Lisa Nikolidakis reads from No One Crosses the Wolf
Thursday, September 1, 6:30 pm
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Lisa Nikolidakis will be in conversation with Lacy M. Johnson.

Lisa Nikolidakis’s work has been selected for The Best American Essays 2016 (edited by Jonathan Franzen) and she has won numerous prizes and awards for both her fiction and nonfiction, including the Annie Dillard, the Orlando, and the Lamar York prizes. Born in Philadelphia and raised in New Jersey, Nikolidakis presently teaches creative writing, photographs animals, and writes. For more information, visit www.lisanikolidakis.com.
 
Lacy M. Johnson is a Houston-based professor, curator, activist, and is author of the essay collection The Reckonings, the widely-acclaimed memoir The Other Side, and Trespasses, and is editor, with the graphic designer Cheryl Beckett of More City Than Water: A Houston Flood Atlas. She teaches creative nonfiction at Rice University and is Founding Director of the Houston Flood Museum. 
 
An Evening of Poetry with Joy Priest & Roger Reeves
Friday, September 2, 7pm
(Lanecia Rouse Tinsley Gallery, 3719 Navigation Blvd)
Joy Priest is an Inprint MD Anderson Foundation Fellow and a doctoral student in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Houston. She is the author of Horsepower (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), selected by U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey as the winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry.
 
Roger Reeves is the author of Best Barbarian (W. W. Norton & Co., 2022) and King Me (Copper Canyon Press, 2013). He is currently a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and an associate professor of English and creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin.

Contemporary Poetry: The Arab American Turn
Thursday, September 8, 5:30 pm
(Waldorf Ballroom, Hilton University of Houston)
Please join the Arab-American Educational Foundation Center for Arab Studies on Thursday, September 8th for the Annual AAEF Dr. Burhan and Mrs. Misako Ajouz Professor of Arab Studies Distinguished Lecture in Literature: “Contemporary Poetry: The Arab American Turn,” a discussion of Fady Joudah’s “Tethered to Stars: Poems” and Hayan Charara’s “These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit: Poems.” This discussion will be moderated by Dr. Sally Connolly, Department of English University of Houston.

Fady Joudah is a Palestinian American physician, poet, and translator. Joudah’s debut collection of poetry, The Earth in the Attic (2008), won the 2007 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Joudah followed his second book of poetry, Alight (2013) with Textu (2014), a collection of poems written on a cell phone wherein each piece is exactly 160 characters long. His fourth collection is Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance (2018). Joudah’s fifth and most recent collection, Tethered to Stars: Poems (2021) was selected as a Library Journal Best Book of Poetry of 2021.

Hayan Charara is a poet, children’s book author, essayist, and editor. He is a professor in the Honors College at the University of Houston, where he also teaches creative writing. His poetry books are These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit (2022), Something Sinister (2016), The Sadness of Others (2006), and The Alchemist’s Diary (2001). His children’s book, The Three Lucys (2016), received the New Voices Award Honor, and he edited Inclined to Speak (2008), an anthology of contemporary Arab American poetry. With Fady Joudah, he is also a series editor of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize.

Dr. Sally Connolly is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Houston and Associate Dean of Student and Faculty Success for the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. Her first book, Grief and Meter: Elegies for Poets After Auden (2016), was the first ever critical study of the elegies that poets write for each other. Her second book, Ranches of Isolation: Transatlantic Poetry (2018) considers the (sometimes vexed) nature of transatlantic poetic relations in a series of wide-ranging essays. She is currently working on a book about the poetry of the AIDS epidemic.
This event is free and open to the public. Masks encouraged.

