Inprint Poetry Buskers at Indie Bookstore Day

Inprint Poetry Buskers will be writing free personalized poems on the spot at Brazos Bookstore for attendees of Indie Bookstore Day on requested themes using typewriters. Come by the Inprint table from 12 pm – 3 pm to see the local writers in action and walk away with your very own poem.

For more information about Indie Bookstore Day, click here.

Inprint Poetry Buskers at Houston Poetry & Arts Festival

Inprint Poetry Buskers will be writing free personalized poems on the spot at the West Houston Institute for attendees of the Houston Poetry & Arts Festival attendees on requested themes using typewriters. Come by the Inprint table from 10 am – 1 pm to see the local writers in action and walk away with your very own poem.

For more information about Houston Poetry & Art Festival, click here.

INPRINT ELIZABETH ACEVEDO REBROADCAST

CANCELLED: Due to major travel delays, the Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series event featuring National Book Award winner Elizabeth Acevedo scheduled for tonight – Monday, April 15, 7:30 pm, at the Alley Theatre – has been cancelled so there will be no rebroadcast available. We apologize for the inconvenience and are looking at ways to reschedule Elizabeth’s visit to Houston. We will be in touch soon with further details. Thank you so much for your understanding.

DETAILS AND HOW TO WATCH: This is an online rebroadcast of Elizabeth Acevedo live event as part of the 2023/2024 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series. This online event will be accessible from the Inprint website. Details on how to access the reading will be provided to season subscribers. Those who purchase general admission tickets for this rebroadcast event will be provided the viewing link on their Eventbrite email receipt in the “Additional Information” section.

Elizabeth Acevedo will read from her new novel Family Lore, followed by an on-stage conversation with celebrated Houston author Jasminne Mendez. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. The event is presented as part of the 2023/2024 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO, the current Young People’s Poet Laureate, “is in full command of her special powers as a storyteller of compassionate, capacious, and lyrical imagination” (Julia Alvarez). Her New York Times bestselling YA novel-in-verse The Poet X was “an incredibly potent debut” (Jason Reynolds) and won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Carnegie Medal. Acevedo is also the author of the picture book Inheritance: A Visual Poem and the YA books Clap When You Land and With the Fire on High, which explore family, love, and Dominican-American culture.

Acevedo comes to Houston to share her first novel for adults about a lineage of powerful sisters, Family Lore. About the novel, Angie Cruz writes, “Acevedo has written unforgettable characters who breathe new life into how we grieve, age, and take care of each other.” According to Kiese Laymon, “No writer on earth transforms a page into a home with distinct emotional chambers like Acevedo…. This is how stories should be made,” and Jacqueline Woodson adds, “With Family Lore, Elizabeth Acevedo has made the transition into the adult world look easy. The true gift of a stunningly talented writer.” Acevedo lives in Washington D.C. and is a National Poetry Slam Champion.

JASMINNE MENDEZ is a Dominican-American poet, playwright, translator, and award-winning author of books for adults and children. Her most recent publications include Aniana del Mar Jumps In, a YA novel in verse, her YA memoir, Islands Apart: Becoming Dominican American, her poetry collection City Without Altar, and translations into Spanish of children’s books by Amanda Gorman and Nikole Hannah-Jones/Renée Watson. She is Program Director for Tintero Projects and co-hosts the Inprint/Tintero Projects podcast Ink Well, which showcases primarily Latinx writers.

Poetry/In-person 2024-107

 

This is an in-person workshop that takes place at Inprint House.

I believe two of the most significant concepts in poetry are concreteness and abstractions and I seek to understand the balance between the two. Some poems will lean more on creating a solid world for the reader to live in, while others will rely on conceptual ideas and images that feel less interconnected. There is no right or wrong side, but I feel poems that find ways to encapsulate both sides carry a special weight to them. Whether you try to create a balance between the two in your work or want to lean on one a lot more than the other, it’s important to be aware of how much space each takes up in your work. In this generative workshop, we will learn how to hone in on our own strengths of using concrete images and ideas, and abstract ones. We will explore the work of poets like Terrance Hayes, Solmaz Sharif, Natalie Diaz, Joy Priest, Marie Howe, Jean Valentine, Louise Gluck, Jack Gilbert, Etheridge Knight, William Carlos Williams, Linda Gregg, Diannely Antigua, Sharon Olds and more. Poets at any stage in their writing journey are welcome.

