Welcome to Malvern Books!
Malvern Books is now closed. Malvern Books was a bookstore and community space in Austin, Texas. We specialized in visionary literature and poetry from independent publishers, with a focus on lesser-known and emerging voices.
An Update from the Manager of Malvern Books
Dear Friends,
We’ve had a wonderful time sharing our favorite books with you over the past nine years, and it’s been an honor to celebrate the work of so many brilliant writers through our readings and events.
Malvern Books is the realization of Joe Bratcher’s vision—Joe dreamt of a bookstore that would carry the books he loved, mostly poetry and fiction from small, independent presses. He wanted to promote writers and translators of books from other countries, while also championing the work of local writers.
When Joe first talked to me about opening Malvern Books, I must admit I was skeptical. I didn’t think we’d find an audience. It was 2012 and everyone was saying that bookstores were dead, Kindle and online shopping were the future. I anticipated many quiet sales days, with Joe and I just sitting there, looking at each other. He told me if that’s how it ended up, well, at least we’d have a chance to chat—and since we always seemed to laugh a lot when we talked, it sounded like a good way to spend some time. And so from then on, whenever we’d have a really slow sales day, with just a few people coming in, we’d look at each other and say, “We’re living the dream!” and we’d laugh.
But back to opening… in early 2013, with the help of our amazing architect, contractor, and interior designer, we created the space that Joe had in mind. We started posting on social media thanks to Tracey, our wonderful digital media manager and first Malvern hire. And we were so grateful to the many enthusiastic writers and readers who expressed their excitement at the imminent arrival of Malvern Books. From the very beginning it felt like we were building a community.
We opened our doors in October 2013, and we were shocked by how many people came by. You showed up and you loved what we had to offer! You constantly surprised and humbled us with your kind words and helpful suggestions. People from out of town would visit the store because a local friend had told them they had to come by, and we received much appreciated shout-outs from the Austin Chronicle and numerous other newspapers and journals.
And then 2020 hit—but even with the pandemic, we had loyal customers who came by for curbside pick ups, signed up for individual shopping appointments, and participated in our Zoom book clubs and events. If we didn’t say it enough, THANK YOU!
All along the way, we were lucky enough to have truly wonderful staff members who loved the books we carried and who helped us build the store we have now. Their work has been invaluable and we could not have done this without them.
On July 28th of this year, we lost Joe. I can’t tell you how hard it has been to try and carry on in this space without him. Our little Malvern world has not been the same since, and, as much as we love this store and our amazing customers, Malvern Books simply cannot continue without our Joe.
Malvern Books will be closing on December 31st, 2022. It has been a wonderful nine years and we thank each and every one of our cherished customers, friends, staff, and suppliers for helping us along the way.
As we move forward, we’ll be sharing our plans with you for sales and specials. For now, we just wanted to let you know this was coming. We hope you all continue to seek out works in translation and books published by small presses—there is so much great stuff out there—and that you continue to support our local independent bookstores, like our dear friends at BookWoman, among others. But, most importantly, we hope to see you in the store sometime soon, to say goodbye and to thank you, both for being the readers that you are and because you have come with us on this incredibly fulfilling journey in Joe’s world.
With heartfelt thanks and wishing you all the best,
Becky Garcia,
Manager, Malvern Books
Everyone is welcome to join us for a launch party and concert to kick off the 2017 REVEL Solstice Festival: A Blank Canvas, a 17-event interactive chamber music, visual art, and poetry series. Award-winning poet Carrie Fountain will offer readings of her original work, and the acclaimed Bel Cuore Quartet will perform music from their upcoming CD release, Splashing the Canvas, in an exploration of what inspires us to create, to care for one another, to dream, to build, and to keep hope alive.
The 2017 REVEL Solstice Festival is sponsored in part by Classical 89.5 KMFA, Malvern Books, 4th Tap Brewing Co-Op, and Blackerby Stage & Studio.
Join us for an evening with Alaskan Fiddling Poet Ken Waldman, who will share poems from his recent collection, Trump Sonnets: Volume One, and play the fiddle with accompanists.
November 9, 2016, incredulous at Donald Trump’s victory, Ken Waldman, scribbled: “You make George W. seem a statesman—your opening trick,” which he made into the first line and a half of a sonnet. A week later, Waldman wrote two more Trump-inspired sonnets. He ended up processing Donald Trump’s unlikely rise to power by writing 71 sonnets in the first 50 days after the 2016 presidential election. 41 were in the voice of Donald Trump; the other 30 were addressed to him. The result: an ambitious, satirical look at current events.