Michał Choiński teaches literature at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. He has written two books on the history of American literature: Rhetoric of the Revival (V&R, 2016) and Southern Hyperboles (Louisiana State University Press, 2020). His pamphlet, Gifts Without Wrapping came out with the Hedgehog Press in 2019, as a winter of a poetry competition. Choiński’s poems have been published in the US, UK and in Canada. In 2022, he’ll be a Fulbright Fellow at Yale University, writing his next book.
Website: https://michalchoinski.com/

Oksana’s Lutsyshyna is a Lecturer in Ukrainian in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and her research interests address the issue of metropolitan modernity and Central and Eastern European identity in literature. Her doctoral dissertation is a study of the prose of Polish writer Bruno Schulz in light of Walter Benjamin’s modernity theories, and she is currently at work on a book on the discourse of film in the prose of Bruno Schulz and Ukrainian writer Valerian Pidmohylny. Her second academic book-length project focuses on gendered colonialism and decolonization in the works of contemporary Ukrainian writers. Author of four novels and four volumes of poetry, Lutsyshyna’s most recent novel Ivan and Phoebe (2019) won two of the most prestigious literary awards in Ukraine, in 2020 and 2021, respectively: the Lviv City of Literature UNESCO Prize and the Taras Shevchenko National Prize in fiction. Her novel is forthcoming in Nina Murray’s English translation from Deep Vellum Publishing in 2022. Her poetry collection, Persephone Blues, in English translation, was released in 2019 by Arrowsmith Press. She also translates Ukrainian authors into English in collaboration with Olena Jennings. 

The iconic Jaipur Literature Festival, held annually at the Pink City of Jaipur in India's Rajasthan state, has always believed in the spirit of community and the hope, strength, and vitality that literature gives. Join us for the fifth annual JLF Houston, where the Bayou City's unique culture, diversity, and energy fuse with the festival's camaraderie, caravan of ideas, and magical flow of conversations.

Melissa Ginsburg reads from Doll Apollo
Monday, September 12, 6:30 pm
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Melissa Ginsburg is the author of the poetry collection Dear Weather Ghost and the novels The House Uptown and Sunset City. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, West Branch, Fence, Southwest Review, and other magazines. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Mississippi, and serves as associate editor of Tupelo Quarterly.
 
Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series featuring Erika L. Sánchez
Monday, September 12, 7:30 pm 
(Ballroom at Bayou Place, 500 Texas Avenue)
National Book Award finalist Erika L. Sánchez will read from her new memoir Crying in the Bathroom, followed by an on-stage conversation with Jasminne Mendez, author of the YA memoir Island of Dreams. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. 
 
Erika L. Sánchez is the author of the National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestseller I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter. According to The New York Times, “This gripping debut about a Mexican-American misfit is alive and crackling,” and Juan Felipe Herrera adds, “This book will change everything…. A perfect book about imperfection.” The novel is currently being adapted into a film directed by Emmy award-winning actress America Ferrera. A poet by training, Sánchez is also the author of the poetry collection Lessons on Expulsion, “a fierce, assertive debut” (The Washington Post) that challenges notions of femininity, race, religion, and sexuality. She has received fellowships from Princeton, the Chicago Public Library Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation. Her nonfiction work has appeared in The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Salon, and Cosmopolitan for Latinas, where she was the sex and love advice columnist.

Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series featuring Abdulrazak Gurnah
Monday, September 19, 7:30 pm 
(Brockman Hall for Opera, Rice University, Entrance #18)
Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah will read from his new novel Afterlives, followed by an on-stage conversation with celebrated author and Rice University faculty member Kiese Laymon. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. 
 
Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents” (Nobel selection committee). Gurnah is the author of 10 works of fiction that draw on his experience fleeing Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania) as a young refugee, including the novels Memory of Departure, Desertion, The Last Gift, and Gravel Heart. He is a two-time Booker Prize nominee for the novels By the Sea and Paradise, which The New York Times calls “a poignant meditation on the nature of freedom and the loss of innocence, for both a single sensitive boy and an entire continent.”

Gulf Coast Reading Series featuring Lisa Nikolidakis and UH CWP graduate students
Friday, September 23, 7 pm
(Lawndale Art Center, 4912 Main St, Houston, TX 77002)
The Gulf Coast reading series presents the poetry and prose of UH graduate students, paired with prominent featured visiting writers, at Lawndale Art Center. Participating students come from the MFA and PhD programs in Creative Writing.
 
