about fatherhood, violence, addiction, and memory, and writes poetry in his spare time.

We’re having an all-day party to celebrate the 100th birthday of world-renowned Chilean (anti)poet Nicanor Parra!

Here’s a taste of what we’ll be doing to mark this grand centenary:

• Starting at noon, guests will be giving readings from Chilean writers every half an hour
• There’ll be an opportunity for you to share your favorite Parra poems
• From 7pm onwards, we’ll host a reading and discussion with poet and Parra translator Dave Oliphant, who has many tales to tell about his interactions with the great man
• Cake and refreshments with the program at 7pm

Nicanor Parra is hugely popular in his native Chile, and many consider him to be one of the most significant poets of Spanish-language poetry—Pablo Neruda called him “one of the great names in the literature of our language.” Parra has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 2011 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world. Despite his fame as a poet, Parra kept up his “day job” as a professor of theoretical physics until his retirement in 1991. Parra describes himself as an “anti-poet,” someone who disdains any hint of poetic grandiosity. He shuns poetic convention in favor of playful, conversational musings, and his verse is full of raucous wit and humor. Stop by Malvern Books to celebrate his happy 100th and learn more about this wonderful poet!

Join us for the inaugural shindig in a new monthly series, the Raw Paw reading series.

Raw Paw was founded in Austin, Texas, in 2010. Here’s what they have to say about this awesome new series:

In our larval stages, Raw Paw was a weekly poetry potluck where writers would share wine and words. We are so pleased to be returning to our root with our new poetry imprint: Mind Maze. Mind Maze will be released every month and showcase 20 poems by one of Austin’s best; all wrapped in a patterned, screen-printed cover designed by Nicole Carleton.

To debut this imprint we will be releasing the first book of the series, Bluenote, by revered Austin poet David Jewell. The event will include a reading by five very gifted writers and future Mind Maze poets: Ed Buffaloe, A.R., Jonathon Lowell, Brandy Ingram, and Paula Mendoza. Join us in this literary synergy of events and publications!

Join us for an evening with authors Henry Chappell and James Magnuson. We’ll kick things off at 7pm with live music from Americana roots duo Mark Viator and Susan Maxey; the readings will follow.

Henry Chappell is a field reporter for The Land Report and writes a regular column for Texas Wildlife. He has been a full-time freelance writer since 1997. His first novel, The Callings, was a 2003 Spur Award finalist in the Western Writers of America “best first novel” category, and his second, Blood Kin, was a finalist for the same award in 2005 for the “novel of the west” category, as well as runner-up for the TCU Texas Book Award. His most recent book, Silent We Stood, won the 2014 Western Writers of America Spur Award for best historical novel.

James Magnuson is the author of nine novels, including Famous Writers I Have Known, Ghost Dancing, and Windfall. He has also written more than a dozen plays that have received productions everywhere from the street theaters of Harlem in the Sixties to Lincoln Center and Playwrights Horizons. He has been a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, winner of an NEA grant for his fiction, and for twenty-one years has been the Director of the Michener Center for Writers.

Bigger is back! The captivating Tyler Gobble hosts our monthly reading series, Everything is Bigger, which features prose and poetry and prizes. This month’s intrepid readers are Lisa Olstein, Dobby Gibson, Sam Sax, and Deb Olin Unferth.

Join us for an afternoon with poets Sarah Webb, David Meischen, and Carol Hamilton.

Sarah Webb edited poetry for twelve years for Crosstimbers (University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma). She co-edits the Zen arts magazine Just This for the Austin Zen Center and serves on the editorial committee of All Roads Will Lead You Home. Her work is currently appearing in A Ritual to Read to Each Other: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford, The Enigmatist, Blue Hole, Persimmon Tree, Pushing the Envelope: Epistolary Poems, Portland State ReadAround (KPSU.org), and The Texas Poetry Calendar. Her collection Black (Virtual Artists Collective, 2013) was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award.

David Meischen has been writing poetry and teaching the writing of poetry for thirty years. He has had poems in The Southern Review, Southern Poetry Review, Borderlands, Cider Press Review, and other journals, as well as Two Southwests (Virtual Artists Collective, 2008), which features poets from the Southwest of China and the United States. Meischen has participated in four collaborative poetry and art shows, most recently Ekphrasis: Sacred Stories of the Southwest (Phoenix, AZ, Obliq Art, 2014). Also a fiction writer, Meischen has recent stories in The Gettysburg Review, Bellingham Review, The Evansville Review, and elsewhere. Winner of the Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest in Mainstream Fiction, 2011, and the Talking Writing Fiction Contest, 2012, he has finished a novel in stories and is currently seeking an agent. Meischen is a co-founder and Managing Editor of Dos Gatos Press; he lives in Austin, TX, with his husband—also his co-publisher and co-editor—Scott Wiggerman.

Carol Hamilton is a former elementary school teacher in Connecticut, Indiana and Oklahoma, the last twelve years in a school for gifted children. She taught in the English departments of a community college and on the graduate faculty at The University of Central Oklahoma. She has been a translator at a clinic for women and children for 20 years and translates for medical teams to Latino countries. She received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Central Oklahoma in 2007. She has published 16 books: children’s novels, legends, and poetry. She has won a Southwest Book Award, an Oklahoma Book Award, Cherubim Award, Chiron Review Chapbook Award, Pegasus Award, David Ray Poetry Prize, the Byline Literary Awards for both short story and poetry, and the Warren Keith Poetry Prize. She is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize. She has a soon-to-be-released book of poetry titled SUCH DEATHS.

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. This month, Joe will play host to Lyman Grant: poet, intrepid traveler, and the Dean of Arts & Humanities of Austin Community College.

Lyman is the author of three volumes of poetry, one chapbook, and two textbooks. He has also edited two books relating to Texas literature. His articles and essays have appeared in the Texas Observer, Texas Humanist, Texas Books and Review, Dallas Morning News, and Langdon Review, among others. Lyman recently returned to Austin after spending a year on the road visiting 47 states with his family in a 34-foot RV.

Join the editors at Revista Pterodáctilo, a journal of Latin American literature, arts, and culture, for tamales and a bilingual poetry reading. The reading will feature poets Ignacio Carvajal and Christina Marie Lancastar. This event is free & open to the public. Sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Program in Comparative Literature at UT Austin, and held in conjunction with the GRACLS conference.

In honor of Banned Books Week, we’re teaming up with the Media Law Resource Center to host a discussion on censorship’s effects on First Amendment rights.

The Censorship Presentation touches upon various types of regulation and censorship relating to both everyday individuals and the press, discussing schools, universities, online issues, television, radio and international variations. This presentation will be given by lawyer Stacy Allen, a partner at Jackson Walker, and will also include an overview of Banned Books Week, including the event’s history and some more recent well-known challenges to books. There will be an opportunity for an audience Q&A following the talk.

Join us for an evening with poets Timothy Donnelly and Cecily Parks.