Ken Waldman has six previous poetry collections, a memoir, a kids’ book, and nine CDs that combine original poetry with Appalachian-style string-band music and Alaska-set storytelling. Since 1995 he’s been a full-time touring artist, appearing in a wide range of venues for a wide
range of audiences.
Join us for an evening of poetry and soundscapes with Kim Vodicka, who will read from her poetry collection Psychic Privates. With musical accompaniment by Josh Stevens, and featuring Taylor Gorman.
Poet. Nihilist. Spokesbitch of a Degeneration. Beavis in Scorpio. Moon in Roseanne. Penis in Uranus. Venus in ASS GLAM! Kim Vodicka is the author of two poetry collections: Aesthesia Balderdash (Trembling Pillow Press, 2012) and Psychic Privates (White Stag, 2018 [forthcoming]). She is also responsible for the Psychic Privates EP (TENDE RLOIN, 2017), the world’s first poetry chapbook on 7” vinyl, as well as the Psychic Privates comic book series (Oily Pelican Press). Her poems, art, and other creative abominations have been featured in Spork, Epiphany, Industrial Lunch, Smoking Glue Gun, Luna Luna Magazine, Paper Darts, The Volta, Tarpaulin Sky, Makeout Creek, Mojo, Best American Experimental Writing (BAX) 2015, and many others.
Josh Stevens (above left) is a Memphis-based multi-instrumentalist. A singer/songwriter by day and psychedelic sonic architect by night, he has an affinity for all things pedals and noises that project onto as many astral planes as possible. When he’s not making strange esoteric sounds, you’ll generally find him locking into the groove behind the drum kit with many bands, some of whom you may know, in any town that will have them. A luthier by trade, he follows his prowess and love for music to its core structure and foundation, analyzing all the details, eager to find out just what makes the pieces tick.
Taylor Gorman (above right) graduated from LSU in Creative Writing and received his MFA from Wichita State University. His work has appeared in The New Orleans Review, Passages North, Cutbank, and The Cincinnati Review. He lives in Austin, TX with his cat.
Join us for a reading from The Lumberjack’s Dove—and a shadow puppet crankie show—with visiting writer GennaRose Nethercott, and with special guest Sean Petrie.
In the ingenious and vividly imagined narrative poem The Lumberjack’s Dove, GennaRose Nethercott describes a lumberjack who cuts his hand off with an axe—however, instead of merely being severed, the hand shapeshifts into a dove. Far from representing just an event of pain and loss in the body, this incident spirals outward to explore countless facets of being human, prompting profound reflections on sacrifice and longing, time and memory, and—finally—considering the act of storytelling itself. The lumberjack, his hand, and the axe that separated the two all become participants in the story, with unique perspectives to share and lessons to impart. “I taught your fathers how to love,” Axe says to the acorns and leaves around her. “I mean to be felled, sliced to lumber, & reassembled into a new body.” Inflected with the uncanny enchantment of modern folklore and animated by the sly shifting of points-of-view, The Lumberjack’s Dove is wise, richly textured poetry from a boundlessly creative new voice.
GennaRose Nethercott’s book The Lumberjack’s Dove was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series for 2017. She is also the lyricist behind the narrative song collection Modern Ballads, and is a Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellow. Her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies including BOMB, The Massachusetts Review, The Offing, and PANK, and she has been a writer-in-residence at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore, Art Farm Nebraska, and The Vermont Studio Center, among others. A born Vermonter, she tours nationally and internationally composing poems-to-order for strangers on a 1952 Hermes Rocket typewriter.
Sean Petrie is a founding member of “Typewriter Rodeo,” whose poetry book came out earlier this year. He has 6 short books coming out in 2019 as part of Fountas & Pinnell’s “Leveled Books” series. He also teaches legal writing at UT, and thinks Buffy is the best show ever.
You’re invited to join us for another Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series! The theme of this month’s reading is “Walk on the Wild Side,” and the readers are Tomás Q. Morín, Carrie Fountain, Sarah Bird, and Eliza Gilkyson (left to right, below).
Founded in 2010 by Peg Alford Pursell, Why There Are Words is an award-winning literary reading series that takes place every second Thursday in the San Francisco Bay Area, and beginning in 2017, will take place at 5 more national locations: New York City, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland, and Austin. Each reading event presents a range of writers, including those who have published books and those who haven’t. All writers share the criterion of excellence. The guiding idea behind the series is that good work is timeless and needs to be heard regardless of marketing or commercial concerns. If you’re interested in reading or would like more information, please contact Alison: wtawaustin@gmail.com.
