Please join us for an afternoon conversation at Basket Books & Art with Felicia Zamora author of Interstitial Archeology. Felicia Zamora will also be at Lawndale Art Center for the Gulf Coast Reading Series beginning at 7pm.

Water permeates this stunning collection—ocean, lake, saliva, tears, sweat, blood—and the deeper Felicia Zamora excavates, the sheerer it becomes. Revisiting her childhood as a Latina living in poverty in the United States, Zamora explores racial trauma, estrangement from inherted culture and language, and the instinct to retreat into the body as a space of understanding. Grounded in the specificity of her history, her body, and her life, these poems find the universal threads that constellate hummingbirds to whales, Galapagos tortoises to Matt Groening cartoons, family photographs to joy and heartache, and an insistence on human connectivity.

Felicia Zamora is the author of six books of poetry, including Quotient; I Always Carry My Bones, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize and the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; Body of Render, Benjamin Saltman Award winner; and Of Form & Gather, Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize winner. She won the Loraine Williams Poetry Prize from the Georgia Review, a Tin House Next Book Residency, and an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. She is an associate professor of poetry at the University of Cincinnati and a poetry editor for the Colorado Review.

 
https://www.basket-books.com/events/4929920260424

Celebrate the release of Black. Single. Mother. with Jamilah Lemieux!

EVENT DEETS

When: Friday, April 24 @ 7PM

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St., Houston, TX 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming.

*Please note outside copies of the book will not be allowed in the bookstore and you will not be eligible for the signing/photo line. You must buy a book from Kindred Stories.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A personal meditation on, examination of, and tribute to Black single motherhood, unapologetically told through poignant essays and candid interviews by a celebrated cultural critic

“Jamilah Lemieux is one of the most important feminist writers of the twenty-first century.”—Brittney Cooper

With her signature candid, humorous, and sometimes biting takes, Jamilah Lemieux suffers no fools while also courageously revealing the scars of her own parenting journey and search for self-acceptance in a world that hates “baby mamas.” With a particular verve and relatability—honed in her many years among Black Twitter’s most prominent voices—Lemieux centers the complex reality of Black single motherhood: uncertainty and fierceness alike.

Black. Single. Mother. combines riveting personal essays, infused with whip-smart cultural and historical analysis, with twenty-one intimate first-person testimonies from a spectrum of Black single mothers. A long-overdue offering in celebration of the American matriarch most often maligned, Black. Single. Mother. sets out to inspire a new cultural and community dialogue about this powerful figure as one profoundly deserving of love, support, and respect.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jamilah Lemieux is a cultural critic and writer with a focus on issues of race, gender, and sexuality. A leading feminist thinker, social influencer, and millennial media darling, Lemieux has written for a host of platforms, including the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Essence, Playboy, The Cut, The Guardian, Colorlines, The Washington Post, Wired, Self, Refinery29, and Vanity Fair. She was prominently featured in Lifetime’s docuseries Surviving R. Kelly and Surviving R. Kelly 2: The Reckoning. She also appeared in A&E’s Secrets of Playboy. Lemieux penned the foreword for the anniversary editions of Michele Wallace’s Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman and Ann Petry’s Miss Muriel and Other Stories. Currently, she writes a weekly advice column for Slate‘s “Care and Feeding” parenting section. She resides in Los Angeles with her daughter Naima.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Josie Pickens is a veteran writer, journalist, filmmaker, and storyteller whose work examines culture, politics, race, gender, and sexuality with clarity and depth. She has written for national outlets including The Washington Post, The Guardian, EBONY, Essence, The Root, Mic, Bitch, NewsOne, and MadameNoire, blending reporting, cultural critique, and narrative insight. As a filmmaker and producer, Pickens has shaped documentary and nonfiction projects that center Black, queer, and marginalized communities, with a focus on systems of power and community resilience. Her writing and visual work are grounded in rigorous research and a commitment to amplifying voices and stories often overlooked in mainstream discourse.
 
https://kindredstorieshtx.com/products/irl-author-talk-black-single-mother-with-jamilah-lemieux-april-24-7-pm

Set in Guadalajara during the early aughts, the auspicious and quirky debut by Úrzula Barba Hopfner tells the story of Corina, a young woman who has rarely left home in 20 years, except for her job at a local publishing house. To save her job after making a grave mistake in the company’s most famous book saga, she must confront her fears and embark on a journey to track down a mysterious writer. Starring Naian González Norvind (New Order) and Cristo Fernández (Ted Lasso), Corina won the Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival and is an uplifting, endearing fable reminiscent of Amélie about embracing the unknown.

Tickets & More Info Here
 

Tickets

• $10 festival admission; $8 MFAH members, students with ID, seniors (65+)

Plan Your Visit

• This screening takes place in Brown Auditorium Theater in the Law Building.
• Parking Information | Museum Hours | MFAH Campus Map

About the Filmmaker
Urzula Barba Hopfner is a Mexican director, writer, and producer with over two decades of experience in film, television, and documentary editing. She made her directorial debut with Corina, her first feature as writer and director. The film premiered at the Guadalajara International Film Festival (FICG), where it won Best Feature “Hecho en Jalisco,” and went on to screen at major festivals including SXSW (Audience Award), Shanghai International Film Festival (Audience Award), Tallinn Black Nights, Los Cabos, and GIFF (Press Award). The film received nine Ariel Award nominations, including Best First Feature, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, establishing Urzula as a distinctive and sensitive voice in contemporary Mexican cinema. A 2025 BerlinAiR resident (Nipkow Programm / Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg), Urzula bridges her creative work between Mexico and Europe, building a personal and visually resonant body of work.