Timothy Donnelly is the author of Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit (Grove, 2003) and The Cloud Corporation (Wave, 2010; Picador, 2011), winner of the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His chapbook Hymn to Life was recently published by Factory Hollow Press and with John Ashbery and Geoffrey G. O’Brien he is the co-author of Three Poets, published by Minus A Press in 2012. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fence, Harper’s, Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of The Paris Review’s Bernard F. Conners Prize and the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, as well as fellowships from the New York State Writers Institute and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He is the poetry editor of Boston Review and teaches in the Writing Program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

Cecily Parks’s first collection of poems, Field Folly Snow, was a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award. Her second collection, O’Nights, will be published by Alice James Books in April. She lives in Austin and teaches at Texas State University.

Join us for an afternoon of readings with poets Scott Wiggerman, Elizabeth Raby, and Joyce Gullickson.

Scott Wiggerman is the author of two books of poetry, Presence and Vegetables and Other Relationships, and the editor of several volumes, including Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry, Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga, and the brand new Wingbeats II. Recent poems have appeared in Decades Review, Frogpond, Pinyon Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and the anthologies This Assignment Is So Gay, Forgetting Home: Poems about Alzheimer’s, and The Queer South. He is chief editor for Dos Gatos Press in Austin, Texas, publisher of the Texas Poetry Calendar, now in its seventeenth year.

Elizabeth Raby is the author of a four-generation memoir in prose and poetry, Ransomed Voices (Red Mountain Press, 2013), three full-length poetry collections, including This Woman (finalist for a 2013 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award), and four chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in many journals and several anthologies. She received the Elmer Kelton Award for poetry from Angelo State University in 2010. Raby has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, since 2000. She was a poet-in-the-schools for the New Jersey and Pennsylvania arts councils and received her MA (Creative Writing) from Temple University.

Joyce Gullickson is a registered nurse and poet whose poems and chapbooks attempt to connect us, and wake us up to the world in all of its beauty. She co-edits The Enigmatist and Blue Hole. Her poems have appeared in The Map of Austin, Di-verse-City, Sunscripts and the San Antonio Express News. Her chapbooks include Against All Odds, What If, and Who’s Keeping Count.

Opening day seems like it was only yesterday, but in fact Malvern Books turns one this week! And we’re kicking off three days of birthday celebrations with something rather appropriate: a reading from UT Austin’s 1st year MFA students—hey, they’ve been immersed in literature for one year, too!

We’re celebrating Malvern Books’ first anniversary this weekend, and we’re doing it in fine style, with music, readings, food, prizes and cake! Come and join the fun!

This evening we’ll have classical guitar from Tony Morris, along with readings from W. Joe Hoppe, Kurt Heinzelman, and Richard Sober (who will also be displaying his artwork).

Kurt Heinzelman is a poet, translator, scholar, and editor. His latest book of poems, his fourth, is Intimacies & Other Devices (2013). Demarcations (2011) is his translation of Jean Follain’s 1953 volume of poetry Territoires. A scholarly article, “The Grail of Origin: Translation and Originality,” is forthcoming in The Writers’ Chronicle. He was founding co-editor of The Poetry Miscellany and is currently Advisor and Editor-at-Large for Bat City Review and Editor-in-Chief of Texas Studies in Literature and Language (TSLL). He is also an Honorary Professor at Swansea University (Wales).

Richard Sober has been painting and writing since he was fifteen. Sober’s checkered career includes work as a carpenter’s helper, mailroom clerk, cabdriver, messenger, dishwasher, line cook, housepainter, gardener’s helper, census field supervisor, bibiliographic searcher, caregiver, union steward, data entry clerk, warehouseman, and harm reduction specialist. He is the author of Chopin Express, Anything With a Hole In It, Rosewood-The Serpentine Nature of the Beast-Four Windowboxes, Correo Aereo, Because the House is Wild and Empty, and Adjusting to the Light. He is currently working on two manuscripts of poems, Borrowed Earth and Fictive Kin. This December he will have a solo exhibition of 350 paintings in Baltimore. Sober and Sandie Castle can be heard on a spiken word CD, Missing in Action, produced by Birdhouse Studios.

We’re celebrating Malvern Books’ first anniversary this weekend, and we’re doing it in fine style, with music, readings, food, prizes and cake! Come and join the fun!

This afternoon we have honky-tonk cabaret from TOPSY, a reading and book signing with Dr. Fred McGhee (author of Austin’s Montopolis Neighborhood), and a reading and screening of two short films from poet and film maker Richard Bailey.

Fred L. McGhee, Ph.D. is Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology at Austin Community College and served as the founding president of the Montopolis Neighborhood Association. Also a former board member of the Austin History Center Association, he has combined historical photographs with personal photographs and images generously provided by longtime residents and friends of the Montopolis neighborhood. A specialist in the multicultural history of Texas and Hawai’i, he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently a candidate for the Austin City Council from District 3, which includes Montopolis.

Richard Bailey’s poetry collection REVIVAL was awarded Finalist for the 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award. His poems have appeared in several journals, including The Madison Review, Mudfish, and Whiskey Island Magazine. His play A SHIP OF HUMAN SKIN was a Finalist at Kitchen Dog Theater’s New Works Festival, 2012, and Semifinalist at The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2012, and The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, 2012. His short films have shown in festivals across the country, including SXSW, Black Maria, FOCUS, Social Outcast, Wildcatter Exchange, and at Anthology Film Archives in NYC.

Join us for the Raw Paw reading series, which celebrates the release of a new issue of their poetry imprint, Mind Maze. This month’s release is Tiny Nothing, from poet A.R. Rogers. Tiny Nothing is A.R. Rogers’ first chapbook. As the title suggests, the work focuses on the smaller events of our lives: the love of a house plant, mourning a dead moth, an act of kindness, breakfast, and the goings-on of an imagination. Each poem arrives lightly on the page, their images left to linger in a corner of the reader’s mind. Despite a concentration on the author’s personal and mundane experience, the collection points toward something larger. The poet’s use of the shifting nature of free verse complements the emotional undertone of Tiny Nothing.

The event will include readings from A.R., Ken Fontenot, Brandy Ingram, and Margery Segal. With Master of Ceremonies David Jewell. Come along and enjoy this literary synergy of events and publications!

Raw Paw was founded in Austin, Texas, in 2010. Their new poetry title, Mind Maze, is released every month and showcases twenty poems by one of Austin’s best—all wrapped in a patterned, screen-printed cover designed by Nicole Carleton.

Join us for a reading to celebrate the launch of the latest issue of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review! Featuring keynote poet Sasha West, with Christian Rees, Sam Sax, Shonna Skarda, and David Meischen.