Tomás Q. Morín is the author of Patient Zero and A Larger Country. He translated Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu and with Mari L’Esperance co-edited Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine. He is at work on a memoir about fathers. He teaches at Drew University and in the low residency MFA program of Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Carrie Fountain’s poems have appeared in Tin House, Poetry, and The New Yorker, among others. Her debut collection, Burn Lake, was a National Poetry Series winner and was published in 2010 by Penguin. Her second collection, Instant Winner, was published by Penguin in 2014. Fountain’s debut novel, I’m Not Missing, was published in July, 2018 by Flatiron Books (Macmillan). Born and raised in Mesilla, New Mexico, Fountain received her MFA as a fellow at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. Currently writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University and Visiting Professor at the Michener Center, she is the host of NPR’s This Is Just to Say, a radio show and podcast where she has intimate conversations with America’s most influential poets. Fountain lives in Austin with her husband, playwright and novelist Kirk Lynn, and their two children.
Sarah Bird is the author of nine novels and one book of non-fiction. Her latest novel, Above the East China Sea, was long-listed for the Dublin International Literary Award; was an ALEX Award nominee; winner of the 2016 Texas Philosophical Society Literary Award; a Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice; a Seattle Times Best Book of the Year; a Tucson Book Festival Great Books for Book Club selection; and a Marie Claire Best Summer Reads. Sarah has been an NPR Moth Radio Hour storyteller, and a writer for Oprah’s Magazine and the NY Times Sunday Magazine. During her ten-year screenwriting career, Sarah was hired to write for Paramount, CBS, Warner Bros, National Geographic, ABC, TNT, as well as several independent producers. Her latest novel, Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen, inspired by the true story of Cathy/Cathay Williams, the only woman to serve with the fabled Buffalo Soldiers and the first woman to enlist in the peacetime U.S. Army, has been selected to be a lead Fall 2018 title.
Eliza Gilkyson is a twice Grammy-nominated (2006/2015) singer songwriter and activist who is one of the most respected musicians in Folk, Roots and Americana circles. Her songs have been covered by Joan Baez, Bob Geldof, Tom Rush and Rosanne Cash and have appeared in films, PBS specials and on prime-time TV. A member of the Austin Music Hall of Fame, and a recent inductee into the Austin Songwriter Hall of Fame, she has won countless Folk Alliance and Austin Music awards, including 2014’s Songwriter of the Year. Eliza’s music has always offered a vivid reflection of the times we live in, full of joys and sorrows, each song a window into a life of struggle and triumph in a world she feels is “poised on the edge of moral, economic and environmental bankruptcy.” Her new CD released in summer 2018 from Red House Records, is titled Secularia.
You’re invited to join us for another Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series! This month’s theme is “Alchemy” and the readers are Joe Nick Patoski, Hugh Fitzsimons III, Bronte Treat, Elizabeth Harris, Dena Afrasiabi, and Gurf Morlix.
Founded in 2010 by Peg Alford Pursell, Why There Are Words is an award-winning literary reading series that takes place every second Thursday in the San Francisco Bay Area, and beginning in 2017, will take place at 5 more national locations: New York City, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland, and Austin. Each reading event presents a range of writers, including those who have published books and those who haven’t. All writers share the criterion of excellence. The guiding idea behind the series is that good work is timeless and needs to be heard regardless of marketing or commercial concerns. If you’re interested in reading or would like more information, please contact Alison: wtawaustin@gmail.com.
A staff writer for Texas Monthly magazine for eighteen years, and a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, Joe Nick Patoski (top row, left) has authored and co-authored biographies of Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Selena, and the Dallas Cowboys, directed a film on the Texas musician Doug Sahm, and collaborated on books about the Texas Mountains, the Texas Coast, and Big Bend National Park. His tenth book is Austin to ATX: The Hippies, Pickers, Slackers & Geeks Who Transformed the Capital of Texas.
Hugh Fitzsimons III (top row, middle) is a third-generation rancher from Dimmit County, Texas, and a director of the Wintergarden Groundwater Conservation District. He is currently expanding into the cultivation of environmentally beneficial restorative plants and crops. His first book, the memoir A Rock Between Two Rivers, was published in 2018 by Trinity University Press.