Set in the sweltering summer of 2001 amid Argentina’s looming economic collapse, The Virgin of the Quarry Lake is a visceral, supernatural, coming‑of‑age horror that melds teenage desire with dark folklore. Best friends Natalia, Mariela, and Josefina are bound by youth and an all‑consuming crush on their longtime friend Diego—until an older, more worldly woman captures his attention. Heartbroken and desperate, Natalia turns to whispered spells and ancestral incantations in a bid to reclaim love, but what begins as jealousy soon morphs into something far more sinister. As the oppressive heat and social unrest build, so does Natalia’s transformation, leading her into uncharted territory of self‑empowerment, rage, and terrifying consequence. Gorgeously atmospheric and unsettlingly precise, Laura Casabé’s film conjures the volcanic emotional landscape of adolescence with supernatural dread.

Tickets

• $10 festival admission; $8 MFAH members, students with ID, seniors (65+)

Plan Your Visit

• This screening takes place in Lynn Wyatt Theater in the Kinder Building.
• Parking Information | Museum Hours | MFAH Campus Map

Tickets & More Info Here

Join FotoFest, Reel Quick Film Lab, Friends of Columbia Tap, and TCAALH for a Photo Walk program. All photo experience is welcome!

Beginning at Project Row Houses, FotoFest invites participants to explore Houston's Third Ward through a guided Photo Walk that highlights the neighborhood’s history, culture, and evolving landscape. This experience features significant community landmarks throughout the Third Ward and along the Columbia Tap Trail, such as Trinity United Methodist Church, Historic Riverside Hospital, Blackshear Elementary School, and Greater Rose Hill Missionary Baptist Church.

The walking tour focuses on historical and cultural sites and is led by historian and storyteller Naomi Carrier, Founder and Executive Director of the Texas Center for African American Living History. Participants will visit landmarks such as John Biggers Murals at Texas Southern University, The Savoy, Mack Hannah’s Savings and Loan, and the legendary Eldorado Ballroom, while engaging with stories that illuminate the people, places, and movements that shaped Third Ward.      

What to Bring             

For a comfortable experience, participants should bring:

• Comfortable walking shoes
• Water for hydration
• Sunscreen
• Appropriate sun-shielding (e.g., hats, sunglasses, etc.)

Arrive Early    

Guests should arrive between 9:45–10 AM. The walk will begin promptly at 10 AM.

Volunteer      

Interested in volunteering? Visit our Volunteer page to learn more.

Parking                

Project Row Houses is located on a strip along Holman St. Street parking is available in front of and across the houses. Do not park in the gated parking lot across from PRH.                       

Partner          

This program is co-organized by Reel Quick Film 

https://fotofest.org/biennial2026-photowalk-2

This year, 31 Houston-area indie bookshops (that's 6 more than last year!) are inviting you to visit as many of us as you can—not only on Indie Bookstore Day (Saturday, April 25), but all throughout April. Here's how the Bookstore Crawl works:

1. Pick up your Bookstore Crawl card at the first participating store you visit. Keep an eye out for the 2026 Bookstore Crawl tote bag, too—many shops will have them available for purchase.

2. Support each bookstore you visit! You can leave a great review, follow them on social media, subscribe to their newsletter, post pictures online, tell your friends and family about your visit, and more. Your support makes a real difference, friends, and we appreciate you. Before you leave, be sure to get your card stamped or signed by a bookseller.

3. Visit as many participating bookstores as you can from April 1-30. Check out our digital map of brick-and-mortar stores to help you plan your visits; we have also created a Linktr.ee with everyone's websites! When you have visited 15, you can turn in your stamped card to enter the ✨RAFFLE!✨ For each store you visit after the first 15, you will receive a bonus entry.

4. Your card must be dropped off at a participating bookstore by the close of their business hours on Thursday, April 30, in order to enter the raffle!

5. Use the hashtag #HTXBookCrawl26 in your posts. We also encourage you to tag the bookshops you visit, as well as the @htxbookcrawl Instagram page. We love seeing your posts and book hauls!

Let's get the party started! We look forward to seeing you all month long, Houston. And be sure to mark your calendar for Saturday, April 25: Indie Bookstore Day!

Say hello to the 2026 Participating Indie Bookstores:

Basket Books & Art · Becker's Books · Blue Willow Bookshop · The Book Attic · Books Abound · Books by the Bay · Books & More Bookstore · The Book Readers Venue · Brazos Bookstore · Buy the Book · CLASS Bookstore · Copperfield's Books · Dreamers Books + Culture · Enchanted Chapters Bookstore (mobile) · Forgotten Lore Bookshop · Good Books in the Woods · Good on Paper Books and Stationery · Gulf Coast Cosmos Comics · Houston Book Warehouse · Kaboom Books · Katy Budget Books · Kindred Stories · LIT bookbar · LIT Java Coffee & Books · Mockingbird Books · Mossrose Bookshop · Murder By The Book · Plot Twist Books (mobile) · Then & Now Bookshop · Village Books · Wilson's Mobile Book Emporium (mobile)

Click here for a Linktr.ee of all 31 participating bookstores' websites.