Sasha West’s first book, Failure and I Bury the Body (Harper Perennial), won the National Poetry Series and the Texas Institute of Letters First Book of Poetry Award. It was also featured in the Poets & Writers emerging poets issue. Her work has appeared in The Southern Review, Ninth Letter, Forklift Ohio, Born, and elsewhere. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she teaches writing at the University of Texas’s LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Christian Rees is an alumnus of Loyola University of Maryland’s writing program. He has been published online in JMWW, Row Home Lit, Pithead Chapel, and Permafrost Review and his poem “The Bone House” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He divides his time in Texas working as a literacy advocate, in prisoner outreach, and running long distances.

Sam Sax is a Fellow at The Michener Center for Writers and the associate poetry editor for Bat City Review. He’s the author of the chapbooks, A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters (Button 2014), and sad boy / detective (Winner of the 2014 Black River Chapbook Award). His poems are forthcoming from Boston Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Minnesota Review, Vinyl, and other journals.

Shonna Skarda was raised in El Paso and has lived in the Austin area since 1996. She is a licensed dyslexia therapist who works with children and adults to remediate difficulties with reading and writing. Shonna’s poetry also appeared in issue 39 of Borderlands.

David Meischen has been writing poetry and teaching the writing of poetry for thirty years. He has had poems in The Southern Review, Southern Poetry Review, Borderlands, Cider Press Review, and elsewhere. Co-founder of Dos Gatos Press and co-editor of Wingbeats and Wingbeats II, collections of poetry writing exercises, Meischen is also a fiction writer, with recent work in The Evansville Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Valparaiso Fiction Review.

Join us for an evening with writers Bayard Godsave and Dina Guidubaldi.

Bayard Godsave has an MFA from Minnesota State University, Moorhead; in 2008 he received his PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and currently he is an Assistant Professor, teaching writing and English literature at Cameron University in Oklahoma. His work has appeared in the Cream City Review, Confrontation, Another Chicago Magazine, Florida Review, Pleiades, Cimarron Review, Evansville Review, The Gettysburg Review, and is forthcoming from This Land Press. Bayard’s story “00:02:36:58,” which originally appeared in Carolina Quarterly in 2005, was included in 2006 in Flash Fiction Forward, an anthology of short short fiction published by WW Norton. He has co-edited American Fiction Vol. 11 (New Rivers Press), as well as the forthcoming Vol. 12 of the same series. His first collection of short stories, Lesser Apocalypses, was published in 2012 by Queen’s Ferry Press. His second collection, a pair of novellas titled Torture Tree, was published by Queen’s Ferry Press in 2014. He is currently at work on a novel set in rural, southwestern Oklahoma in the early 1930s.

Dina Guidubaldi graduated from Texas State’s MFA program and has since been living here in Austin, writing, teaching, and working various weird jobs. Her first book of stories, How Gone We Got, comes out in March with Queen’s Ferry Press.

The captivating Tyler Gobble hosts our monthly reading series, Everything is Bigger, which features prose and poetry and prizes. October’s readers will be Ben Kopel, Ana Carrete, and Mike Bushnell.

Please note: this is an OFF-SITE event that takes place at Studium, 908 E 5th St #106, Austin, Texas 78702.

We’re thrilled to once again be taking part in the Texas Book Festival, October 25th-26th (look for us in Booth 500), and we’re even more thrilled to be a part of their Lit Crawl, an awesome event that takes literature to unexpected places (including, in previous years, the Texas State Cemetery, assorted bars, and the kiln room of Clayworks). It’s a very fun night that draws about 2,000 people each year… so join our Everything is Bigger crew and thousands of lit-lovers for an evening of adventurous readings! The Everything is Bigger readers include Fernando Flores, Taylor Jacob Pate, Blake Lee Pate, Vincent Scarpa, Sam Sax, Lisa Olstein, and Laurie Saurborn Young. The Lit Crawl begins at 7.30pm; the Everything is Bigger readers will be on from 8.30pm SHARP!

Please visit the Lit Crawl website for more details.

Malvern’s own Tyler Gobble is launching his first poetry collection, MORE WRECK MORE WRECK (winner of the 2013 Cargill First Book Poetry Prize), at Malvern Books, and we couldn’t be more delighted/honored/STOKED. Join us for a celebratory night of readings from Tyler, Layne Ransom, and Jason Tobin, and for music by Lost John.

“These poems aren’t just one thing, or another, they are instead stuffed with so much energy that they are spilling all over the pages. Like industrious, tiny humans, they seep everywhere, sprawling across memories and dreams, carrying with them scars and shreds of real hope. Even better, More Wreck More Wreck is bubbling with the absolutely kick ass beauty of a great imagination let loose.” —Peter Davis

“These poems ask for permission and possibility, hopefulness’s redecoration in a purely American landscape of . . . rollercoasters, pizza parties, front porches, politics, pet dogs, and tank tops. These poems live in ‘the carnival of what is,’ and they shout from the rooftops: live! live!” —Alexis Orgera

Join us for an evening with poets Carmen Giménez Smith and Laurie Ann Guerrero.

Carmen Giménez Smith is the author of a memoir, Bring Down the Little Birds, and four poetry collections—Milk and Filth; Goodbye, Flicker; The City She Was; and Odalisque in Pieces. Milk and Filth was a finalist for the NBCC Award in Poetry. She is the recipient of a 2011 American Book Award, the 2011 Juniper Prize for Poetry, and a 2011-2012 fellowship in creative nonfiction from the Howard Foundation. She recently co-edited the anthology Angels of the Americplyse: New Latin Writing. A CantoMundo Fellow, she is the editor-in-chief of the literary journal Puerto del Sol and the publisher of Noemi Press. She teaches in the creative writing MFA program at New Mexico State University.

Poet Laureate of San Antonio, Laurie Ann Guerrero is the author of Babies under the Skin (Panhandler 2007), A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying (Notre Dame 2013) and the forthcoming A Crown for Gumecindo (Aztlan Libre 2015). Her honors include the 2012 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, 2013 Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and a 2014 International Latino Book Award. She holds degrees from Smith College and Drew University. Poet-in-Residence at Palo Alto College, she lives and writes in the Southside of San Antonio.

Join us for an evening with writers Rob Brunet and Brannon Perkison.

Rob Brunet will be reading from his novel Stinking Rich, a “deviously funny” crime caper that asks “what could possibly go wrong when the backwoods Libidos Motorcycle Club hires a high school dropout to tend a barn full of high-grade marijuana?” Brunet’s fiction has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Thuglit, Out of the Gutter, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Noir Nation, Shotgun Honey, and numerous anthologies. Before committing to writing, he ran a digital media boutique producing award-winning Web presence for film and TV, including LOST, Frank Miller’s Sin City, and the cult series Alias.

Brannon Perkison is a fellowship winner with the SLS Literary Seminars and two-time finalist at the Writers’ League of Texas manuscript contest, the largest of its kind in the state. His novel, The Do-Nothing, was a Quarter-Finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and earned the praise of best-selling author Louis Sachar with whom he studied. Brannon Perkison was born in Hawaii in 1969, the Navy-brat son of an intelligence officer. He was brought up in the piney woods of East Texas and has also lived in Germany and Ohio before moving to Dallas, Texas in 1998.