Bronte Treat (top row, right) is a writer based in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in Sorin Oak Review, Peach Fuzz Magazine, and Women of Venus. She studied Rhetoric and Writing at St. Edward’s University, where she was an editor of Arete Academic Journal. Her work is concerned with family history and identity.
Elizabeth Harris’s novel, Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman, winner of the Gival Press Novel Award and an Austin Chronicle Top Read of 2015, was a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction. Her first collection of stories, The Ant Generator, was winner of the University of Iowa Press John Simmons Prize. Harris (bottom row, left) taught fiction writing and modern literature for a number of years at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. She and her husband divide their time between the Texas coast and Austin.
Dena Afrasiabi (bottom row, middle) is an editor and fiction writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Toast, and Fiction Southeast, among other publications. Her writing has received fellowship support from the Millay Colony, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts as well as the National Endowment for the Arts. She’s currently at work on a novel.
Gurf Morlix (bottom row, right) won mainstream recognition during his time as Lucinda Williams’ guitar player, musical director and producer. After they had a falling out over the band’s musical direction, Morlix moved on and became a freelance producer. Since then, he’s helmed projects by a diverse set of country and Americana artists including Robert Earl Keen, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Slaid Cleaves and Mary Gauthier, as well as his own records. His new recording is Impossible Blue 2019.
Join us for an evening with Austin Community College Performance Poet and Community Engagement Specialist Taria Person.
Taria Person “The Realest Person,” author of Rainbow Elephant, and playwright of the stageplay Hangers, performs poetry about conflict resolution through self-awareness, and acknowledging, respecting, and accepting each other’s differences.
You’re invited to join us for another Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series! June’s theme is “Traveling Light” and the guests are Lucas Schaefer, Dalia Azim, S. Kirk Walsh, Nancy Koerbel, and Michael Fracasso (left to right, below).
Founded in 2010 by Peg Alford Pursell, Why There Are Words is an award-winning literary reading series that takes place every second Thursday in the San Francisco Bay Area, and beginning in 2017, will take place at 5 more national locations: New York City, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland, and Austin. Each reading event presents a range of writers, including those who have published books and those who haven’t. All writers share the criterion of excellence. The guiding idea behind the series is that good work is timeless and needs to be heard regardless of marketing or commercial concerns. If you’re interested in reading or would like more information, please contact Alison: wtawaustin@gmail.com.
Lucas Schaefer’s fiction has appeared in One Story and CRAFT. He has received a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center, and has been a recent resident at 100W Corsicana, the Studios of Key West, and the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods. A graduate of the New Writers Project at UT-Austin, Lucas lives with his husband in Austin and is currently at work on a novel.
Dalia Azim’s writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Aperture, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Glimmer Train (where she won their Short Story Award for New Writers), Other Voices, and Sightlines, among other places. She is manager of special projects at the Blanton Museum of Art and is working on a novel.
S. Kirk Walsh’s work has appeared—or is forthcoming—in StoryQuarterly, Guernica, Electric Literature, the New York Times Book Review, Longreads, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. She lives in Austin, Texas, and is the founder of Austin Bat Cave, a writing and tutoring center for kids. Walsh has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, Ragdale, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is currently at work on a novel about Detroit, Michigan.
Nancy Koerbel’s poems have recently appeared in Redactions, One, and The Pittsburgh Poetry Review. A former recipient of a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, she lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she teaches legal and business writing, works as a copyeditor for a large tech company, and coordinates the Pittsburgh branch of Why There are Words.
Michael Fracasso, musician, chef, and Austinite, is a genre-crossing artist incapable of repeating himself. His critically acclaimed work includes nine distinctive solo CDs, recorded duets with both Patty Griffin and Lucinda Williams, an epic reinterpretation of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero,” and memorable tributes to Woody Guthrie, Mickey Newbury and Townes Van Zandt. In 2011 he was short listed for the Austin Public Library Award for literary achievement.
You’re invited to join us for another Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series! This month’s theme is “Silver Linings” and the guests are Kathryn Schwille, Kristen Staby Rembold, Mark Solomon, Marian Szczepanski, and musical duo Joanna Howerton and Michael Cross.
Founded in 2010 by Peg Alford Pursell, Why There Are Words is an award-winning literary reading series that takes place every second Thursday in the San Francisco Bay Area, and beginning in 2017, will take place at 5 more national locations: New York City, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland, and Austin. Each reading event presents a range of writers, including those who have published books and those who haven’t. All writers share the criterion of excellence. The guiding idea behind the series is that good work is timeless and needs to be heard regardless of marketing or commercial concerns. If you’re interested in reading or would like more information, please contact Alison: wtawaustin@gmail.com.