Poison Pen Reading Series
Thursday, September 29, 630 pm
(Poison Girl, 1641 Westheimer Rd)
Founded and currently organized by UH Creative Writing students/alumni/faculty, Poison Pen was voted Houston’s Best Reading Series in 2014 by the Houston Press. Poison Pen brings in three readers on the last Thursday of each month. Poison Pen’s readers are locally and nationally recognizable writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say and El Zócalo Advisory Committee
Monday, October 3, 6pm
(Alley Theatre, 615 Texas Ave)
Free. Reservations required: nuestrapalabra.org
Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say will highlight grassroots Latino art and culture that has changed the way we are perceived and treated across the nation. This powerful showcase of talent takes place in the state of the art facilities of Houston’s Alley Theatre, a leading force for art in the U.S., through a partnership with its El Zócalo Advisory Committee headed by Baldemar Rodriguez, Manager of Community Partnership.

Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series Javier Zamora
Monday, October 3, 7:30 pm 
(Ballroom at Bayou Place, 500 Texas Avenue)
Renowned poet and activist Javier Zamora will read from his new memoir Solito, followed by an on-stage conversation with Daniel Peña, award-winning author of Bang. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. 

Javier Zamora is a renowned poet and activist who migrated alone from El Salvador to the U.S. at the age of nine. He published his first chapbook Nueve Años Inmigrantes at the age of 21 and his debut poetry collection Unaccompanied, published in 2017, explores the devastating impacts of the U.S-funded Salvadoran Civil War on his family – his father fled the country when Javier was one, and his mother when he was four. About the collection, Latino Book Review writes, “Zamora insists that the stories he houses in his blood deserve to be told, and in the telling he has created a truly astonishing debut.” His poems have appeared in Granta, The Kenyon Review, and The New York Times. Zamora has received fellowships from Harvard, Stanford, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation.

Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series Maggie O’Farrell
Monday, October 10, 7:30 pm 
(Cullen Performance Hall, Univ of Houston)
New York Times bestseller Maggie O’Farrell will give a reading from her new novel The Marriage Portrait, followed by an on-stage conversation with Houston writer and former Houston Chronicle book editor Maggie Galehouse. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. General admission tickets include a signed hardcover copy of O’Farrell’s new novel The Marriage Portrait, available for pickup at the theatre on the night of the event or at the Inprint office afterwards.
 
Maggie O’Farrell is “a miracle in every sense” (Ann Patchett). In 2020, O’Farrell published the New York Times bestseller Hamnet – “a family saga bursting with life, touched by magic, and anchored in affection” (The Boston Globe). Now translated into more than 32 languages and optioned for the screen by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, Hamnet was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the UK Women’s Prize for Fiction. O’Farrell’s debut novel After You’d Gone won the Betty Trask Award and The Hand That First Held Mine was recipient of the Costa Book Award for Fiction. Her other works include the novels The Distance Between Us, Instructions for a Heat Wave, This Must Be the Place, and the acclaimed memoir I Am, I Am, I Am.

Brazos Bookstore Presents Granta: The New Wave of Spanish Fiction
Tuesday, October 11, 6:30 pm
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Spain’s literary scene is burgeoning, and the new generation pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo like never before. Wildly varied in subject and style, and also in language, we’ll have the chance to explore with David Aliaga (Barcelona), Rodrigo Hasbún (Bolivia), Irene Reyes-Noguerol (Seville) and Alejandro Morellón (Mallorca) some of the themes and styles that are moving the conversation in exciting new ways. David, writing about Jewish identity from Sepharad, Irene steeped in classical mythology, and Alejandro, who formally challenges the intersection between mysticism and technology.
 
Poetry & Prose – Creative Writing Program – New Student Reading
Wednesday, October 12, 6pm
(MD Anderson Library, Honors Commons, UH Campus)
Poetry & Prose is a reading series featuring UH faculty, students, alumni and other well-known writers, that happens right here on campus.

Readings are free and open to the public. Light refreshments are served.
The series is presented by the University of Houston Libraries, in cooperation with the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.
 