Click here for a digital map of all 28 participating brick-and-mortar stores.

Free | All Ages | RSVP & MORE INFO HERE

Discovery Green proudly partners with the Great Age Movement to launch Great Age on the Green, a senior health and wellness music festival. It will be an unforgettable celebration of vitality, connection and living life out loud. All ages are welcome.

This free, inaugural festival pulses with energy from the moment the music starts. Kate Linder, award winning actress on Young and the Restless since 1982 will be emceeing.

Enjoy live performances from Houston’s legendary jazz vocalist Diunna Greenleaf, veteran Broadway Jazz singer John Nevitt, DJ Diva Beats by Angela Nichols will be spinning hits from every generation while the lawn comes alive with movement and play.

Slide into some signature Great Age Senior Fitness Club’s fun at Trini’s Shuffleboard Court, perfect your putt at the Hagstette Family Putting Green alongside golf pros or let loose in a joyful hula hoop session under the open sky.

Don’t miss Houston Ballet’s Dance2Thrive- a joyful, live-music movement class led by Teaching Artists that promotes well-being, creativity and social connection.

Feed your curiosity with inspiring, forward-thinking health and wellness talks from leading experts, then grab a front-row seat for a show-stopping fashion experience starring local and national celebrity seniors who redefine what style looks like at every age.

Come for the music. Stay for the movement. Leave inspired. Great Age on the Green is where aging is celebrated boldly, beautifully and together.

FREE!

This April you can power the Earth Day procession at Discovery Green! Houston’s downtown celebration features community artists and projects including a Magpies and Peacocks fashion show, University of Houston, Downtown art installation, Houston recycled goods artist Glee Ryan and a community art project by puppet-maker Dennis McNett of Wolfbat.  

Other community partners include Citizens’ Environmental Coalition and Magpies & Peacocks.

Discovery Green visitors are invited to participate in mask-making workshops inspiring them to creatively interpret the theme of Our Power, Our Planet. Using recycled materials, these masks will represent endangered animals, plants, ecosystems, natural elements or symbolic representations of the Earth. During the celebration on April 25, participants will wear their masks to join in on a public procession accompanied by 12-foot-tall puppets as part of Reclamation of the Earth created by Wolfbat.  

By coming together to create art together the community becomes the fuel for the procession. We are the power that can protect our planet.  

This will be a zero-waste event. Please plan on bringing your own refillable water bottles and utensils.

MORE INFO HERE

Harnessing the Power of Rhythm and Sound in Poetry

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


Registration & More Info Here

What makes a line of poetry sing? Why do the most memorable sentences, apart from their literal meanings, feel so immersive, rich? Often it comes down to the way a writer works with the materiality of language, attending not only to what the words mean but to how they sound and move together. Whether the language sighs like the wind in the lull of a summer afternoon or screeches like train wheels as they grind against their tracks, whether it evanesces into the serenity of dawn or heaves with the rage of a thunderstorm, the visceral aspects of language work in tandem with imagery, creating aesthetic effects that cannot be reduced to rational meaning or conveyed in any other words.

In this workshop we will attune our ears to the power of verbal music by focusing on two of the most intensely sensuous components of language: rhythm and sound. Through examples from poets such as James Merrill, Amy Clampitt, Ada Limón, Terrance Hayes, and Angie Estes, we will see how writers compose so that their language becomes not only a means to communicate but an aesthetic experience in itself, brimming with sensory presence and lyrical resonance. We will alternate our discussions with generative writing exercises—some of them solitary, some collaborative—and on the second day we will discuss your work, exchanging guided feedback and contemplating how rhythm and sound can shape not only our creative work but everything we write.

Although George and Martha Washington, their family members, and the people enslaved at Mount Vernon are among the most heavily studied personalities of the 18th century, new information and primary sources are discovered about them every year. These new findings come in the form of curatorial objects, archaeological discoveries, and newly unearthed documents. Each revelation adds texture and specificity to our knowledge of the past.
 
In this lecture, Adam T. Erby dives into four recent additions to Mount Vernon’s collections and the surprising stories each tells. The artifacts serve as primary sources and jumping-off points for an exploration of domestic life at Mount Vernon during the Washingtons' lifetimes. Erby discusses some of the surprising facets of life at Mount Vernon and the complicated stories of the men, women, and children who lived there.
 
Twice a year, Bayou Bend's Carol and Les Ballard Lecture Series presents renowned scholars who speak about important aspects of American decorative and fine arts.


Tickets & More Info Here
 
Plan Your Visit

• Admission is free.
• The lecture takes place in the Kilroy Visitor and Education Center at Bayou Bend.
• To participate in a virtual viewing via Zoom, register here.
• For more information, or to reserve a seat, email bayoubend@mfah.org or call 713‑639‑7762.