Join us for an afternoon with poets Catharine Savage Brosman, Tomás Morin, and Erin Belieu.

Catharine Savage Brosman is Professor Emerita of French at Tulane University and Honorary Research Professor at the University of Sheffield. She is the author or editor of nineteen scholarly volumes. On the Old Plaza, just released, is her tenth collection of poetry. Her previous creative publications comprise two volumes of personal essays and nine collections of verse, including Range of Light, devoted to the American west, and Under the Pergola, featuring poems on Katrina and other Louisiana topics.

Tomás Q. Morín’s poetry collection A Larger Country was winner of the APR/Honickman Prize and runner-up for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award. He is co-editor with Mari L’Esperance of the anthology, Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine, and his translation of Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu was published by Copper Canyon Press. His poems have appeared in Slate, Threepenny Review, Boulevard, Poetry, New England Review, and Narrative.

Erin Belieu is the author of four poetry collections, all from Copper Canyon Press: Infanta, selected for the National Poetry Series; One Above & One Below, winner of the Midlands Poetry Prize; Black Box, a finalist for the Los Angles Time Book Prize; and Slant Six. Belieu’s poems have appeared in places such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Tin House, and Slate, as well as multiple appearances in Best American Poetry. She is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University, director of The Port Townsend Writers Conference, and co founder of VIDA: Women In Literary Arts.

Join us for the Raw Paw reading series, which celebrates the release of a new issue of their poetry imprint, Mind Maze. This month’s release is Stuck in the Future by Ed Buffaloe (cover image pictured below). The event will include readings from Josh Boyd, Wade Martin, Jim Redmond, and Ed Buffaloe, with Master of Ceremonies David Jewell. Come along and enjoy this literary synergy of events and publications!

Raw Paw was founded in Austin, Texas, in 2010. Their new poetry title, Mind Maze, is released every month and showcases twenty poems by one of Austin’s best—all wrapped in a patterned, screen-printed cover designed by Nicole Carleton.

Join us for an evening with writers Tatiana Ryckman and E. Kristin Anderson.

Tatiana Ryckman (above left) was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of the chapbook story collection, Twenty-Something; managing editor of the Austin Review; and assistant editor at sunnyoutside press.

E. Kristin Anderson (above right) grew up in Westbrook, Maine and is a graduate of Connecticut College. Kristin is the co-editor of Dear Teen Me, an anthology based on the popular website. Her poetry has been published worldwide in many magazines and anthologies and she is the author of two forthcoming chapbooks, A Jab of Deep Urgency (Finishing Line Press) and A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks). She is an online editor at Hunger Mountain and a contributing editor at Found Poetry Review. Once upon a time she worked at the New Yorker. She now lives in Austin.

Join us for readings and a discussion with Valerie Miles, editor of A Thousand Forests in One Acorn, a collection featuring twenty-eight of the greatest Spanish-language writers. And we’ll start the night in fine style with live Flamenco music from guitarist David Córdoba.

A Thousand Forests in One Acorn is perhaps the greatest cross-section of contemporary Spanish-language literature to be anthologized and translated into English. Composed over many years of conversations and literary adventures throughout the Spanish-speaking world, the book captures the voices of leading writers as they reflect on the particular work they consider closest to their heart, or that best expresses their driving creative obsession. Editor Valerie Miles will discuss her inspiration to assemble this formidable anthology and what it was like to interview some of the greatest authors of Spanish-language literature including: Nobel prize winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Javier Marías, Ana María Matute, and Enrique Vila Matas, among many others.

Valerie Miles is a writer, editor and translator who was born in New York and grew up in Pennsylvania, though she’s been living in Spain for over twenty years. In 2003, she founded the Spanish-language version of Granta, together with Aurelio Major, which is now on its fourteenth issue. Her articles, essays, and reviews appear in the New York Times, Paris Review, La Nación, La Vanguardia, and Granta.

David Córdoba was born in San Fernando, Spain. He began playing the guitar at the age of ten, and started taking classical lessons at sixteen under the tutelage of Spanish guitarist Antonio Clavel. At eighteen he fell in love with Flamenco music after getting his first album from the great Flamenco master Paco de Lucía. Since then, he has had the opportunity to perform throughout Spain, and has continued studying Flamenco guitar with gypsy maestro Baldomero Amador. David moved to Austin from Spain seven years ago.

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. This month, Joe will play host to Christopher Carmona.

Christopher Carmona is a Chican@ Beat poet from the Rio Grande Valley of Deep South Texas. The Texas Observer recognized him as being one of the top five writers in 2014. He was a nominee for the Alfredo Cisneros de Miral Foundation Award for Writers in 2011 and a Pushcart Prize nominee in 2013. He has two books of poetry, beat and I Have Always Been Here. He edited The Beatest State In The Union: An Anthology of Beat Texas Writings with Chuck Taylor and Rob Johnson and is working on a book called Nuev@s Voces Poeticas: A Dialogue about New Chican@ Poetics with Isaac Chavarria, Gabriel Sanchez, and Rossy Lima Padilla to be published by Slough Press in 2015. Currently he is the organizer of the Annual Beat Poetry and Arts Festival and the Artistic Director of the Coalition of New Chican@ Artists.

Join us for an evening with writers Malachi Black and Michael McGriff.

Malachi Black (above left) is the author of the poetry collection Storm Toward Morning (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), and two limited edition chapbooks: Quarantine (Argos Books, 2012) and Echolocation (Float Press, 2010). Black’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Poetry, Ploughshares, AGNI, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, and The Southern Review, among many other journals, and in several recent and forthcoming anthologies, including Discoveries: New Writing from The Iowa Review; Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry, and The Poet’s Quest for God. The recipient of a 2009 Ruth Lilly Fellowship (awarded by the Poetry Foundation in conjunction with Poetry magazine), Black has since been granted fellowships and awards from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Emory University, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the MacDowell Colony, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, UT-Austin’s Michener Center for Writers, the University of Utah, and Yaddo. Black was the subject of an Emerging Poet profile in the Academy of American Poets’ American Poet magazine, and his work has several times been set to music and has been featured in exhibitions both in the U.S. and abroad. Black is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of San Diego.

Michael McGriff (above right) was born and raised in Coos Bay, Oregon. His books include Our Secret Life in the Movies (with J. M. Tyree), Home Burial, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection, Dismantling the Hills, a translation of Tomas Tranströmer’s The Sorrow Gondola, and an edition of David Wevill’s essential writing, To Build My Shadow a Fire. His writing has appeared in Bookforum, Tin House, The Believer, PBS NewsHour, and Narrative. He is a former Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, and his work has been recognized with a Lannan Literary Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. From 2009-2014 he served as editor and publisher at Tavern Books. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Join us for a reading with poets Nathan Brown and Jena Kirkpatrick. Nathan will also provide us with some musical entertainment!