CANCELLED: Inprint Elizabeth Acevedo Reading

CANCELLED: Due to major travel delays, the Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series event featuring National Book Award winner Elizabeth Acevedo scheduled for tonight – Monday, April 15, 7:30 pm, at the Alley Theatre – has been cancelled. We apologize for the inconvenience and are looking at ways to reschedule Elizabeth’s visit to Houston. We will be in touch soon with further details. Thank you so much for your understanding.

Elizabeth Acevedo will read from her new novel Family Lore, followed by an on-stage conversation with celebrated Houston author Jasminne Mendez. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. The event is presented as part of the 2023/2024 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series. ASL interpretation will be available at this event.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO, the current Young People’s Poet Laureate, “is in full command of her special powers as a storyteller of compassionate, capacious, and lyrical imagination” (Julia Alvarez). Her New York Times bestselling YA novel-in-verse The Poet X was “an incredibly potent debut” (Jason Reynolds) and won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Carnegie Medal. Acevedo is also the author of the picture book Inheritance: A Visual Poem and the YA books Clap When You Land and With the Fire on High, which explore family, love, and Dominican-American culture.

Acevedo comes to Houston to share her first novel for adults about a lineage of powerful sisters, Family Lore. About the novel, Angie Cruz writes, “Acevedo has written unforgettable characters who breathe new life into how we grieve, age, and take care of each other.” According to Kiese Laymon, “No writer on earth transforms a page into a home with distinct emotional chambers like Acevedo…. This is how stories should be made,” and Jacqueline Woodson adds, “With Family Lore, Elizabeth Acevedo has made the transition into the adult world look easy. The true gift of a stunningly talented writer.” Acevedo lives in Washington D.C. and is a National Poetry Slam Champion.

JASMINNE MENDEZ is a Dominican-American poet, playwright, translator, and award-winning author of books for adults and children. Her most recent publications include Aniana del Mar Jumps In, a YA novel in verse, her YA memoir, Islands Apart: Becoming Dominican American, her poetry collection City Without Altar, and translations into Spanish of children’s books by Amanda Gorman and Nikole Hannah-Jones/Renée Watson. She is Program Director for Tintero Projects and co-hosts the Inprint/Tintero Projects podcast Ink Well, which showcases primarily Latinx writers.

Teachers-As-Writers Workshop/Online 2024-106

This workshop is open for K-12 educators and staff. Up to 12 CPE hours are available for this workshop by request.

HISD educators and staff can register for free, click here.

As educators, it can sometimes be difficult to find time to practice and nurture within ourselves the creativity we teach and foster in our students each day. Focusing on poetry and creative nonfiction, this workshop aims to help us all reconnect with our creativity and reinvigorate our love for words and the creative process. We will read published works for inspiration and direction and will then spend dedicated time each week generating new work that speaks to our own interests and passions. There will also be opportunities to workshop and share our writing as a means of building community and strengthening our work through collaborative discussion. All experience levels are welcome!

INPRINT BOOK CLUB DISCUSSES Devil Makes Three

This Inprint Book Club meeting will take place via Zoom. The Zoom link will be the same for every meeting and will be provided in your Eventbrite email receipt (scroll down to the Additional Information section).

On April 14, 2024 the Inprint Book Club will discuss Devil Makes Three by Ben Fountain, who will appear as part of the 2023/2024 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series on Monday, January 29, 2024.

During this Zoom session, Ben Fountain will be in attendance to answer questions about the novel. 

Visit brazosbookstore.com to order your copy of Fountain’s newest novel.

Inprint Book Club meetings are free and open to the public and are facilitated by experienced book club leader Torie Ludwin. The full schedule of Inprint Book Club meetings for 2023/2024 season appears on the main Inprint Book Club webpage, which you can access by, clicking here.