About the Speaker
Adam T. Erby is the executive director for historic preservation and collections and the Martha Washington Chief Curator at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, where he oversees the institution’s historic structures, curatorial collections, historic interiors, special exhibitions, and conservation program. He recently curated the permanent exhibitions Mount Vernon: The Story of an American Icon and Lives Bound Together: Slavery at Mount Vernon. Erby is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture.

The newspaper archive is filled with curiosities, pigeonholes, mythologies of everyday life, and mysteries. Headlines, ads, classifieds, font types, illustrations, and photos can all inspire new creative conversations. The Houston Poetry Recovery Project welcomes work from writers, poets, and artists who take Houston and Gulf Coast historic newspapers as their source.

Bundle is a small, independent press based in Houston. We publish fiction, poetry, and hybrid, experimental works. We are not a single theme or genre publisher; we are interested in works that bundle concepts and incongruencies together to produce new thoughts, outcomes, and modes of relating.Bundle brings together feminist, anti-racist, environmental, and socially conscious writers and works. We question the prevailing values of capitalism and patriarchy. We are for the weird and wayward, the beautiful, the dumb, the capacious and generous, the obscure and inefficient, and the slovenly. We are against logics of scarcity and seek alternative imaginings of living and flourishing together. To this end, bundle is interested in supporting and sustaining the off-the-page life of projects.

 
https://www.basket-books.com/events/4930320260426

No Name is a Black-owned worker cooperative connecting community members both inside and outside carceral facilities with radical books. Each month, No Name uplifts two books written by Black, indigenous, and other people of color. No Name believes building community through political education is crucial for our liberation and should be accessible to everyone—which is why all programming is free. 

MEETING DEETS

When: Sunday, April 26 @ 1 PM

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)

How: RSVP to let us know you're coming! Support the Fiction Book Club by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here!

ABOUT THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH

First published in 1961, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a masterful and timeless interrogation of race, colonialism, psychological trauma, and revolutionary struggle. In 2020, it found a new readership in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and the centering of narratives interrogating race by Black writers. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in spurring historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of post-independence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on the other. A landmark text for revolutionaries and activists, The Wretched of the Earth is an eternal touchstone for civil rights, anti-colonialism, psychiatric studies, and Black consciousness movements around the world. Translated by Richard Philcox, and featuring now-classic critical essays by Jean-Paul Sartre and Homi K. Bhabha, as well as a new essay, this sixtieth anniversary edition of Fanon’s most famous text stands proudly alongside such pillars of anti-colonialism and anti-racism as Edward Said’s Orientalism and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

https://kindredstorieshtx.com/collections/book-clubs/products/april-2026-no-name-book-club-april-26-1-pm-cst

Harnessing the Power of Rhythm and Sound in Poetry

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

Registration & More Info Here

What makes a line of poetry sing? Why do the most memorable sentences, apart from their literal meanings, feel so immersive, rich? Often it comes down to the way a writer works with the materiality of language, attending not only to what the words mean but to how they sound and move together. Whether the language sighs like the wind in the lull of a summer afternoon or screeches like train wheels as they grind against their tracks, whether it evanesces into the serenity of dawn or heaves with the rage of a thunderstorm, the visceral aspects of language work in tandem with imagery, creating aesthetic effects that cannot be reduced to rational meaning or conveyed in any other words.

In this workshop we will attune our ears to the power of verbal music by focusing on two of the most intensely sensuous components of language: rhythm and sound. Through examples from poets such as James Merrill, Amy Clampitt, Ada Limón, Terrance Hayes, and Angie Estes, we will see how writers compose so that their language becomes not only a means to communicate but an aesthetic experience in itself, brimming with sensory presence and lyrical resonance. We will alternate our discussions with generative writing exercises—some of them solitary, some collaborative—and on the second day we will discuss your work, exchanging guided feedback and contemplating how rhythm and sound can shape not only our creative work but everything we write.

Cooking with "Foreign Flair": Exploring the World from the Midcentury American Kitchen
 
In the 1960s, grocery store shelves, magazines, cookbooks, and TV cooking shows reflected a growing American fascination with food from overseas. Soldiers and foreign service workers traveled the world, tourists enjoyed newly accessible air travel, and visitors to world's fairs were greeted with Americanized iterations of global cuisines and model kitchens that echoed the (mostly imagined) design trends of other cultures.
 
In this presentation, Sarah Archer explores the American fascination with worldly culinary culture and how it helped to transform the midcentury kitchen into a vessel of exploration. This lecture complements the exhibition Midcentury Menu: Dining in the Atomic Age. 

Tickets & More Info Here

Plan Your Visit

• Ticket includes admission to Rienzi.

About the Presenter
Sarah Archer is an independent scholar and design journalist based in Philadelphia. She is the author of several books, including The Midcentury Kitchen, Midcentury Christmas, and Catland: the Soft Power of Cat Culture in Japan.

Free, registration required

Join Inprint on Sunday, April 26, as we celebrate the stories of our elders. Senior citizens enrolled in the Inprint Senior Memoir Workshops at the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center will give readings from their work, sharing touching pieces about their lives, families, and communities.

The Inprint Senior Memoir Workshops at the Jewish Community Center have been running since 1996. These workshops were taught by Anna Barr and Maria Hiers, both former Inprint Fellows. Anna now also serves as Inprint’s Development Manager.

