Open Mic Poetry Night is hosted by Deb Akers.  Bring your poetry to share!

Besides writing and performing poetry, Chandra dances, sings, plays percussion, writes songs, acts, and has a flair for the culinary arts. Born in Austin - bred in the D.C. area, Her poetry is informative, seductive, in-your-face, suggestive, thought provoking, controversial, musical, and extremely personal - with a delivery that is animated and tactile - even comical!

Collaboration with World Saxophone Quartet's Hamiet Bluiett led to her direct the Healing Caravan performance project, incorporating world-class music & spoken word to deliver the message of healing and natural nutrition. Awarded a full publishing contract in the 2005 Big Texas Poetry Competition, Chandra is using the prize to publish a self-help book for all ages titled No Mistake. Her latest vocal/spoken word collaboration is titled the N.O.W. U. Project.

Karla K. Morton, 2010 Texas State Poet Laureate, has a new book of poems from Dos Gatos Press. Redefining Beauty came out of Morton's journey through her own diagnosis, treatment and recovery from breast cancer.

In a series of passionate and powerful poems, accompanied by photographer Walter Eagleton's black and white images, Redefining Beauty offers readers hope and comfort through its intimate candor, good-humored defiance and unfiltered honesty. A lifelong poet, as well as a wife and mother of two, Morton was diagnosed with breast cancer in May, 2008. In search of information to help her fight the disease, Morton turned to books. She found facts and statistics. She found self-help books. “But I needed more,” she says. “I needed some grit, a leather strap between my teeth. And when I couldn't find what I needed, I simply wrote my way through it.”

Karla K. Morton is a celebrated poet, author and storyteller. She has several upcoming books, including Becoming Superman, Names We've Never Known, and a collection of her works as part of the Poet Laureate series by TCU Press (to be published in 2010). Karla's poetry, which spans many subjects and forms, has also been published in a number of literary journals. She serves on the board of the Greater Denton Arts Council and the Denton Poets' Assembly. As Texas Poet Laureate for 2010, Karla has launched a Little Town, Texas Tour across the state to serve as an ambassador of poetry.

This workshop series will enhance your connection to rhythm thru hand drumming. Drumming is a wonderful way to revitalize your spirit, rejuvenate your body, and connect with others while playing in community. Drumming is an ancient tradition. Some believe women were the first drummers before they were forbidden to play.

In our class, you will learn basic techniques, hand patterns, and traditional rhythms on the West African djembe drum. You bring the interest and inhibition, and I will bring the drums and instruction. Together we will build a drum community. Come and Drum Sista Drum!

Each class is $15 with a part of the proceeds going to the store. To reserve a drum contact sistadrums@yahoo.com or call the store.

Tonya "Onye" Lyles is a multi-instrumentalist based in Austin  Texas. She founded SistaDrums to rejuvenate, invigorate and uplift a community through teaching the art of hand-drumming and movement linked to traditional world rhythms.  Since 1994, she has been playing and performing traditional rhythms on djembe and currently teaches in Austin, Texas. Her performance experiences range from solo artist to member of a 16 piece West African drum and dance ensemble.

A longtime Austinite, Malka Dubrawsky originally came here to attend the University of Texas where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art.

It was life at home with children that brought her to creating with fabric and eventually to patterning the fabric itself.

Her first book, Color Your Cloth: A Quilter's Guide to Dyeing and Patterning Fabric introduces the reader to dyeing fabric with wax resist or batik. The focus of this book is the accessibility of this process to someone who
crafts at home. In her book, Malka states, "I know this process is doable at home because I do it at home."  The book covers a variety of techniques for creating simple, graphic patterns on cotton or linen oftentimes using commonplace objects as wax applicators. The entire process is covered thoroughly and the book includes 12 easy to create projects to spur the reader from blank fabric to finished product.

Jarrettsville is a novel based on the author's family history. It opens in 1869 after Martha Jane Carnes has just shot and killed her fiancé in front of fifty witnesses and former Union militia members. To find out why she did it, the story steps back to 1865, six days after the Confederate surrender and President Lincoln has been assassinated. Martha Jane is loyal to her Confederate family but in love with the Union hero, Nicholas McComas, and after discovering that her brother belongs to the same Rebel militia as John Wilkes Booth, they must keep their affair a secret.

Nixon has ghosts to exorcise here. Jarrettsville is an embroidery of imagination on a true piece of her family history, sewn together from old family papers and letters, newspaper accounts and graveyard records. But the story, as vivid as it is, is overshadowed by an even more looming ghost in the nation's family history: the legacy of racism.

Cornelia Nixon is an award-winning short story writer and the author of two previous novels.  Cornelia Nixon was born in Boston, Massachusetts and spent many happy summers on the "Big Farm" described in her novel, Jarrettsville. Her book on D.H. Lawrence was her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley, and since then she has written only fiction, including now three novels and numerous short stories. Her stories have won prizes, including the First Prize O. Henry Award in 1995, another O. Henry in 1993, two Pushcart Prizes (1996 and 2003), a Nelson Algren Award in 1988, and the Carl Sandburg Award for Fiction in 1991. She has received fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Antiquarian Society. She is married to poet Dean Young, lives in Berkeley, California, and teaches in the MFA program at Mills College.

