NOCTUARY Book Launch: A Poetry Reading & Community Gathering

✦ Join us for a celebratory evening featuring poetry readings in the round by Sarah Matthes, Sasha West, Jennifer Chang and C. Rees; an invocation of the dead; live-tarot readings, refreshments and poetic ecstasy ensue! Hosted by Host Publications editors Annar Veröld-Miranda & Claire Bowman! 

C. Rees immerses us in a landscape of personal and collective loss, where grief is not a process with beginning and end, but a churning ecology we inhabit. NOCTUARY bears witness to its rivers, trees, and lichens, as well as the contamination and exploitation of a rural county where gods “bleed settler dreams into the water- / shed” and “headstones grow [...] like parasitoid wasps,” never looking away from our own complicity in “history’s cruel regard.” In these necropastoral nocturnes, the ruin wrought upon this land and the peoples who continue to inhabit it is unburied, as present as "foxes bruised with exhaust."

✦ Host Publications is an award-winning, women-led independent publisher located in Austin, Texas. Devoted to our mission to elevate historically marginalized writers, Host Publications publishes radical poetry and fiction by emerging LGBTQ+, BIPOC, intersectional feminist, and immigrant voices. 

✦ Free & open to all lovers of literature. 

✦ There will be small bites and light refreshments 

✦ Health and safety note: masks are encouraged and will be provided. 

✦ This event is supported in part by an Elevate Grant of Austin Arts, Culture, Music, & Entertainment.

✦✦✦ ABOUT THE GUESTS ✦✦✦

C. Rees (they/them) is a queer poet and bookseller whose work contends with contamination and complicity, emergent ecologies, hauntings, and porousness. Their first poetry collection, NOCTUARY, will be published by Host Publications in 2026. C. was raised in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Lenni-Lenape land, and currently live in Austin, TX, on Comanche, Lipan Apache, Coahuiltecan, Tonkawa, and Jumanos land. They hold an MFA in Poetry from the New Writers Project at UT Austin. They are ideologically and materially committed to a free Palestine. 

Jennifer Chang is the author of three books of poetry, including An Authentic Life, which received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She teaches at the University of Texas in Austin. 

Sarah Matthes writes poems and jokes. Her debut collection Town Crier was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. She teaches poetry at UT Austin where she also serves as managing editor for Bat City Review.

Sasha West is the author of How to Abandon Ship (2024) and Failure and I Bury the Body (2013), recipient of the National Poetry Series and a Texas Institute of Letters First Book of Poetry Award. As part of eco-arts collaborative Hammonds + West, her multi-media shows with visual artist Hollis Hammonds have been exhibited at the Columbus College of Art and Design, Texas A&M, ArtPrize Michigan, and elsewhere. She is an Associate Professor at St. Edward’s University, where she founded the Environmental Humanities program.

✦✦✦ ACCESSIBILITY & PARKING INFO ✦✦✦

PARKING: Alienated Majesty is located at 613 W 29th St. We share a limited amount of parking spots in our commercial lot with three other businesses (so carpooling is recommended if you can!). You can also find free and paid street parking options in the surrounding neighborhood. There is one designated accessible parking spot on the side of the lot facing Rio Grande. 

ENTRANCE: Our main entrance is accessible via ramp and opens manually. If you need assistance with opening the door, feel free to contact us ahead of time to let us know. 

RESTROOM: Our public restroom is single-occupancy and wheelchair-accessible. 

If you have any additional questions about accessing the space, feel free to call us at 512-243-6679 or email pr@alienatedmajestybooks.com. 

✦✦✦ ABOUT HOST & ALIENATED MAJESTY BOOKS ✦✦✦ 

✦ Host Publications is an award-winning, women-led independent publisher located in Austin, Texas. Devoted to our mission to elevate historically marginalized writers, Host Publications publishes radical poetry and fiction by emerging LGBTQ+, BIPOC, intersectional feminist, and immigrant voices. 

✦ Alienated Majesty Books is a bookstore in central Austin specializing in small presses, translations, literary fiction, indie comics, politics & theory, environments, and poetry. In 2024, the Austin Chronicle named AM a critics pick for Best Obscure Literature Collection.