This reading and the workshops led by Anna and Maria are part of the Inprint Senior Memoir Workshops program, which has provided a professional writer to work with groups of senior citizens at different community centers throughout the city for more than 20 years. Similar Inprint workshops are currently running at the Finnigan Park Community Center, Tom Bass Community Center, and Julia C. Hester House.

Registration & More Info Here

Every spring, three Houston parks team up to celebrate the Houston musicians who keep the tradition of jazz alive. The immensely popular series, Jazzy Sundays in the Parks, brings free jazz concerts to Discovery Green in March and the Water Works at Buffalo Bayou Park in April.  

Traditionally, the series opens at Emancipation Park, but due to the construction of a state-of-the-art performance stage and other park improvements, the series will be at Discovery Green and Buffalo Bayou Park. The series will return to Emancipation Park next year.  

Guests are encouraged to arrive early and bring a blanket or lawn chairs. Food and drink will be available for purchase. A pop-up market will be on site at each park with locally crafted items, food and wearables. All concerts are free and family friendly. 

MORE INFO HERE

Yann Martel will read from his new novel Son of Nobody, followed by an on-stage conversation led by Houston author and former Houston Chronicle Book Editor Maggie Galehouse. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. The event is presented as part of the 2025/2026 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series. 

Tickets & More Info Here

Yann Martel is the celebrated Canadian author of Life of Pi, a Booker Prize winning international bestseller made into an Academy Award winning film and successful Broadway play. Born in Salamanca, Spain, Martel grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, and Victoria, British Columbia, and, through his parents’ time in the Canadian Foreign Service, was also raised in Costa Rica, Paris, Madrid, and Mexico City. After studying philosophy in college, he worked at odd jobs—tree-planter, dishwasher, security guard—while establishing himself as a writer. Known for exploring themes of interpretation, identity, and storytelling, Martel is also the author of the novels Self, Beatrice & Virgil, and The High Mountains of Portugal, as well as the acclaimed short story collection The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios.

We're meeting to discuss Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala!

BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

When: Tuesday, April 28 @ 7PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend! Support the Mystery/Thriller Book Club by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here!

ABOUT ARSENIC AND ADOBO

A RUSA Award-winning novel!

The first book in a new culinary cozy series full of sharp humor and delectable dishes—one that might just be killer....

When Lila Macapagal moves back home to recover from a horrible breakup, her life seems to be following all the typical rom-com tropes. She's tasked with saving her Tita Rosie's failing restaurant, and she has to deal with a group of matchmaking aunties who shower her with love and judgment. But when a notoriously nasty food critic (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead moments after a confrontation with Lila, her life quickly swerves from a Nora Ephron romp to an Agatha Christie case.

With the cops treating her like she's the one and only suspect, and the shady landlord looking to finally kick the Macapagal family out and resell the storefront, Lila's left with no choice but to conduct her own investigation. Armed with the nosy auntie network, her barista best bud, and her trusted Dachshund, Longanisa, Lila takes on this tasty, twisted case and soon finds her own neck on the chopping block…

https://kindredstorieshtx.com/collections/book-clubs/products/april-2026-mystery-thriller-book-club-april-28-7pm

Join us on Tuesday, April 28 for a poetry reading featuring Samyak Shertok, francine j. harris, and Bo Hee Moon!

Samyak Shertok debut collection, No Rhododendron (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025), was selected by Kimiko Hahn for the 2024 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and shortlisted for the 2026 PEN Open Book Award. His poems appear in The Cincinnati Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, POETRY, Shenandoah, Waxwing, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and the Jake Adam York Prize, he has received fellowships from Aspen Words, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. His work has been awarded the Robert and Adele Schiff Award for Poetry, the Gulf Coast Prize in Poetry, and the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Originally from Nepal, he is an Assistant Professor of English at Mississippi State University.

francine j. harris is a professor in the Department of English. Her third collection, Here is the Sweet Hand from Farrar, Straus & Giroux, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award. Her second collection, play dead, was the winner of the Lambda Literary and Audre Lorde Awards and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her first collection, allegiance, was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery and PEN Open Book Awards. Originally from Detroit, she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She also serves as Consulting Faculty Editor at Gulf Coast.

A South Korean adoptee, Bo Hee Moon is the author of Birthstones in the Province of Mercy published with Milkweed Editions, and Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs, which she published under another name with Tinderbox Editions in 2021. Her poems have appeared in Agni, Poetry, The Margins, swamp pink, and other journals. She is a PhD student in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston, where she has received the Inprint Brown Foundation Fellowship.

https://www.basket-books.com/events/4931720260428

Laura Rathe Fine Art Houston presents Beneath the Surface, a group exhibition featuring KX2, Audra Weaser, and Sydney Yeager. The show brings together women artists at pivotal stages in their careers, each navigating a challenging art world while pushing the boundaries of visual language and artistic practice. Beneath the Surface explores what unites them: curiosity, experimentation, and the perseverance required to sustain meaningful creative work. Through layered materials, technical innovation, and meditative reflection, their work captures moments of balance and suspended energy, revealing the labor, depth, and transformation that often lie hidden behind apparent calm and beauty.  The exhibition reception will be held Thursday, April 30, from 6–9 p.m. at the River Oaks District gallery (4444 Westheimer Rd.). 

