Words and Wine Wednesdays at The Writing Barn are free to attend, and serve as a great weeknight social function to meet new people, bask in the atmosphere of great literature, and have the chance to ask questions, get a book signed or linger by the wine and cheese.
Typically the last Wednesday of each month, the Barn doors open to the local literary community, inviting anyone interested to venture out to our neck of the woods from 7:30PM-9:00PM and join us in honoring a different featured author each month. Over wine and cheese, have an opportunity to meet likeminded literary folk and listen to a compelling author Q&A and/or reading. Authors’ books will be available to purchase through indie bookstore BookPeople.See our 2015 lineup below!
*Dates are subject to change. When the event is about two weeks out, an Eventbrite RSVP page will be posted to The Writing Barn’s website and social media networks. Please RSVP to reserve a spot. Words and Wine Wednesdays are free, but head counts are a helpful gauge of how much wine and cheese to procure.*
March 25– Natalia Sylvester, author of Chasing the Sun
April 29 – Nikki Loftin, author of Wish Girl, with special guest Joy Preble, author of Finding Paris
May 27 – Carrie Fountain, author of poetry collections Instant Winner and Burn Lake
June 24 – Greg Garrett, author of Entertaining Judgement: The Afterlife in
Popular Imagination (read our event recap of his reading at BookPeople)
Nikki Loftin lives with her Scottish photographer husband just outside Austin, Texas, surrounded by dogs, chickens, goats, and rambunctious boys. She is the author of the multiply starred-reviewed Nightingale’s Nest and The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, which Publisher’s Weekly called “mesmerizing” and Kirkus called “irresistible.” Her next novel, Wish Girl, will be published on February 24, 2015.
Joy Preble is the author of THE SWEET DEAD LIFE and its sequel, THE A WORD(May 2014), both from Soho Press. She is also the author of the DREAMING ANASTASIA series (Sourcebooks) that combines paranormal romance with Russian folklore. DREAMING ANASTASIA was nominated for a Cybil Award in the Teen Sci-Fi/Fantasy Category in 2009. Joy also has a contemporary mystery/romance on the way: FINDING PARIS will be out April 21, 2015 from Balzer and Bray/Harper Collins.
Carrie Fountain’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House, and Poetry, among others. Her debut collection, Burn Lake, was a 2009 National Poetry Series winner and was published in 2010 by Penguin. Born and raised in Mesilla, New Mexico, Fountain received her MFA as a fellow at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Currently writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University, she lives in Austin with her husband, playwright Kirk Lynn, and their children. Her second collection, Instant Winner (Penguin), was published in 2014.
Greg Garrett is the author of Entertaining Judgement: The Afterlife of Population Imagination, The Other Jesus: Rejecting a Religion of Fear for the God of Love, We Get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel according to U2, The Gospel according to Hollywood, The Gospel Reloaded (with Chris Seay), Holy Superheroes, Stories from the Edge: A Theology of Grief, One Fine Potion: The Literary Magic of Harry Potter; of the critically-acclaimed novels Cycling, Shame, and Free Bird (named by Publishers Weekly and the Denver Rocky Mountain News as one of the best first novels of 2002); and of the memoirs Crossing Myself and No Idea.
Natalia Sylvester is the author of the novel, Chasing the Sun (New Harvest, 2014), which was chosen as the Best Debut book in Latinidad’s Best Books of 2014. Publisher’s Weekly described it as “a page-turning novel that strikes a balance between austere domesticity and suspenseful, life-altering trauma.” Born in Lima, Peru, Natalia came to the U.S. at age four and grew up in South Florida, where she received a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Miami. A former magazine editor with a journalism background, Natalia is fascinated by the role of truth in fiction and fiction in truth. Her essays and interviews with authors have been published in Latina magazine, Writer’s Digest, The Writer, and NBCLatino.com.
Words and Wine Wednesdays is a sister program to our newest blog series, Austin Author Spotlight, featuring an exclusive interview with a local author each month. Our first three featured authors of Words and Wine Wednesdays will also have exclusive interviews on this new blog series.
Stay up to date with our free programming by following us on Twitter and Facebook, and checking our Events & Classes page regularly! Our free events will primarily have corresponding RSVP pages via Eventbrite.
We hope to see you at our free events!