Austin is a city of festivals and events that draw visitors from around the world. One of our favorite festivals at Torch is the Texas Book Festival. Joining as a partnering organization for the fourth year in a row, we’re proud to bring in Tiana Clark and Donika Kelly for readings and conversations, and host a powerful lit crawl full of Torch Features and friends. 

Poet, professor, and essayist, Tiana Clark, will join us to read from Scorched Earth, a 2025 National Book Award finalist. Her work touches on her life-changing experiences with divorce, self-love, queer discovery, and bliss. 

Donika Kelly is a poet and professor at the University of Iowa, and author of The Natural Order of Things. Her work touches on radical love and attention to the happenings in the world around us.

You can catch Torch’s amazing events at Black Pearl Books, the Texas Capitol, or Cheer Up Charlies in community with other renowned Black women writers sharing their work. 

Check out our three events below:

• Thursday, November 6, at Black Pearl Books: Join us for a free kickoff reception and reading featuring our two Texas Book Festival features, Donika Kelly and Tiana Clark, as they read from their official Texas Book Festival-selected books in Austin’s Black-owned bookstore, Black Pearl Books. Learn more and RSVP here.

• Saturday, November 8, at the Texas Capitol: In partnership with Texas Book Festival, join Tiana Clark and Donika Kelly at the Texas Capitol as they discuss their literary works. We’ll delve into their backgrounds, the inspiration behind their writing, and much more. Learn more about the conversation online here.

• Saturday, November 8, at Cheer Up Charlies: In partnership with Texas Book Festival, join us at 7:45 p.m. for an electric evening of poetry and fiction by award-winning authors C. Prudence Arceneaux, Ebony LaDelle, Carrie R. Moore, Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo, Fabienne Josaphat, and Amanda Johnston (host). Learn more about the Lit Crawl online here. 

Texas Book Festival is a nonprofit organization dedicated to celebrating the culture of literacy and ideas. This is the Texas Book Festival’s 30th year hosting the festival and is one of the largest book festivals in the nation. The festival features over 250 authors at events in and around the Texas Capitol and neighboring streets and venues, attracting 40,000 to the Texas capital city.

For more information about Torch Literary Arts, please visit https://www.torchliteraryarts.org/ or follow @torchliteraryarts on Instagram. 

For more information about the Texas Book Festival, including the free event schedule, please visit www.texasbookfestival.org. 

About Torch Literary Arts

Torch Literary Arts (TORCH) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established with love and intention in 2006 to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. TORCH has featured work by Toi Derricotte, Tayari Jones, Sharon Bridgforth, Crystal Wilkinson, Patricia Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Elizabeth Alexander, and others. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.

Help TORCH continue to publish and promote Black women writers by donating today.

About Tiana Clark

Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collections Scorched Earth; I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, which won the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize; and Equilibrium, which won the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark’s other honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and Tennessee State University, where she studied Africana and women’s studies. She is the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College. Find out more at TianaClark.com.

About Donika Kelly

Donika Kelly is the author of The Natural Order of Things, The Renunciations, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf book award in poetry, and Bestiary, the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and Pushcart Prize winner. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She is an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.

About the Texas Book Festival

The Texas Book Festival, the largest book event in Texas and one of the premier literary Festivals in the nation, returns for its 29th year on November 16–17 in downtown Austin! Free and open to all, attendees can look forward to a star-studded lineup of more than 250 authors, engaging programming for all ages, book signings, food trucks, cooking demonstrations, and a Saturday night Lit Crawl in East Austin. Learn more at www.texasbookfestival.org.

Media Contact Information:

Brittany Heckard

Communications Associate

bheckard@torchliteraryarts.org 

(512) 641-9251