Kathryn Schwille (top left) is the author of the novel What Luck, This Life, set in East Texas around the time of the Columbia shuttle disaster. It was selected by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as one of the best southern books of 2018. Her short stories have appeared in New Letters, Memorious, Crazyhorse, Literary Hub, and other journals, and have been cited twice for Special Mention in the Pushcart Prize. She lives in North Carolina and teaches at Charlotte Center for Literary Arts.
Kristen Staby Rembold’s (top center) most recent book is Music Lesson, poetry, published in 2019 by Future Cycle Press. She is also the author of two poetry chapbooks, Leaf and Tendril and Coming into This World, and a novel, Felicity, winner of Mid-List First Fiction Series Award. Her poems have appeared in many periodicals including Crab Orchard Review, Green Mountains Review, Literary Mama, Smartish Pace, and New Ohio Review. She has taught poetry and fiction writing at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, and is former co-editor of IRIS: A Journal About Women. She holds degrees from Northwestern University and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
Mark Solomon (top right) has lived in NYC since 1941. Since 1973 his poems have appeared in Broadway Boogie, TriQuarterly, Hanging Loose, BOMB, The Marlboro Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, and Southern Poetry Review. A chapbook, Her Whom I Summoned, and My True Body, his first full-length collection, are available through Havel.Havulim@gmail.com
Marian Szczepanski (bottom left) is the author of the historical novel Playing St. Barbara (High Hill Press, 2013), which Huffington Post called “a stunning debut novel that shimmers with unforgettable characters while casting necessary light on a dark chapter in American history.” She has won awards for short fiction and magazine writing and holds an MFA in fiction from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is a faculty member at Houston’s Writespace creative writing center and has also taught for the Texas Writers League (Austin), Gemini Ink (San Antonio), Village Writing School (Eureka Springs and Rogers, AR), University of Pittsburgh’s Writers Café, and St. Francis University (Loretto, PA). She divides her time between Houston and Hood River, Oregon.
Joanna Howerton grew up in a musical family in the beautiful hills of Kentucky. In the Blues, she found her true voice and style and honed her vocal skills and played with various R&B and jazz ensembles in New Orleans and Austin. Her partnership and duo with Michael Cross has been transformative, inspiring the creation of a sound that bridges their past and current influences.
Michael Cross, a talented vocalist, lyricist, composer and seasoned recording artist, has toured nationally and internationally. Recording projects include TX Blues Voices, and his own album Blues Lovin’ Man. Michael’s latest collaboration with Joanna Howerton has inspired new material and their duo is steadily building an enthusiastic following.
Join us for a night with spoken word artists Joaquín Zihuatanejo and Taria Person.
Joaquín Zihuatanejo is a brilliant poet. His testimonials and songs and explorations are multilingual, structurally adventurous. The wide range of forms and dictions makes visible his ravenous curiosity and intellect. His language, rippling with the loss of a father and racial and cultural tensions, resists one-dimensional answers. His nouns and verbs wonder, croon, weep, question, and roar. The deep attention to language and to the shaping of language infuses the work with a riveting self-awareness of the self—in this case, a Mexican American man unafraid to remember, to love. Beautifully crafted and richly imagined, Arsonist is a remarkable debut. —Eduardo C. Corral, author of Slow Lightning
Joaquín Zihuatanejo received his MFA in creative writing with a concentration in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work has been featured in Prairie Schooner, Sonora Review, and Huizache, among other journals and anthologies. His poetry has been featured on HBO, NBC, and on NPR in Historias and The National Teacher’s Initiative. He was the winner of the Anhinga-Robert Dana Prize for Poetry. His book, Arsonist, was published by Anhinga Press in September of 2018, and was short-listed as a Finalist for both the Writers’ League of Texas Best Book Poetry Prize and the International Latino Book Award Best Book Poetry Prize. Joaquín has two passions in his life, his wife Aída and poetry, always in that order.