The exhibition will be on view through May 31st, 2026.


MORE INFO AND EXHIBITION PREVIEW HERE

Artist: Melissa Aytenfisu 

Othered is a profound exploration of the lives and identities of biracial individuals. In a world where racial mixing is increasingly accepted, the biracial experience remains a unique and underrepresented facet of our collective narrative. Through the medium of photography, Melissa aims to delve into the intricate tapestry of biracial identity.

This body of work will focus on the subject of biracialism (black and white).She particularly likes to address issues such as:

1. The extent to which biracial individuals are categorized and their senses of identity molded by societal norms and expectations.

2. The degree to which biracial people differ or coalesce in their developing senses of self.

3. Self-identity: The evolving impact of a growing population of biracial individuals on societal concepts of race, racism and post-racism.

FREE RSVP & MORE INFO HERE

Celebrate the release of Rich and Rotten with Jahquel J!

WAITLIST SIGN UP AND MORE INFO HERE

EVENT DEETS

This event is a signing only. You will have the opportunity to get a signed copy of Rich and Rotten and take a photo with the author. Each Signing Line Ticket comes with a copy of the book of Rich and Rotten.

How: Purchase a SIGNING LINE TICKET to guarantee a spot in the signing line. Each Signing Line Ticket comes with a copy of the book of Rich and Rotten. You can bring up to 5 previous books by Jahquel that you would like signed. Please note that each ticket is for entry of ONE person. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Explosive, sensual, and unapologetically raw, Rich and Rotten delivers Jahquel J.’s signature blend of passionate romance and high-stakes family drama—where love is the most dangerous game, and trust is the rarest luxury.

In Greenwich Pointe’s world of Black wealth and power, Tatiana Rich has everything money can buy—except freedom. When her kingpin father forces her into a strategic marriage with the Sterling dynasty’s heir, she begs Nazir Kane—the man she fell for during her college years—to run away with her.

By morning, he’s vanished without a word.

A decade later, Tatiana is rebuilding her life after her husband Karim’s tragic death. While raising their daughter and growing her luxury spa empire, an assassination attempt on her father brings an unexpected guardian: Nazir Kane—now a powerful security specialist assigned to protect her family.

Living under the same roof as the man who shattered her heart is torture enough. But as old flames reignite, darker truths emerge about the father who controlled her and the husband she mourned.

With enemies closing in and whispers that her husband’s death wasn’t an accident, Tatiana must decide if the man who once betrayed her is the only one who can save her now . . .

Cantor Phillip Phares leads a performance of sacred chanting in the Byzantine Orthodox Christian tradition. During the program, a local priest explains the symbolism and use of Orthodox liturgical vestments and implements.

Tickets & More Info Here

Plan Your Visit

• Included with All Access ticket
• This program takes place on Level 2 of the Beck Building.
• Parking Information | Museum Hours | MFAH Campus Map

About the Performer
Phillip Phares holds a certificate in Byzantine music from Hellenic College Holy Cross. He currently serves as a cantor at St. Joseph Orthodox Church in Houston.

MFAH World Faiths Initiative
This program is part of the MFAH World Faiths Initiative, which seeks to highlight themes of faith, religion, and spirituality in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Focusing on the many expressions of faith in these collections, the initiative honors the diverse communities of Houston and inspires connections among cultures and beliefs.

Houston’s African Art Festival returns May 2–3! Art, culture, food, music & a Saturday afterparty. Free admission.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/houstons-african-art-festival-tickets-1984099106839

Join HFTC for our second writing workshop led by Dr. Shiarnice Burton in collaboration with Inprint.

The way your body moves tells a story. Your outside speaks to what is going on inside.

In this high-energy, interactive workshop, students use movement as a doorway into storytelling. Before writing a single word, participants explore emotions, memories, and personal experiences through guided exercises—moving like weather, carrying invisible objects, and shifting energy levels.

Each activity helps students notice how posture, rhythm, space, and gesture express feelings and ideas. Then, they translate those sensations into vivid written stories and reflections.

By engaging the body first, this workshop lowers writing anxiety, builds emotional awareness, and helps young writers find an authentic voice.

REGISTRATION & MORE INFO HERE

Join Rothko Chapel for a playful, family-friendly mindfulness experience blending animal-inspired yoga, breathing exercises, and creative intention-setting through art. Designed to support children’s emotional well-being and mental health, this nurturing session is led by Align Mind, a Houston-based organization bringing mindfulness workshops to families across the city.

Pay What You Can Tickets $5-25 | In-person event with bench seating

REGISTER & MORE INFO HERE

Establishing Your Voice; Knowing Your Audience

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

This workshop invites writers to think more intentionally about how the concept of an audience shapes their voice, tone, and the creative risks they take. Drawing on the distinct literary approaches of Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, we explore what it means to write from within a community versus writing about a community, under pressure to explain, justify, or perform. Rather than positioning these approaches in opposition to each other, the workshop uses them to open a broader conversation about power, visibility, and responsibility in storytelling.