Brazos Bookstore Presents: C. W. Smith
Saturday, October 15, 6:30 pm
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
C.W. Smith is the author of the novels Thin Men of Haddam, Country Music, The Vestal Virgin Room, Buffalo Nickel, Hunter’s Trap, Gabriel’s Eye, Understanding Women, Purple Hearts, Steplings, and Girl Flees Circus. He has also published a collection of short stories (Letters from the Horse Latitudes), a collection of essays (A Throttled Peacock: Observations on the Old World), and a memoir (Uncle Dad). He has twice won the “best novel” Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, and he has received the Southwestern Library Association Award for Best Novel, as well as Border Regional Library Association Award for Outstanding Book about the Southwest. Other accolades include the Dobie-Paisano Creative Writing Fellowship from the University of Texas, National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships in 1976 and 1990, the Texas Headliner’s Feature Story award, the Frank O’Connor Memorial Short Story Award from Quartet magazine, the John H. McGinnis Short Story Award from Southwest Review; a Pushcart Prize Nomination from Southwest Review, and an award for Best Nonfiction Book by a Texan in from the Southwestern Booksellers Association. He is also a recipient of the Lon Tinkle award for lifetime achievement from The Texas Institute of Letters. Smith lives in Dallas and is a Dedman Family Distinguished Professor (emeritus) at Southern Methodist University.
 
Brazos Bookstore Presents: Reza Aslan
Sunday, October 16, 6:30 pm
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Reza Aslan is an internationally acclaimed writer, producer, and scholar of religions. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Zealot, and editor of Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
 
Menil presents: Mel Bochner
Wednesday, October 19, 6pm
(Menil Drawing Institute)
Mel Bochner joins the Menil Drawing Institute’s Chief Curator Edouard Kopp for a talk on the occasion of the unveiling of Bochner’s new wall drawing, the fourth in an ongoing series of ephemeral, site-specific installations in the Drawing Institute.
 
Mel Bochner (b. 1940) is recognized as one of the leading figures in the development of Conceptual art in New York in the 1960s and 1970s. Emerging at a time when painting was increasingly discussed as outmoded, Bochner became part of a new generation of artists, which also included Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, and Robert Smithson - artists who, like Bochner, were looking at ways of breaking with Abstract Expressionism and traditional compositional devices. His pioneering introduction of the use of language in the visual, led Harvard University art historian Benjamin Buchloh to describe his 1966 Working Drawings as ‘probably the first truly conceptual exhibition.‘
 
Gulf Coast Reading Series ft. Raquel Gutiérrez
Friday, October 21, 7 pm
(Lawndale Art Center, 4912 Main St, Houston, TX 77002)
The Gulf Coast reading series presents the poetry and prose of UH graduate students, paired with prominent featured visiting writers, at Lawndale Art Center. Participating students come from the MFA and PhD programs in Creative Writing.
 
Brazos Bookstore Presents: Jennifer Ghivan & James Wade
Thursday, October 27, 6:30 pm
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Jennifer Givhan, a National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices fellow, is a Chicana and indigenous novelist, poet, and transformational coach. She is the author of Jubilee, which received an honorable mention for the 2021 Rudolfo Anaya Best Latino-Focused Fiction Book Award, and Trinity Sight, winner of the 2020 Southwest Book Award. She has also published five full-length poetry collections and her honors include the Frost Place Latinx Scholarship and the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize.
 
James Wade lives and writes in the Texas Hill Country with his wife and daughter. He is the author of River, Sing Out and All Things Left Wild, a winner of the prestigious MPIBA Reading the West Award for Debut Fiction, and a recipient of the Spur Award for Best Historical Novel from the Western Writers of America.
 
Poison Pen Reading Series
Thursday, October 27, 630 pm
(Poison Girl, 1641 Westheimer Rd)
Founded and currently organized by UH Creative Writing students/alumni/faculty, Poison Pen was voted Houston’s Best Reading Series in 2014 by the Houston Press. Poison Pen brings in three readers on the last Thursday of each month. Poison Pen’s readers are locally and nationally recognizable writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
 
Brazos Bookstore Presents: Phyllis Frye and the Fight for Transgender Rights
Saturday, October 29, 6pm
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
The first openly transgender judge to be appointed in the United States, the first attorney to obtain corrected birth certificates for transgender people who had not undergone gender confirmation surgery, a survivor of conversion therapy, and author of a law review article that helped thousands of employers adopt supportive policies for their workers, Phyllis Frye is truly a pioneer in the fight for transgender rights.
 