Taria Person is an alumna of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where she received a dual B.A. in English Creative Writing: Poetry, and Interdisciplinary Studies: Africana Studies. She is the author of Rainbow Elephant and At the Summit, and her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including: O’ Woman a Tapestry of Loving You, and Voices of Warriors: Poems of Hope & Healing. Taria Person won first place at the regional Big Ears: Spoken Word Expo/The 5th Woman Poetry Slam (2017), the Regional Southern Fried Hip-Hop Slam (2013), and Knoxville Poetry Slam (2012). Also, she has been an actress and Production Stage Manager for The Carpetbag Theatre Inc., during its original series of stage productions that have been funded by The Roy Cockrum Foundation, in celebration of (CBT’s) 50th Anniversary. Recently, Person has been commissioned to write a book of poetry by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation; won an Artistic Professional Development grant from Alternate Roots for her original stage play, Hangers; and became a member of the 5th Woman Touring Collective.
You’re invited to join us for another Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series! This month’s theme is Reconciliation and our guests are Sandra Sidi, Carrie Fountain, Josh Denslow, and The Flyin’ A’s (left to right, below).
Founded in 2010 by Peg Alford Pursell, Why There Are Words is an award-winning literary reading series that takes place every second Thursday in the San Francisco Bay Area, and beginning in 2017, will take place at 5 more national locations: New York City, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland, and Austin. Each reading event presents a range of writers, including those who have published books and those who haven’t. All writers share the criterion of excellence. The guiding idea behind the series is that good work is timeless and needs to be heard regardless of marketing or commercial concerns. If you’re interested in reading or would like more information, please contact Alison: wtawaustin@gmail.com.
Sandra Sidi writes fiction and nonfiction. She was a military analyst in Baghdad in 2007 and 2008. She is an MFA Candidate at Texas State University San Marcos, and holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Yale University. Her first piece, “Get A Weapon,” was published in The Atlantic and is forthcoming in Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: An Anthology by Kendall Hunt Publishing. She is working on a novel about Israeli soldiers.
Carrie Fountain is a poet and novelist, and serves as the 2019 Texas Poet Laureate. She is the author of two poetry collections, Instant Winner and Burn Lake, winner of the 2009 National Poetry Series Award, and the YA novel I’m Not Missing. Her first children’s book, The Poem Forest (Candlewick Press, 2020) tells the story of American poet W.S. Merwin and the palm forest he grew from scratch on the island of Maui. Her poems have appeared in Tin House, Poetry, and The New Yorker, among many others. She is the host of KUT’s This Is Just to Say, a radio show and podcast where she has intimate conversations on the writing life with other poets and writers. Fountain is writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University, and lives in Austin, TX.
Josh Denslow’s short stories have appeared in print and online in such fine places as Barrelhouse, Third Coast, Cutbank, Wigleaf, and Black Clock, among many others. NOT EVERYONE IS SPECIAL, his debut short story collection, will be published in 2019 by 7.13 Books. Along with his wife and his brother-in-law, he plays drums in the band Borrisokane. KUTX called us “synth-punk gloom-wonders” and the band was hailed by the Austin Chronicle as one of the Best New Local Acts of 2013. They are currently recording thier first full-length album.
The Flyin’ A’s perform Americana with a Texas Kick. This husband and wife duo hails from Austin, Texas. You can hear their Texas roots in all they do. The high energy duo is famous for their top-notch songwriting, breathtaking harmonies, and exceptional live performance. Their latest album You Drive Me Crazy was selected to be on the 2017 first round Grammy Ballot and has taken them on tour around the US, UK, and the EU, and now they are headed to NZ for the first time. From Stuart Adamson’s outstanding lead guitar work and gritty vocals to Hilary Claire Adamson’s powerhouse vocal gymnastics and lilting harmonies, it is no wonder this duo is quickly gaining momentum both at home and abroad. They combine the best of Texas country, southern blues, folk and gospel to create an original sound that is all their own.
Malvern Books is proud to present an evening (via Zoom; details to come) with Cotton Mather guitarist and prize-winning poet Harold Whit Williams, who will be reading from his new book and performing songs from his new solo album, both titled My Heavens.
Worth noting: All royalties from the download or stream of My Heavens goes to Color of Change.
Williams returns to form on this, his fifth poetry collection. The very idea of a paradise—beyond sky or upon earth or within each moment—is poked and prodded with both sharp cynicism and wide-eyed wonder alike. Addressing grief, the day in/day out depictions are deeply distilled, the lines sober yet also playful, loose and languid. Nostalgia without sentimentality. Dreamlike visions without surrealism. These poems settle down across the kitchen table from a reader for a little give and take, a little what’s it all about? “The transubstantiation, the utter mystery,” Williams writes, “I swallow it all/And expect nothing in return.”
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