If you have any further questions, please email info@inprint.org.

Inprint Poetry Buskers at Commons Public Celebration

Inprint Poetry Buskers will be writing free personalized poems on the spot at Hermann Park Commons for Commons Public Celebration attendees on requested themes using typewriters. Come by the Inprint table from 9 am – 12 pm to see the local writers in action and walk away with your very own poem.

For more information about Hermann Park’s Commons Public Celebration, click here.

Science + Literature: Written in the Stars with Novuyo Rosa Tshuma


Presented by Baylor College of Medicine’s Humanities Expression and Arts Lab, Hermann Park Conservancy’s Garden and Nature Series, Inprint, and the National Book Foundation.

Novuyo Rosa TshumaJoin a special event featuring a reading by celebrated author Novuyo Rosa Tshuma in conversation with author/physician and 2024 Science + Literature committee chair Ricardo Nuila (The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine) on writing fiction through a scientific lens. The event will include a book sale facilitated by Kindred Stories and book signing.

Novuyo’s latest novel Digging Stars was a National Book Foundation’s 2024 Science + Literature selection and tells the story of Rosa, a protagonist preoccupied both with space, and with what it means to be human. Her first novel, House of Stone, won the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award and the Bulawayo Arts Award for Outstanding Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the Balcones Fiction Prize, and was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. A former Houstonian, Tshuma earned her PhD at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, where she was an Inprint Nina and Michael Zilkha/Fondren Foundation Fellow, recipient of Inprint International Student Fellowships, and was a much beloved Inprint Writers Workshop leader. A recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, Tshuma has taught graduate fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently teaches at Emerson College.

Ricardo Nuila is a writer and practicing doctor at Houston’s largest public hospital. His work has been featured in The New YorkerTexas MonthlyThe New England Journal of Medicine, and Best American Short Stories. His first book, The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air. In its review, the New York Times notes that Ricardo is a “skillful writer who humanizes his points in meticulous and compassionate detail.” He is the Director of the Humanities Expression and Arts Lab (HEAL) at Baylor College of Medicine.

ABOUT SCIENCE + LITERATURE

Science + Literature identifies three books annually, across genres, that deepen readers’ understanding of science and technology, and highlights the diversity of voices in contemporary science and technology writing. Science + Literature is made possible by the Sloan Foundation. Read more about the Science + Literature program on the National Book Foundation’s website.

2024 Inprint Prize Winners Reading

Free and open to the public, this reading will take place outdoors on the east side of the museum 

Join Inprint for a celebratory reading of the 2024 Inprint Prize Winners. This spring, Inprint awarded 10 prizes ranging from $1,000 – $10,000 to nine students studying creative writing at the University of Houston and one undergraduate at Rice University. The winners, selected by outside judges, will give short readings from their prize-winning works. Inprint Executive Director Rich Levy will give opening remarks and Inprint Board Member Ron Restrepo will make a toast to the winners.

The event will be part of the Menil’s Neighborhood Community Day. Earlier that afternoon, the Inprint Poetry Buskers will be on-site writing free poems for Community Day attendees. For the full schedule of the Menil’s Neighborhood Community Day events, click here.

Inprint has been proud to support some of the world’s top emerging writers through annual fellowships and juried prizes for graduate students at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program and an annual prize for an undergraduate at Rice University. This year alone Inprint has provided $201,500 in direct support to these students, and since 1983, Inprint’s support of 600+ emerging writers has totaled more than $4.5 million. Recipients of these fellowships and prizes come from all parts of the world and have gone on to impact our local and national communities through teaching, writing, publishing, and more.

2024 Inprint Prizewinners:

Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Nonfiction: Nick Almeida’s stories and essays have appeared in Kenyon ReviewPleiadesSoutheast Review, and elsewhere. Almeida, a PhD candidate at the University of Houston, holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers, where he edited Bat City Review. His chapbook, Masterplans, was selected by Steve Almond as grand prize winner of the inaugural Masters Review Chapbook Open in fiction, and is available now.

Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry: Jari Bradley (they/them) is a San Francisco native. They are the recipient of an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellowship, an Inprint Donald Barthelme Poetry Prize recipient, and a Cave Canem fellow. Their poems have been published in Callaloo, Virginia Quarterly Review, Academy of American Poets (Poem-A Day), and elsewhere. They are currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Houston and a Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast Journal.

Inprint Marion Barthelme Gulf Coast Prize: Leisa Loan is a poet, editor, translator, and educator from Boston, MA.  She is pursuing a PhD in Critical Poetics at the University of Houston where she is an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow. She currently serves as the Digital Editor for Gulf Coast.

 

Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction: Reese Lopez is a writer and musician from Houston, Texas. He is currently an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Houston, where he is an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow and the winner of an Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction. He is currently at work on a novel.

 

Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing at Rice University: Hadley Medlock is a writer of nonfiction and poetry from small-town Arkansas. She is currently a senior at Rice University studying English & Creative Writing. Hadley also serves as the Arts and Entertainment Editor for Rice’s newspaper, The Thresher, and a nonfiction section editor for The Rice Review, a campus literary magazine. Hadley’s work tends to revolve around themes of environment, nature, home, place, and love, and she plans to continue this writing — no matter where she ends up after her impending graduation.

Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction: Kelan Nee is a poet and carpenter from Massachusetts. He is the winner of prizes from The Academy of American Poets, Adroit, and the Inprint foundation. His work has been published by Poetry Magazine, 32 Poems, The Yale Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, and is pursuing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston.

Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry: Bevin O’Connor is a poet and educator from Southern California and received her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the winner of the Prairie Lights Donald Justice Poetry Contest and the Michelle Boisseau Poetry Prize. Bevin has taught writing at the University of Iowa and the University of Southern California. A 2022 finalist for the Best of the Net Anthology, her work can be found or is forthcoming in Bear Review, Annulet, Palette Poetry, Afternoon Visitor, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Poetry at the University of Houston, where she is an Inprint Nina and Michael Zilkha Fellowship recipient and serves as a poetry editor for Gulf Coast magazine.

Inprint Joan & Stanford Alexander Prize in Fiction: Originally from Richmond, Virginia, Biz Rasich is an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow and MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Houston. Prior to starting her MFA, she earned her BA in Mathematical Economic Analysis from Rice University and spent several years at the University of Chicago working on press strategy and research for a book about gun violence. She currently serves as a fiction editor at Gulf Coast and a program associate at Writers in the Schools. Her work has previously appeared in R2, Prairie Margins, and Hayden’s Ferry Review.

Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing: Anthony Sutton resides on former Akokisas, Atakapa, Karankawa, and Sana land (currently named Houston, TX), as an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor fellow at the University of Houston’s Creative Writing and Literature PhD program and is a recipient of the 2024 Inprint Marion Barthelme prize in Creative Writing. The author of the poetry collection Particles of a Stranger Light (Veliz Books, 2023) and co-editor of Tom Postell: On the Life and Work of an American Master (Unsung Masters, 2024), Anthony’s poetry has appeared in guesthouse, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, Oversound, Texas Review, Zocalo Public Square, the anthology In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (Black Lawrence Press, 2024), and elsewhere.

Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry: Mathew Weitman’s poetry appears or is forthcoming Bennington Review, The Georgia Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He is the winner of the Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry, the Loraine Williams Poetry Prize, the AWP Kurt Brown Prize in Poetry, and is a two time Pushcart nominee. Currently, he is pursuing his PhD at the University of Houston where he is an Inprint Brown Foundation Fellow and a poetry editor for Gulf Coast. He also teaches creative writing at the Harris County Jail.

Special thanks to Joan and the late Stanford Alexander, The Friends of Marion Barthelme, Nina and Michael Zilkha, and the Inprint Board of Directors, who make these prizes possible. Inprint also receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Jerry C. Dearing Family Foundation, Houston Endowment, The City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.