Nathan Brown is a songwriter, photographer, and award-winning poet from Norman, Oklahoma. He is also serving as the current Poet Laureate of the State of Oklahoma for 2013 to 2014. He holds an interdisciplinary PhD in English and Journalism but mostly travels now, performing readings and concerts, as well as leading workshops and speaking in high schools, universities, libraries, and community organizations on creativity, creative writing, and the need for readers to not give up on poetry. He has published nine books. Less Is More, More or Less just came out. And Karma Crisis: New and Selected Poems, released last summer, was a finalist for the 2013 Paterson Poetry Prize and the Oklahoma Book Award. A previous book, Two Tables Over, won the 2009 Oklahoma Book Award. He has two Pushcart Prize nominations, and his CD, Gypsy Moon, came out in 2011.

Jena Kirkpatrick, Poet for Hire, is editor of the poetry anthology Writing for Positive Change, for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Texas. She is co-editor of the diverse-city Youth Anthology for the Austin International Poetry Festival. Jena is an artist instructor for Badgerdog Literary Publishing through the Friends of Austin Public Libraries and in Boys and Girls Club locations throughout central Texas. Jena tours nationally, opening for musicians and leading creative writing workshops as a member of the Trio of Poets who just released their first self-titled CD. Jena writes Poems on the Spot on her antique typewriter at local farmers markets and events. Jena was recently a featured artist in Poets and Writers, the Daily Texan and the Austin American Statesman. Over the last two decades, Jena has self-published seven books; co-written, directed and produced three multi-media performance art shows; competed in two National Poetry Slam competitions; and released her first poetry and music compilation CD, Dangerous Snakes. Any weekend it’s warm here in Texas, Jena can be found surfing behind a speedboat on Canyon Lake.

For seventeen years, the Austin reading for the Texas Poetry Calendar has been the culmination of the fall calendar readings for Dos Gatos Press. This year’s calendar reading is no exception, with close to thirty poets sharing Texas-related work, including their poems from the 2015 Texas Poetry Calendar. Over the years, the Austin reading has grown from local poets to poets from around the state. This year expect to hear poets from the other urban areas—Houston (Darla McBryde, Jerry Hamby, Stan Crawford, Kelly Ellis, Vanessa Zimmer-Powell, Kristina McDonald); DFW (Travis Blair, Aliene Pylant); San Antonio (Toni Falls, Janice Campbell)—and from East (Anne McCrady); West (Loretta Diane Walker); and South Texas (Cathy Downs); as well as a bevy of outstanding poets from Austin and Central Texas. This is the perfect way to experience poetry live, hosted by Texas Poetry Calendar editors Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen, who are especially excited to have moved the Austin reading to Malvern Books.

List of readers:

Janice Campbell, Gloria Amescua, Darla McBryde, Jerry Hamby, Christa Pandey, Laura Cottam Sajbel, Claire Camargo, Joe Blanda, Toni Falls, Mary Lynn Stafford, Kristina McDonald, Katherine Oldmixon, Anne McCrady, Bruce McCandless, Cathy Downs, Loretta Diane Walker, Amy Greenspan, Travis Blair, Brady Peterson, Jan Spence, Margie Roe, Shubh Schiesser, Kelly Ellis, Allyson Whipple, Vanessa Zimmer-Powell, Sarah Webb, Cindy Huyser, Stan Crawford, Aliene Pylant, Nikki Loftin.

Join us for a collaborative art opening and poetry reading with students from Austin Community College and Austin Independent School District.

Vision + Voice is a new collaboration between Austin Community College and Austin Independent School District that promotes literacy and creative expression by combining artwork from ACC students with poetry from AISD students. In the spring of 2014, ACC’s Arts & Humanities Division hosted a poetry contest open to all AISD students. AISD students submitted over 800 poems and a panel of judges selected one winning poem and 2-4 honorable mentions per grade for a total of 52 poems (you can watch videos of the winning students reading their poems here). Each of the fifteen winning poems has been paired with an original artwork by an ACC student to create posters designed to promote literacy and creativity. These posters will be displayed throughout AISD and ACC campuses, and in many other public spaces in Austin, including at Malvern Books through the month of December. We’re delighted to feature these art works in our store, and to host an art opening and poetry reading that celebrates this wonderful collaboration. Come to Malvern Books and…

See the posters!
Hear the poems!
Meet the poets!
Eat the cake!

“The Vision + Voice collaboration contributes to the culture of literacy we want for our district. Students were able to engage in authentic literacy experiences and the community is given the opportunity to celebrate their passion, creativity, and talents.”—Dr. Pauline Dow, AISD Chief Academic Officer

“The creative arts are important factors in student success and retention. By pairing the AISD poems with the artwork of ACC students we have created an enduring showcase for student work. We are thrilled to be able to partner with AISD on Vision + Voice and look forward to this being an annual project.”—Lyman Grant, ACC Dean of Arts and Humanities

This month we’re celebrating the release of Postcard Habitats by Jonathan Lowell, the fourth release in Raw Paw’s Mind Maze print celebration of Austin poets. Join us for refreshments and readings from local poets, with hosts Wade Martin and A.R Rogers.

Raw Paw was founded in Austin, Texas, in 2010. Their new poetry title, Mind Maze, is released every month and showcases twenty poems by one of Austin’s best—all wrapped in a patterned, screen-printed cover designed by Nicole Carleton.

From Jonathan:

For me, a postcard is a unique mode of expression, a kind of fragmented signal from a moment that is long past by the time it reaches its destination. They are often written from a feeling of exhilaration of movement and a longing for home. They are attempt to casually fix the motion of life into words. Postcard Habitats grew out of pondering the relationships between movement and place: the pains and pleasures of each, the way our bodies and identities shift and change as we constantly remake our habitats in this world. For awhile these poems were journeys, constantly in motion and swirling around me. Now that they are fixed and bound to a page, they are, for me at least, a place. I feel both pain and relief for that. But perhaps for you they will put you on your own journey, something to write to your home about. And so it continues…

Jonathan Lowell has lived in Austin for over three years as a graduate student in geography at the University of Texas at Austin, fitting in poem writing in whatever gaps he can find. His poems have appeared in Echo and the Raw Paw issues 4 and 5.

Join us for an evening with writers Peter J. Story and Joanne Fox Phillips.

Peter J. Story lives in San Antonio, Texas with his wife and their two pugs. He writes code by day and fiction by night, considering himself an author of deliberate, genre-free stories with a soul. While his is not a pen name, he does enjoy chuckling to himself about how well it suits his passion. Things Grak Hates is his debut novel.

Joanne Fox Phillips is the chief audit executive for SemGroup Corporation, an oil and gas company headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her first novel, Revenge of the Cube Dweller, was published in July 2014 by River Grove Books in Austin, Texas. Joanne was born in San Francisco and grew up in Menlo Park, California. She currently resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma with her husband Phil and her two rescue dogs, Rocky and Memphis.