Through guided reading, conversation, and generative writing, participants are encouraged to notice how their own language shifts depending on who they imagine is listening. The emphasis is on awareness and ultimately offers writers space to reflect on factors such as voice, authority, and trust on the page without determining a single “correct” method. Designed for writers of fiction at all experience levels, but also applicable across genres, this workshop will create a focused, supportive environment for experimentation and reflection.

Registration & More Info Here

Houston’s African Art Festival returns May 2–3! Art, culture, food, music & a Saturday afterparty. Free admission.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/houstons-african-art-festival-tickets-1984099106839

Hot and Spicy Louisiana Boiled Crawfish with Live music and good family fun!

For more than a decade, M.E.N. Inc.’s Annual Crawfish Festival has been a cornerstone community event in Houston, bringing together families, businesses, and supporters to celebrate culture, connection, and purpose. What began as a small community gathering has grown into one of M.E.N. Inc.’s signature fundraisers featuring live music, Zydeco performances, great food, and family-friendly activities for all ages.

Beyond the crawfish and music, the festival represents something bigger: a shared investment in the next generation. With the continued support of community partners, volunteers, and sponsors, the Crawfish Festival remains a powerful reminder of what’s possible when a community comes together with purpose and heart.

 
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/12th-annual-crawfish-festival-tickets-1982977994562

Establishing Your Voice; Knowing Your Audience

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

This workshop invites writers to think more intentionally about how the concept of an audience shapes their voice, tone, and the creative risks they take. Drawing on the distinct literary approaches of Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, we explore what it means to write from within a community versus writing about a community, under pressure to explain, justify, or perform. Rather than positioning these approaches in opposition to each other, the workshop uses them to open a broader conversation about power, visibility, and responsibility in storytelling.

Through guided reading, conversation, and generative writing, participants are encouraged to notice how their own language shifts depending on who they imagine is listening. The emphasis is on awareness and ultimately offers writers space to reflect on factors such as voice, authority, and trust on the page without determining a single “correct” method. Designed for writers of fiction at all experience levels, but also applicable across genres, this workshop will create a focused, supportive environment for experimentation and reflection.

Registration & More Info Here

brittny ray crowell and Nina McConigley will read from their new books respectively, Cord Swell and How to Commit A Postcolonial Murder, followed by an on-stage conversation led by poet and University of Houston Creative Writing Program director Kevin Prufer. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. The event is presented as the closing event of the 2025/2026 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series and also marks the final Inprint reading hosted by Rich Levy, Inprint’s longtime, outgoing Executive Director, who is retiring after 31 impactful years in the role.

Tickets & More Info Here

brittny ray crowell is a poet, artist, and assistant professor at Clark Atlanta University. Winner of an Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry and the Lucy Terry Prince Prize, crowell received her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston, where she was an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow. Her poems have appeared in The Common, Copper Nickel, The Journal, Ploughshares, and elsewhere, and her work as a librettist has been featured as part of the Kennedy Center’s Cartography Project. Cord Swell, crowell’s ambitious and inventive debut poetry collection, is a pilgrimage of poems, stories, voices, and mixed-media collage through the lives of three generations of Black women from her hometown of Texarkana, Texas. Nick Flynn calls the book “an altar, a praise song to women…who survive―some as witness, some as memory, some as a recipe for gravy.” A. Van Jordan describes these poems as “heirlooms passed down to us, bolstering strength through every challenge.”

Nina McConigley is the author of the story collection Cowboys and East Indians, which won the PEN/Open Book Award and the High Plains Book Award. Her play based on Cowboys and East Indians was commissioned by the Denver Center for Performing Arts and recently received its world premiere. McConigley’s work has also appeared in The New York Times, Orion, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Salon. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston, where she was an Inprint Brown Foundation Fellow and a winner of the Inprint Donald Barthelme Nonfiction Prize. How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder is McConigley’s bold and fiercely original debut novel, set in 1986 rural Wyoming, about a pair of Indian-American teenage sisters who plot to murder a newly immigrated uncle. At its heart, the tale is a moving story of sisterhood, a playful ode to the 80s, a murder mystery (of sorts), and a powerful meditation on history and language, trauma and healing, and the meaning of independence. Celeste Ng writes, “I have been waiting for Nina McConigley’s debut novel for years and it’s even better than I could have imagined.”

Formed in Chicago in 1969 by visionary musician Maurice White, Earth, Wind & Fire revolutionized popular music with their genre-blending sound and uplifting spirit. Combining elements of R&B, soul, funk, jazz, disco, and pop, the band created timeless hits like September, Boogie Wonderland, and Shining Star. Known for their dynamic horn section, kalimba-driven grooves, and electrifying stage shows, EWF became one of the best-selling and most influential groups of all time, with over 90 million records sold worldwide.

Their innovative approach earned them nine Grammy Awards, induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and countless honors for their cultural impact. Today, founding members Verdine White, Philip Bailey, and Ralph Johnson continue to carry forward the band’s legacy of positivity, love, and musical excellence.