AD/HD Generation: Holistic Ways to Support Children is an easy-to-read guidebook for parents and adults that offers reliable facts and tools for helping children thrive, plus step-by-step do-able practices that can be used immediately.

AD/HD Generation: Holistic Ways to Support Children  is a unique book that is aligned with current research and also supports healthy living, a greener planet, and a peaceful world.  Honoring children's individuality and wholeness; it is filled with safe, effective, and holistic parenting tools that honor all aspects of children's be-ing: their physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and energetic bodies. This book is for ALL parents, not just those with children who have diagnoses or behavioral challenges. The tools and resources in this book support the wholeness and wellness of all children so they can thrive; they also strengthen overall family relationships so that parents and kids can settle into an open, flowing, and more loving space with each other.

Cecilia Zúñiga, Ph.D., is an author, teacher, counselor, and life coach. She is a Board Certified Professional Counselor and a Nationally Certified School Psychologist. For years as a School Psychologist in the public schools, she watched as kids lined up outside the nurse's office to get their prescription medications for various diagnoses during their lunch periods. She also spent hours meeting with parents who were looking for answers to their children's wellness that did not involve “drugs.” Realizing that the information about options was confusing and often misleading, Dr. Zúñiga decided to write a booklet to support parents in their searching and provide them with the kinds of parenting tools they were requesting. The booklet evolved into a 10-year project and a nearly 300-page book that challenges society's approach to children's wellness, and takes a more comprehensive look at holistic options and tools for general health and parenting. Go to www.myinnerscapes.com for more information.

Three San Antonio Poets (one recently come to settle in Austin) will be reading from their new books. While their subject matter ranges from an exploration of often disorienting aspects of everyday life to world affairs to the Middle Ages, their poems share a well-defined feminine perspective. These poets are attuned to the nuances of the moment and to the possibility of transcendence in these moments.  

Margie McCreless Roe has had poems in several anthologies and in journals such as Borderlands, Concho River Review, Gulf Coast, New Texas, The Texas Observer, and Windhover.  She has published two books, Flight Patterns and Call and Response.  Naomi Shihab Nye has called Roe's poems “finely crafted, carefully perceived.”  Retired from teaching college English, Roe now divides her time between Cedar Park, Texas, and Estes Park, Colorado.  

Cyra Dumitru is a nationally published poet who has three collections of poems.  Poet Hayan Charara has praised her third book Remains for "its quiet wisdom; what's remarkable about it is that even when it looks at the horrors and losses of the world, it finds beauty."  Dumitru teaches full-time at St. Mary's University in San Antonio.

Judith Infante has published her poetry and translations of Mexican poetry in numerous national literary journals and anthologies.  Love, A Suspect Form, which is a verse re-telling of the story of Heloise and Abelard, is her first book-length publication. Of the poems in this volume Wendy Barker writes " (Infante) brilliantly evokes the twelfth-century world of the doomed lovers . . . this is a highly original work." Steve Bennett writing in the San Antonio Express News calls the work "fascinating." The composer Jan Gilbert who is using the book as the basis for an opera praises the poems for their "fine balance between medieval and contemporary sensibilities." Infante lives in San Antonio.

Edited by Judy Jensen, Borderlands' upcoming issue features poetry, reviews and a photographic series on the Great Inagua, Bahamas, by Emily Ann Griffin.

Come celebrate the launch with us!

Poets whose new works are published in the fall issue and who will be attendance include:
Marian Aitches, Joe Ahearn, Alice Batt, Joe Blanda, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Laurie Ann Guerrero, Cindy Huyser, Ann McCrady, David Meischen, Katherine Durham Oldmixon, Kathleen Peirce and Abe Louise Young.

You are invited to a love-filled early evening reading to celebrate the creative process. Come here eight women poets share new work from the Fall Women's Writing Workshop!

Have tea, write a little poem of your own, dance with scarves, and enjoy readings. Some of these poets will read in public for the first time...let's welcome them!

Readers include Mel Cofer, Martha Ramos-Duffer, Jamie Harris, Teresa Hall, Cheney Crow, Emma Skogstad, Shannon Baley,  and Abe Louise Young

Patricia Austin, professional psychic, will be reading Tarot Cards, Palms and sharing other divination tools for BookWoman's clientele as a benefit for BookWoman. Recommended donation is $1 a minute.

Pat gives positive and constructive information. Call (472-2785) to get on the list, or take your chances and just drop by!

Most people know about the Buddha, his travels, teachings and so on. But the author offers us a rare glimpse of Yasodhara, the woman he left behind. When Yasodhara was a mere 16 years old, Buddha left her in the middle of the night to care for their two-day-old son, Rahula, while he went off to find himself.

Buddha's Wife tells a fascinating story, little known in the west, about the woman whom Buddha left behind. Gabriel Constans focuses the reader's attention on the strong and complicated women who surrounded Buddha and makes us re-think the nature of spiritual life.
-- Chitra Divakaruni, international best-selling author, whose books include Mistress of Spices,Sister of My Heart and Palace of Illusions.