Join us for a reading with poets Hoa Nguyen, Dale Martin Smith, and Julie Choffel (below, left to right).

Born in the Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, Hoa Nguyen studied Poetics at New College of California in San Francisco. With the poet Dale Smith, Nguyen founded Skanky Possum, a poetry journal and book imprint in Austin, Texas, their home of fourteen years. She is the author of nine books and chapbooks including As Long As Trees Last (Wave, 2012) and Red Juice: Poems 1998 – 2008 (Wave, 2014). She currently lives in Toronto, where she curates a reading series, reads tarot, and teaches poetic.

On the faculty of the Department of English at Ryerson University, Toronto, Dale Smith has published five books of poetry and a critical monograph, including, most recently, Slow Poetry in America (Cuneiform, 2014), a book of narrative writing. He is the author of poetry that investigates the historical and domestic experiences of American culture in four other works: American Rambler (2002), The Flood & the Garden (2002), Black Stone (2008), and Susquehanna (2009). Additional writing can be found in anthologies and cultural journals like The Baffler, Best American Poetry, Exquisite Corpse, Mandorla, and the Poetry Foundation website. More recently, his provocative arguments on the concept of Slow Poetry have been discussed in The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, and at other locations of literary and cultural debate; an essay on North American public culture and poetics appears in a new collection, Toward. Some. Air: Remarks on Poetics (Banff Centre Press, 2014).

A native Austinite, Julie Choffel is the author of The Hello Delay (Fordham UP, 2012), winner of the Poets Out Loud prize. She is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA Program for Poets and Writers and currently teaches creative writing at the University of Connecticut.

Join us for an afternoon with acclaimed writers Mong-Lan and Abe Louise Young. Mong-Lan and Abe Louise will read from their recent work, and Mong-Lan and dance partner Stephen Shortnacy will also give us a demonstration of the Argentine tango!

Mong-Lan, Vietnamese-born multi-disciplinary American artist, poet, writer, painter, photographer, musician, singer, dancer and teacher of Argentine tango, left her native Vietnam on the last day of the evacuation of Saigon. Winner of a Pushcart Prize, the Juniper Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Awards for Poetry, and other awards, Mong-Lan’s poetry has been nationally and internationally anthologized to include being in Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Book of Poetry: Best Poems from 30 Years of the Pushcart Prize.

She is the author of eight books and chapbooks which contain her poetry and artwork—the most recent of which is One Thousand Minds Brimming: poems & art. Other books include Song of the Cicadas (Juniper Prize, finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award); Why is the Edge Always Windy?; and Tango, Tangoing: Poems & Art. A Wallace E. Stegner Fellow in poetry for two years at Stanford University and a Fulbright Fellow in Vietnam, Mong-Lan received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona. She has taught at the University of Maryland in Tokyo, Stanford University, and the University of Arizona. She is currently working on a novel, books of poetry, books which contain her artwork, etc.

Abe Louise Young is an award-winning poet and educator whose work explores creative contact and liberation. She lives in Austin, Texas and holds an MFA from the University of Texas, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow in Writing. Her poetry/essays have recently appeared in The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor, Massachusetts Review and more than thirty other publications. She has won a Narrative Story Prize, an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Grolier Poetry Prize and others. Her books include Queer Youth Advice for Educators: How to Respect and Protect Your LGBT Students (2011), a chapbook of poetry, Ammonite (2010), and Hip Deep: Opinion, Essays, and Vision from American Teenagers (2005).

Join us for the inaugural event in our new 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!

To kick things off in fine style, B. Alan Bourgeois will be reading from his novel Extinguishing the Light, and Joe Milazzo will be reading from Crepuscule w/ Nellie.

Join us for an evening with poets Paula Cisewski, Katy Chrisler, and Stephanie Goehring (pictured below, left to right).

Paula Cisewski’s second poetry collection, Ghost Fargo, was selected by Franz Wright for the Nightboat Poetry Prize. She is also the author of Upon Arrival (Black Ocean), of the chapbooks How Birds Work and Two Museums, and the co-author, with Mathias Svalina, of Or Else What Asked the Flame. Paula has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts. Her work appears regularly in literary magazines such as Conduit, A Handsome Journal, failbetter, Revolver, and REVOLUTIONesque. A poem was recently included in Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics. She teaches, both academically and privately, and curates artful literary events in the Twin Cities.

Katy Chrisler recently received her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was a participant in the Land Arts of the American West traveling residency program. Previous poems of hers have appeared in Tin House, Poor Claudia, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Octopus Magazine. She currently works at The Contemporary Austin as the Publications Coordinator and lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, Joaquin and son, Ruby Rio.

Stephanie Goehring is co-author, with Jeff Griffin, of the chapbook I Miss You Very Much (Slim Princess Holdings) and author of the chapbook This Room Has a Ghost (dancing girl press). A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she lives in Austin, Texas.

Join us for refreshments and readings from local poets, with Raw Paw hosts Wade Martin and A.R Rogers. This month’s readers are: Carie Juettner, Jack Brannon, and Tina Posner.

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. This month, Joe will play host to François Pointeau, author of the chapbook Beer Songs for the Lonely.

François Pointeau was born in Brittany, France, and moved to the US with his family at the age of ten. He started writing poems in San Francisco when he first began learning English. He has always written in English, at first to help him learn the language, later to try and figure out what was going on in his brain, and then finally to communicate small, intense narratives with the world. He first self-published Beer Songs for the Lonely in 2006. It was the bestselling book of poems at Book People for two years straight. He completely rewrote the collection in 2013-2014, and republished it in October 2014. He works as a bartender and wine dude at Whip-In in South Austin, and is the producer and host of KOOP Radio’s Writing on the Air every Wednesday from 6-7pm at 91.7FM. Pointeau lives in Austin, Texas with his dog Brutus.

Join us for an afternoon with poets D.R. Goodman, Cyrus Cassells and Lisa Huffaker.

A native of East Tennessee, D.R. Goodman now lives in Oakland, California, where she is founder and chief instructor at a martial arts school. Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Crazyhorse, Notre Dame Review, Texas Review, Cold Mountain Review, Whitefish Review, and many others; in the anthology, Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets, edited by William Baer; and now in her full-length volume, Greed: A Confession, newly released from Able Muse Press. She is also the author of The Kids’ Karate Workbook: A Take-Home Training Guide for Young Martial Artists (North Atlantic/Blue Snake Books); and an illustrated chapbook, Birds by the Bay.

Cyrus Cassells is the author of The Crossed-Out Swastika (Copper Canyon Press, 2012); More Than Peace and Cypresses (Copper Canyon Press, 2004); Beautiful Signor (Copper Canyon Press, 1997), which won the Lambda Literary Award; Soul Make a Path Through Shouting (Copper Canyon Press, 1994), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and The Mud Actor (Henry, Holt & Co., 1982), which was a National Poetry Series selection. Cassells is the recipient of a 1995 Pushcart Prize, the Peter I.B. Lavan Younger Poets Award, and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches poetry at the Texas State University-San Marcos for the MFA in writing program.

