November is LIT-erary gold for Torch Literary Arts (Torch) and the Texas Book Festival (TBF). For the 3rd year in a row, Torch will join TBF as a partnering organization. As part of this partnership, Torch will welcome Morgan Parker and Lynne Thompson to Austin, along with a lineup of incredible Torch Features.

In Morgan Parker's You Get What You Pay For and Lynne Thompson's Blue on a Blue Palette, the historical experiences of Black women drive the two writers' explorations. Morgan's essays, deeply intimate, witty, and personal, trace her experience in therapy as a way to examine racial consciousness and how America's cultural history has affected Black women in particular. Thompson's collection of poems, rooted in the jazz tradition and encompassing various shades of blue, traverses the multiplicities within the condition of women throughout history. These writers deconstruct what it means to survive and find joy within landscapes that threaten.

You can catch Torch’s three amazing events at the Carver Museum, the Texas Capitol, or Speakeasy in community with other renowned Black women writers sharing their work. 

Check out our three events below:

• Friday, November 15 at the Carver Museum: Join us for a free kickoff reception and reading featuring our two Texas Book Festival visitors, Morgan Parker and Lynne Thompson, as they discuss their works and read from them in community with other Black women writers and Torch community members. Learn more and RSVP here.

• Saturday, November 16 at the Texas Capitol: In partnership with Texas Book Festival, join Morgan Parker and Lynne Thompson 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 16 at the Speakeasy: In partnership with Texas Book Festival, join us at 8pm for an inspiring evening of poetry and memoir by award-winning authors Amina Gautier, Lynne Thompson, Morgan Parker, Anastacia-Renee, 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 29th year hosting the festival and is one of the largest book festivals in the nation. The festival plans to have 275 acclaimed authors at events in and around the Texas Capitol and neighboring streets and venues.

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 Morgan Parker

Morgan Parker is a poet, essayist, and novelist. She is the author of the young adult novel Who Put This Song On?; and the poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and has been hailed by The New York Times as “a dynamic craftsperson” of “considerable consequence to American poetry.” Parker’s debut book of nonfiction, You Get What You Pay For, was published in March 2024.

About Lynne Thompson

Lynne Thompson served as Los Angeles’ 4th Poet Laureate and received a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of four collections of poetry, Beg No Pardon, winner of the Perugia Press Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award; Start With A Small Guitar (What Books Press); Fretwork, winner of the 2019 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize selected by Jane Hirshfield; and,, Blue on a Blue Palette, published by BOA Editions in April 2024. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Thompson is the recipient of multiple awards including the George Drury Smith Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles, the Tucson Literary Festival Poetry Prize, and the Steven Dunn Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from the Summer Literary Series (Kenya) and the Vermont Studio Center. Thompson’s recent work can be found or is forthcoming in the literary journals Best American Poetry 2020, Kenyon Review, Georgia Review,, Copper Nickel, and Gulf Coast, as well as the anthology Dear Yusef: Essays, Letters, and Poems For and About One Mr. Komunyakaa, among others. 

About Amina Guatier

Amina Gautier is the author of four award-winning short story collections, At-Risk, Now We Will Be Happy, The Loss of All Lost Things, and The Best That You Can Do. More than one hundred fifty of her short stories have been published in literary journals and anthologies. She is a recipient of the Blackwell Prize, Chicago Public Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award, the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and International Latino Book Award, along with many other honors. For her body of work, she has been awarded the Pen/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, she now lives in Chicago and Miami.

About Anastacia-Reneé

Anastacia-Reneé is an award-winning cross-genre queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDX speaker and former Seattle Civic Poet. She is the author of Side Notes from the Archivist, (v.), and Forget It. Her mixed media art has been exhibited at the Fry Art Museum and her installation, “Don’t Be Absurd (Alice in Parts),” was chosen by NBC as one of the “Queer Artist of Color Must See LGBTQ Arts Shows.” She has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Artist Trust, Ragdale, Mineral School and others. Renee’’s poetry, fiction and nonfiction has been anthologized and published widely. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

About 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