TICKETS & MORE INFO HERE

On view: Friday, March 27th - Sunday, May 24th
Featured Artists:
Jamee Elyse Hill
William Harry Dadson, Jr.
Makala McCoy
Deveney Thomas
Jaida LaCour
Arya Sreedharan
Ken Jackson
Keri Manuel

https://www.umusetsu.org/exhibitions

DJ Santos Sounds visits the MFAH for a Friday evening performance inspired by Frida: The Making of an Icon. Devoted to Frida Kahlo’s life and legacy, the monumental exhibition features more than 30 works by the legendary Mexican artist and 120 by the generations of artists she inspired.

This all-vinyl experience is inspired by themes from the exhibition and uses immersive soundscapes to highlight Kahlo's role as an icon of the Chicano movement, the music of her era, and the preservation of local music history.

Tickets & More Info Here

Plan Your Visit

• This program is included with Museum admission.
• The performance takes place on the lower level of the Kinder Building.
• Parking Information | Museum Hours | MFAH Campus Map

About the Performer
DJ Santos Sounds (Jesus Lopez) is a Houston-based musical artist and archivist whose work seeks to preserve Chicano sounds in analog form. He has been digitizing his personal collection for almost a decade, a vast archive comprised primarily of 45s of rare Chicano Soul, Texas Soul, Lowrider Oldies, Barrio Ballads, Swamp Pop, Rancheras, Doo Wop, Boleros, and Cumbia that he curates for online audiences and live performances. His work includes background research on the artists and local music history. 

TCB – The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing is a biography of the influential writer Toni Cade Bambara, whose literary works and film collaborations were a catalyzing force in 20th century cultural and political movements. The documentary is made up of stories shared by friends and colleagues including Toni Morrison, Nikky Finney and Haile Gerima.

Sat, Apr 11th, 12:00 PM 
Sat, Apr 11th, 2:00 PM 

TICKETS & MORE INFO HERE

This event is 21+ | TICKETS & MORE INFO HERE

When Cher ruled the charts, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air had everyone quoting lines, and MTV was the ultimate pop-culture destination, the ’90s gave us unforgettable music, bold fashion, and iconic moments. Now it’s your turn to relive it all.

Join us at the Houston Museum of Natural Science at Sugar Land for a nostalgic night packed with throwback vibes, dancing, and interactive fun. Dance the night away as DJ Griffin spins the best hits of the decade, grab cocktails from our cash bars throughout the museum, and enjoy bites from local food vendors.

Need a break from the dance floor? Stop by our friendship bracelet station to get your craft on or capture your most legendary ’90s look at our 360° photo booth.

Whether you lived through the decade or just love the aesthetic, this event is your chance to step into a time of neon colors, unforgettable beats, and pure fun. Throw on your best ’90s outfit, bring your friends, and get ready for a night of nostalgia you won’t forget.

Celebrate the release of Pleasure Please with Ashley Cobb!

RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming.

Please note outside copies of the book will not be allowed in the bookstore and you will not be eligible for the signing/photo line. You must buy a book from Kindred Stories.

TICKETS & MORE INFO HERE

ABOUT THE BOOK

A fun, exciting, and informative guide to sexual health, wellness, and pleasure for women of color

In Pleasure, Please! The Black Woman's Guide to Unapologetic Pleasure and Confidence, certified sex educator Ashley Cobb delivers a comprehensive and empowering new exploration of sexual wellness for women of color (and especially Black women). Cobb draws on her extensive experience and expertise in women's health, sexuality, and activism to walk you through everything from individual empowerment to effective ways to confront and overcome the barriers and stigma that Black women face.

You'll discover expert advice interwoven with real stories from real women who have been in your shoes and dealt with the same issues you deal with every day. You'll also find answers to the questions women most frequently ask the author to answer, as well as crystal-clear, informative guidance you can apply in your own life and relationships to help you make your life better now.

LUCÍA is a 23-year-old vocalist from Veracruz, Mexico whose singular artistic vision bridges the gaps between jazz, Latin and pop music. Lucía Gutierrez Rebolloso started her musical career at the age of two, singing and dancing in her parents’ son jarocho band, “Son de Madera.” She is the first artist from Mexico to enter and win the prestigious Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. Her self-titled debut album is out now. It presents Lucía’s interpretations of jazz standards (“What a Difference a Day Makes,” “You Must Believe in Spring”) classic Spanish songs (including “Silencio,” “La Llorona,” “Como Fue”) and pop songs by Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, featuring an extraordinary group of musicians including Edward Simon, David Sanchez, Larry Grenadier, and Antonio Sánchez.

TICKETS & MORE INFO HERE

LUCÍA is a 23-year-old vocalist from Veracruz, Mexico whose singular artistic vision bridges the gaps between jazz, Latin and pop music. Lucía Gutierrez Rebolloso started her musical career at the age of two, singing and dancing in her parents’ son jarocho band, “Son de Madera.” She is the first artist from Mexico to enter and win the prestigious Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. Her self-titled debut album is out now. It presents Lucía’s interpretations of jazz standards (“What a Difference a Day Makes,” “You Must Believe in Spring”) classic Spanish songs (including “Silencio,” “La Llorona,” “Como Fue”) and pop songs by Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, featuring an extraordinary group of musicians including Edward Simon, David Sanchez, Larry Grenadier, and Antonio Sánchez.

TICKETS & MORE INFO HERE