Why There Are Words Austin

01/07/2020

Why There Are Words is pressing pause for 2020! Follow WTAW Press for updates.

12/12/2019

Sandra Sidi will be reading at WHY THERE ARE WORDS AUSTIN on Wed. 12/18 at 7 pm at Malvern Books, 613 W. 29th St. Here’s a recent interview.

Nkiacha Atemnkeng ('22) sits down with Sandra Sidi to discuss her viral essay for The Atlantic, the challenge of self-censorship, and the relationships that have shaped her MFA experience.

10/08/2019

GURF MORLIX told a story and sang a song for WHY THERE ARE WORDS back in March.

Gurf Morlix in a film that's been called "insane, psychotic, and brilliant!" Features songs by Gurf, Ringo Starr, and Blaze Foley. Filmed in Sweden and Austi...

09/21/2019

Here's a statement from WTAW about the Portland branch of our 8-city national reading series

Statement Regarding Why There Are Words Portland (WTAW PDX) Since 2010, with the founding of the Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series in Sausalito, we’ve been building literary community, in the SF Bay Area, and across the country. Today, at eight branches across diverse regions of the US, ...

09/18/2019

2-NITE!
7 p.m. at Malvern Books, 613 W. 29th St.
Prose! Poetry! Song!
Kathryn Schwille, Kristen Stab Reimbold, Mark Solomon, Marian Szczepanski, Joanna Howerton and Michael Cross

09/16/2019

HERE'S A POEM BY KRISTEN STABY REMOLD.
She'll be reading at WHY THERE ARE WORDS - AUSTIN
Wednesday, Sept. 18, 7 p.m.
Malvern Books, 613 W. 29th St.

Woman at the Post Office


An old woman's trouble in deciding

is holding up the line.

Another crowd, another time,

a loudmouth might complain,

but here in mid-morning, the retired,

mothers, students, all stand quiet.

Her jaw slowly slackening,

insistence draining from her face.

Finally, she lifts her finger

--a pronouncement,

or merely a flicker?--

and the clerk says,

that'll be seven-fifty.

We witnesses

stop holding our breath.

She reaches into her bag, that reflex

intact, and no wonder, considering

how a woman's life is comprised

of procurement. The clerk

hands back her change.

Still, she hesitates.

Who can relax, knowing

there could be something else

she'd meant to say or to send?

--from "Streetlight 3"

09/09/2019

Marian will be reading for WHY THERE ARE WORDS Austin on Sept. 18 at 7 p.m., Malvern Books. Check her out in the meantime!

The granddaughter of immigrant coal miners, Marian Szczepanski used her family background as inspiration for Playing St. Barbara (High Hill Press, 2013), praised by Huffington Post as “a stunning...

08/31/2019

KATHRYN SCHWILLE will be one of five authors of prose and song reading at WTAW Austin on Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. at Malvern Books,. 613 W. 29th St.

What Luck, This Life begins in the aftermath of the 2003 space shuttle disaster, as the townspeople watch their pastures swarm with searchers, and reporters bluster at their doors. A shop owner defends herself against a sexual predator who is pushed to new boldness after he is disinvited to his family reunion. A closeted father facing a divorce that will leave his gifted boy adrift retrieves an astronaut’s remains. An engineer who dreams of orbiting earth joins a search for debris and instead uncovers an old neighbor’s buried longing.

In a chorus of voices spanning places and years, What Luck, This Life explores the Columbia disaster’s surprising fallout for a town beset by the tensions of class, race, and missed opportunity. Evoking Sherwood Anderson’s classic Winesburg, Ohio and Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, the novel’s unforgettable characters struggle with family upheaval and mortality’s grip and a luminous book emerges—filled with heartache, beauty and warmth.