Since winning Southwest Review’s Morton Marr Poetry Prize in 2008, Lisa Huffaker’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in Southwest Review, Poet Lore, Measure, Southern Poetry Review, Mezzo Cammin, The Texas Observer, Able Muse, and Southern Humanities Review, which recently nominated her for the Pushcart Prize. Lisa’s primary background is classical singing; she holds a Master of Music degree in Vocal Performance from the New England Conservatory, and has sung with The Dallas Opera since 1999. She teaches creative writing at Yavneh Academy of Dallas.

Join us for an evening with writers Danielle Sellers, Greg Brownderville, and Ricardo Acevedo (below, left to right). We’ll also have live music from guitarist Christopher Petkus.

Danielle Sellers is from Key West, Florida. She has a BA in English from UT Austin, an MA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and an MFA from the University of Mississippi where she held the John Grisham Poetry Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in River Styx, Subtropics, Smartish Pace, The Cimarron Review, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. Her first book, Bone Key Elegies, was published by Main Street Rag. She teaches English at Trinity Valley School in Fort Worth, Texas.

In 2011 Greg Alan Brownderville published his first collection of poems, entitled Gust (Northwestern University Press/TriQuarterly), which made the Poetry Foundation’s Best-Seller List and was included among “Top Picks” by the Library Journal. In 2012 Brownderville published Deep Down in the Delta (Butler Center Books), a collection of folkloristic poems based on fieldwork he conducted in and around his home community of Pumpkin Bend, Arkansas. Deep Down also features paintings by outsider artist Billy Moore, of Memphis, Tennessee. Brownderville’s third book, a collection of poems entitled A Horse with Holes in It, will be released by LSU Press on Dave Smith’s Southern Messenger Poets series in the fall of 2016. Brownderville has been awarded prizes and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, New Millennium Writings, and the Porter Fund. Since 2012 Brownderville has been an assistant professor of English at SMU in Dallas, where he teaches creative writing, primarily poetry. He has also taught poetry workshops at Ole Miss, Hendrix College, and Lincoln University. Brownderville holds an MFA from Ole Miss.

Born of Yaqui-Mexican and Scottish decent, Ricardo Acevedo was raised in Southern California. He began writing seriously while taking course work at the San Francisco Art Institute in Performance Art, 3D Design, and Video Art. He was published in many local poetry/literary zines and performed with other authors such as Kathy Acker at San Francisco’s annual Poetry on the Water event. Ricardo moved to Austin in 1998 and established himself as a photo-based graphic artist. On the writing front, Ricardo’s poetry and essays have been published regularly in Harold McMillan’s Downtown Arts Magazine, and read often at Chicano poet Raúl R. Salinas’ Cafe Libro. His second prose collection, Sonambulo, was released by DiverseArts Press in 2003. Ricardo was published in the Texas Poetry Festival collection in 2010 and performed improvisational poetry with Austin’s Word Jazz LowStars from 1999-2013. In 2011 Ricardo published a book of his photography and prose entitled Interloper, followed by Night in 2013. He is also part of Christopher Carmona’s “Beats in Texas” project soon to be published by UT Press. Now he is hard at work on his biography and a series of Sci-Fi Noir novellas, and makes his living as a graphic artist and photographer.

Join us for the Raw Paw reading series, which celebrates the release of a new issue of their poetry imprint, Mind Maze. With refreshments and readings from local poets, and hosted by Wade Martin and A.R Rogers.

This fifth Mind Maze poetry chapbook release will be a mystic, animated, and pondering collection from poetry faun and people connector Montsho Jarreau Thoth. This collection includes new poems written between his chemotherapy treatments. All profit from sales of this Mind Maze will go to the necessary cost of keeping this Austin treasure alive and writing. Joining Montsho on our stage will be Ash Smith and Joe Brundidge/Element615.

(And if you’d like, check out these other opportunities to help.)

Raw Paw was founded in Austin, Texas, in 2010. Their new poetry title, Mind Maze, is released every month and showcases twenty poems by one of Austin’s best—all wrapped in a patterned, screen-printed cover designed by Nicole Carleton.

Join us for the second 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 Ernie Wood will read from his novel One Red Thread, “a tale of time travel and its consequences,” and Howard A. Schwartz will read from his novel Flight of the Crow.

A native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Ernie Wood received his AB in English Literature from Hamilton College in New York, returned to his home state to work in newspaper and magazine journalism, and arrived in Austin in 1984. Over a long career, he has been an award-winning writer of non-fiction books, documentary film scripts, advertising and journalism, which he has taught at Austin Community College. One Red Thread is his first novel. Writing in the Austin American-Statesman, Charles Ealy said of the book: “Wood has an easy style and knows how to unravel a complicated tale that keeps your interest.”

Howard A. Schwartz was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota and worked in real estate for thirty-one years. He now enjoys a second career as a writer and lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Margaret, and fox terrier Bailey. Flight of the Crow is his first published novel. He’s currently working on the sequel and it should be published sometime in 2015.

Join Anthony Carson, Clyde Sunrise, and Fritz for an evening of poetry and meditation, accompanied by atmospheric guitar music. Everyone is welcome for this hour of poetic relaxation and contemplation!

Join the Fun Party crew for a reading with Noah Eli Gordon, Lisa L. Moore and Ryan Bender-Murphy (below, left to right).

Noah Eli Gordon‘s most recent book is The Word KINGDOM in the Word Kingdom, published by Brooklyn Arts Press in early 2015. Other recent titles include The Year of the Rooster (Ahsahta Press, 2013), The Source (Futurepoem, 2011), and Novel Pictorial Noise (Harper Perennial, 2007), which was selected by John Ashbery for the National Poetry Series and subsequently chosen for the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award. An advocate of small press culture, he co-founded (with Joshua Marie Wilkinson) Letter Machine Editions, penned a column for five years on chapbooks for Rain Taxi: review of books, ran Braincase Press, was head reviews editor for The Volta, and co-founded the little magazine Baffling Combustions. His essays, reviews, creative nonfiction, criticism, and poetry appear widely, including journals such as Bookforum, Seneca Review, Boston Review, Fence, Hambone, and in many anthologies. He currently lives in Denver with his boo Sommer Browning.

Lisa L. Moore is professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Her writing has been awarded the Lambda Literary Foundation Award, the Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award, and the Art/Lines Juried Poetry Prize, and recognized as a Split This Rock Poem of the Week. She is the author or editor of four scholarly books and her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Ostrich Review, Lavender Review, Sinister Wisdom, and Codex Journal. She is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

Ryan Bender-Murphy is the author of First Man on Mars (Phantom Limb Press, 2013). His poems have also appeared in Better, Everyday Genius, FLAG+VOID, Front Porch, Phantom Limb, Spork, and other mysterious places. He is the editor-in-chief of Hardly Doughnuts, a new literary journal that aims to showcase challenging and experimental narrative poetry and micro fiction.