Phyllis Randolph Frye is an Eagle Scout, a former member of the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets, a veteran (1LT-USA), an engineer, an attorney, a father, a grandmother and a lesbian widow. She is also the first, OUT, transgender judge in the nation and is knows as “grandmother” of the transgender civil rights movement.

Brazos Bookstore Presents: Anna Badkhen
Monday, November 7, 6:30 pm
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Anna Badkhen will be in conversation with Kiese Laymon.
Anna Badkhen was born in the Soviet Union and is now an American citizen. She is the author of six previous books of nonfiction. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Barry Lopez Visiting Writer in Ethics and Community Fellowship, and a Joel R. Seldin Award from Psychologists for Social Responsibility for writing about civilians in war zones.
 
Kiese Laymon is the author of the novel, Long Division and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. His bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. He is the founder of “The Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative,” a program aimed at getting Mississippi kids and their parents more comfortable reading, writing, revising and sharing.
 
Brazos Bookstore Presents: J. Estanislao Lopez
Wednesday, November 9, 6:30 pm
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Estanislao Lopez is the author of We Borrowed Gentleness(Alice James Books). His poems have been featured in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Rumpus, Poetry Daily, BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, The Slowdown Podcast, and elsewhere. He lives and teaches in Houston.
 
Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series Joy Harjo
Monday, November 14, 7:30 pm 
(Cullen Performance Hall, Univ of Houston)
U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo will read from her new poetry collection Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: 50 Poems for 50 Years, followed by an on-stage conversation with Lupe Mendez, 2022 Texas Poet Laureate. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. 
 
Joy Harjo is the first Native American to hold the position of U.S. Poet Laureate. She is the author of nine books of poetry, including An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, and She Had Some Horses.  Harjo has also written two memoirs Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior and two children’s books, recorded seven albums, and created a one-woman show. Her many awards include the Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation, the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction, the American Book Award, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.
 
Glass Mountain Reading
Thursday, November 17, 5:30 pm
(Roy G. Cullen Building, 2^nd floor Reading Room, UH Campus)
Glass Mountain is a national undergraduate literary magazine run by undergraduates at UH. The reading will feature guest writers (fiction, poetry, nonfiction) with an open mic to follow. The reading will take place on Zoom—link to come. 
 
Brazos Bookstore Presents: Gabe Monesanti
Friday, November 18, 6:30 pm
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Gabe Montesanti is the author of the queer, roller derby memoir BRACE FOR IMPACT, (The Dial Press, May 2022). She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Washington University in St. Louis and has had work published in Creative Nonfiction Magazine, Brevity, The Offing, and Boulevard Magazine. Her piece, “The Worldwide Roller Derby Convention” was recognized as a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2020. She is currently at work on a book proposal about her journey performing drag. 
 
Gulf Coast Reading Series ft. Roberto Tejada, José Peña Loyola, Valentina Jager, Nicholas Rattner, and Vanessa Beatriz Golenia
Friday, November 18, 7 pm
(Lawndale Art Center, 4912 Main St, Houston, TX 77002)
The Gulf Coast reading series presents the poetry and prose of UH graduate students, paired with prominent featured visiting writers, at Lawndale Art Center. Participating students come from the MFA and PhD programs in Creative Writing.
 
Brazos Bookstore Presents: Elizabeth Farfán-Santos
Friday, November 18, 6:30 pm
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Elizabeth Farfán-Santos is a medical anthropologist and the author of Black Bodies, Black Rights: The Politics of Quilombolismo in Contemporary Brazil.

Brazos Bookstore Presents: Jennifer Martiza McCauley and Oindrila Mukherjee
Friday, February 3, 6:30 pm
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Jennifer Maritza McCauley is the author of the poetry collection SCAR ON/SCAR OFF (Stalking Horse Press) and the short story collection When Trying to Return Home (Counterpoint Press.) She has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kimbilio, CantoMundo and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. She holds an MFA from Florida International University and a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Missouri. She is the fiction editor at Pleaides and an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.
 