Join us for an evening with writer Christine Fischer Guy, who will be reading from her recently released debut novel, The Umbrella Mender. We’ll start the night off in fine style with live music from Harold Whit Williams & Jon Bookout.

Christine Fischer Guy’s fiction has appeared in journals across Canada and has been nominated for the Writer’s Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Her debut novel, The Umbrella Mender, was published in September 2014. She’s a fiction critic for the Globe and Mail, contributes to The Millions, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Ryeberg, and teaches creative writing at the School for Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto. She is also an award-winning journalist. She has lived and worked in London, England, and now lives in Toronto.

Join us for a reading from author Valentin Sandoval’s new poetic novel, SOUTH SUN RISES. Valentin will be joined by writer Daniel Apodaca.

Valentin Sandoval hails from the desert metroplex of El Paso, Texas. His novel, SOUTH SUN RISES, is a poetic narrative of a pursuit of the American dream on one of the world’s most compelling and dangerous international borders, El Paso/Juarez. Leaving behind her life in Juarez, Sandoval’s mother finds herself isolated and alone in the gritty projects of El Paso. Most days, the hardship of working hard hours while being both the mother and father to four children, she’d find herself fending off the dangers of the projects, with its predators, drug dealers, and junkies. She was resilient enough to search for the best setting for her to raise her children. Through tremendous persistence and effort, she managed to become a US citizen in the midst of raising her children on her own. The book adopts poetics as a form of familial understanding, a surreal kind of folklore in order for the writer to understand the life cycle in which he finds himself.

Jacob Daniel Apodaca is an environmentalist who has been monitoring the quality of the water in the Colorado River for the past 25 years for the City of Austin and the Lower Colorado River Authority. His avocations are writing, playing guitar, applying stucco, creating mosaics, and making masks. He was born in El Paso, Texas in 1964. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English and anthropology from Baylor University in 1986 and a master’s degree in anthropology and Latin American Studies from The University of Texas at Austin in 1991. Apodaca hosted a monthly poetry open mike for Raúl Salinas at Resistencia Bookstore on East 6^th Street in Austin, Texas from 1989 to 1992. He is currently working on a novel titled Fire: La Lumbre Adentro, and he continues to write poetry.

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. This month’s guest is Ash Smith.

Ash Smith is the author of the chapbooks Water Shed (Dos Press), Come Such Frequency (Dusie), and various other publications and ephemera. She was, until recently, a managing editor for the small press and journal Little Red Leaves. She is working on a collection called Pigeon of Tears and tumbles about politics of sound and pop cultural depictions of decapitation at Opened By Customs.

Join us for an evening with Monofonus Press and William Z. Saunders, Grant Cross, Karen Davidson, and Morgan Coy (below, left to right). William will be launching his new memoir, Bad Jobs III.

William Z. Saunders is a writer. His material is words, not just the sounds and meanings, but their layers, values; social, philosophical, psychological. It looks/sounds simple enough, but it is freighted. Speed-read at your own risk.

Grant Cross writes haiku to make sense of the madness He loves swimming best arrived in Texas day after his first birthday born in Illinois grew up in the burbs moved to the Northwest, moved back will die in the sky writes to stay alive works only when he has to wiggles & wiggles

Karen Davidson holds an MFA from The University of Texas at Austin where she was a James A. Michener fellow in Screenwriting and Fiction. Through her work as a screenwriter, she has garnered numerous writing awards including selection as an Emerging Narratives finalist at the IFP Market in NYC. She is currently at work on her first novel.

Morgan Coy is a writer, musician, and founder of the multi-media imprint Monofonus Press. He wrote the Shadow Healer graphic novel with Karen Davidson and directed the short movies that act as dreamy prequels to the novel. He lives in Austin with his family.

Join us for an afternoon with Scott Wiggerman, Paul Licce, and Joe Blanda. We’ll be launching Scott’s new poetry collection, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets; Paul will be sharing his Mueller Lake photography; and Joe will get the event off to a great start with live guitar music.

Most mornings for the past decade, Scott Wiggerman has walked the trails at Mueller Lake Park, an urban space created on land that once held the city’s airport. Awake to the landscape as he walked, Wiggerman stopped from time to time and jotted a word or phrase for a poem that would come later. Leaf and Beak is the product of these walks, of the poet’s ever watchful eye, of the discipline he learned mastering the sonnet. 

Scott Wiggerman is the author of three books of poetry: Leaf and Beak: Sonnets; Presence; and Vegetables and Other Relationships. He is the editor of several volumes, including Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry; Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga; and the new Wingbeats II. Recent poems have appeared in Decades Review, The Road Not Taken, Pinyon Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and the anthologies This Assignment Is So Gay and Forgetting Home: Poems about Alzheimer’s. He is chief editor for Dos Gatos Press in Austin, Texas, publisher of the Texas Poetry Calendar, now in its eighteenth year.

In 1967 Paul Licce got a Polaroid Swinger for an eighth-grade graduation gift. Ever since then he’s been hooked on looking at the natural world through the lens of a camera. In April Paul created a photography exhibit at Cement Loop entitled “Mueller Fog.” During the 2014 East Austin Studio Tour, Paul exhibited a series of photographs entitled “Summer Dragons”—a set of dragonfly photographs taken at Mueller Lake Park. Paul completely understands Scott Wiggerman’s fascination with the park at Mueller.

Joe Blanda makes a living editing technical stuff and playing music, both as a solo artist and with the trio Folkwine. His poems have appeared in various regional publications such as the Texas Poetry Calendar, Borderlands, and The Enigmatist as well as the recent anthology Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga.

Join us for an evening with poet Laurie Saurborn Young, who will be launching her new collection, Industry of Brief Distraction (Saturnalia Books).

Laurie Saurborn Young is the author of the poetry collections Carnavoria (H_NGM_N BKS) and Industry of Brief Distraction, as well as a chapbook, Patriot (Forklift, Ink.). Her poems, fiction, essays, reviews and photographs have appeared in such publications as American Microreviews & Interviews, Denver Quarterly, jubilat, The American Reader, The Rumpus, and Tupelo Quarterly. A 2015 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship recipient, she teaches creative writing at UT Austin.

Join us for the Raw Paw reading series, which celebrates the release of a new issue of their poetry imprint, Mind Maze.

This month’s title is Birds and Flowers by John Herndon. The title refers to a genre of Chinese paintings which actually includes fish and insects and is closely associated with Buddhism. In the current atmosphere, holding a mirror up to nature is a subversive act. With readings from John Herndon, Charles Darnell, and Ejede Okogbo, and hosted by Wade Martin and A.R Rogers.

Raw Paw was founded in Austin, Texas, in 2010. Their new poetry title, Mind Maze, is released every month and showcases twenty poems by one of Austin’s best—all wrapped in a patterned, screen-printed cover designed by Nicole Carleton.