Oindrila Mukherjee is an associate professor of creative writing at Grand Valley State University. She grew up in Kolkata, India, and resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
 
Brazos Bookstore Presents: Christopher Brean Murray
Thursday, February 16, 6:30pm 
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Christopher Brean Murray will be in conversation with Kevin Prufer
 
Christopher Brean Murray is the author of Black Observatory, which was selected by Dana Levin as the winner of the 2021-22 Jake Adam York Prize.
 
Kevin Prufer is co-editor of Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century and the author of six collections of poems. He teaches creative writing at the University of Houston and in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University, serves as Editor-at-Large for Pleiades, and co-curates the Pleiades Press Unsung Masters Series with Wayne Miller.
 
Gulf Coast Reading Series ft. Vi Khi Nao
Friday, February 17, 7 pm
(Lawndale Art Center, 4912 Main St, Houston, TX 77002)
The Gulf Coast reading series presents the poetry and prose of UH graduate students, paired with prominent featured visiting writers, at Lawndale Art Center. Participating students come from the MFA and PhD programs in Creative Writing.
 
Brazos Bookstore Presents: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Thursday, February 23, 6:30pm 
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning and bestselling author, activist, and professor. Her work has been published in over fifty magazines, including The Atlantic and The New Yorker, and included in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Her books have been translated into twenty-nine languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Bengali, Russian, and Japanese. Several have been used for campus-wide reads and made into films and plays. She teaches at the University of Houston.
 
Poison Pen Reading Series ft. Christopher Brean Murray, Bao-Long Chu, Hannah Kelly
Thursday, February 23 29, 630 pm
(Poison Girl, 1641 Westheimer Rd)
Founded and currently organized by UH Creative Writing students/alumni/faculty, Poison Pen was voted Houston’s Best Reading Series in 2014 by the Houston Press. Poison Pen brings in three readers on the last Thursday of each month. Poison Pen’s readers are locally and nationally recognizable writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
 
True Life: A Celebration of Poet Adam Zagajewski
Monday, February 27, 7:30pm 
(The Menil Collection, 1533 Sul Ross)
DACAMERA and Inprint join forces in this heartfelt celebration of the life and work of Polish poet Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021), prize-winning writer of international renown. Pianist Sarah Rothenberg and cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton interweave the music that inspired many of Zagajewski’s poems with readings of his luminous poetry.  Readers will include celebrated poet and author Edward Hirsch, president of the Guggenheim Foundation; Rich Levy, executive director of Inprint; and community leader and friend, Lillie Robertson.

Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series Ada Limón
Monday, March 6, 7:30 pm 
(Ballroom at Bayou Place, 500 Texas Avenue)
U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón will read from her new collection The Hurting Kind, followed by an on-stage conversation with Roberto Tejada, author of the poetry collection Why the Assembly Disbanded. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. 
 
Ada Limón will serve as the 2022-2023 U.S. Poet Laureate. About her work, Tracy K. Smith in The Guardian writes, “Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation,” and Richard Blanco adds, “Both soft and tender, enormous and resounding, her poetic gestures entrance and transfix.” Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, and Bright Dead Things, which was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. She is also the author of the National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Carrying. According to The Washington Post, “Evocative dreams and pivotal memories make this collection a powerful example of how to carry the things that define us without being broken by them.”
 
AWP Conference
Wednesday, March 8 – Saturday, March 11
(Seattle Convention Center)
The AWP Conference & Bookfair is an essential annual destination for writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers. Each year more than 12,000 attendees come together for four days of insightful dialogue, networking, and unrivaled access to the organizations and opinion-makers that matter most in contemporary literature. The conference features over 2,000 presenters and 550 readings, panels, and craft lectures. The bookfair hosts over 800 presses, journals, and literary organizations from around the world. AWP’s is now the largest literary conference in North America.
 
The UHCWP AWP 2023 program featuring alumni, faculty, current students and UH affiliates participating in on and off-site events at AWP is available here.
 
UHCWP @ AWP23: Adam Zagajewski Tribute Reading
Thursday, March 9, 5:30 pm
(The Rabbit Box at Pike Place Market, 94 Pike St, Seattle, WA )
UH is hosting a Tribute Reading in honor of the late Polish poet Adam Zagajewski. Come to listen and share poems, stories, memories. All friends and fans of Adam’s are welcome!
 
Poison Pen Reading Series @ AWP ft. Jameelah Lang, David MacLean, Nicky Beer, Mat Johnson
Thursday, February 23 29, 8:30 pm
(Hotel Sorrento, 900 Madison Street, Seattle, WA)
Founded and currently organized by UH Creative Writing students/alumni/faculty, Poison Pen was voted Houston’s Best Reading Series in 2014 by the Houston Press. Poison Pen brings in three readers on the last Thursday of each month. Poison Pen’s readers are locally and nationally recognizable writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
 
AWP Gulf Coast Reading Series w/ Black Warrior Review, & The Offing
Friday, March 10, 9 pm
(The Lab, 425 15^th Ave E, Seattle, WA)
The Gulf Coast reading series presents the poetry and prose of UH graduate students, paired with prominent featured visiting writers, at Lawndale Art Center. Participating students come from the MFA and PhD programs in Creative Writing.
 
Brazos Bookstore Presents: Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton
Friday, March 10, 6:30pm 
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton will be in conversation with Rozella Haydée White.
 
Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton is an internationally-known, writer, director, performer, critic and the first Black Poet Laureate of Houston, TX. She is the author of the 2019 poetry collection Newsworthy, which was a finalist for the The Writer’s League of Texas Book Award and Honorable Mention in the Summerlee Book Prize. Her poems have garnered her a Pushcart nomination and been translated into multiple languages. She has been a contributing writer for Glamour, Texas Monthly, Muzzle, and ESPN’s The Undefeated. Her work ranges from writing stageplays and librettos for operas such as Marian’s Song to storytelling through film. She currently resides in Houston, TX.
 
Rozella Haydée White (she/her/ella) is the #LoveBigCoach, is a Social Impact Entrepreneur who is focused on nurturing love that is life-giving, justice-seeking, and healing so that all can thrive. She is a public theologian, spiritual life and leadership coach, inspirational speaker and writer committed to embodying love that is bold, intentional and generous. Rozella is the owner of RHW Consulting LLC and is also the creator and co-founder of Racial Healing & Wellness Coaching LLC. Rozella is the author of Love Big: The Power of Revolutionary Relationships to Heal the World (Fortress Press, 2019) and is a contributor to the New York Times Bestseller and international bestseller, A Rhythm of Prayer, edited by Sarah Bessey. She has contributed to many books, written numerous articles, curriculums, and resources focused on leadership development, spirituality, and justice steeped in a Love Ethic.
 
Brazos Bookstore Presents: Joshua Burton
Tuesday, March 21, 6:30pm 
(Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet St)
Joshua Burton will be in conversation with Chankrisna Tea
 
Joshua Burton is a poet and educator from Houston, Texas, who earned his MFA in poetry from Syracuse University. He is a 2019 Tin House Winter Workshop Scholar and a 2019 Center for African American Poetry and Poetics fellowship finalist. His work can be found in Mississippi Review, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, and more.
 
Chankrisna Tea (she/they) is a non-binary Khmer artist from Houston, TX. She is invested in the art of sequences, poetry and comics, and her work can be found in Infrarrealista Review, Sybil, and more.
 
Canon Presents: Ama Codjoe Pop-up Reading and Q & A
Tuesday, March 28, 7pm
(Virtual: Register Here)
Ama Codjoe is the author of Bluest Nude, finalist for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry and Blood of the Air, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. She has been awarded support from Cave Canem, Robert Rauschenberg, and Saltonstall foundations as well as from Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Hawthornden, Hedgebrook, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Her recent poems have appeared in the New York Review of Books, the New Republic, the Best American Poetry series, and elsewhere. Among other honors, Codjoe has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council/New York Foundation of the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation.
 
Poison Pen Reading Series ft. Anthony Sutton, Ginger Ko, Ayokunle Falomo
Thursday, March 30, 8:30 pm
(Poison Girl, 1641 Westheimer Rd)
Founded and currently organized by UH Creative Writing students/alumni/faculty, Poison Pen was voted Houston’s Best Reading Series in 2014 by the Houston Press. Poison Pen brings in three readers on the last Thursday of each month. Poison Pen’s readers are locally and nationally recognizable writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.