Writer and performer Jae Nichelle will debut her poetry collection this Friday at Alienated Majesty Books. Titled \u201cGrownfolk Blues: a musical in poems,\u201d the collection is a story told through bank statements, to-do lists and resumes.<\/p>\n
\u201c(The collection is) designed to make people laugh,\u201d Nichelle said. \u201cI want people to come and know that even when things are super serious, super sad, our joy and our ability to play and satirize things actually helps us persist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s \u201cVaudeville Night\u201d event is the latest in a long history of collaborations with Host Publications, which was originally founded in 1988 by Joe W. Bratcher, who also opened Malvern Books, which later became Alienated Majesty.<\/p>\n
Host\u2019s managing editor, Annar Ver\u00f6ld-Miranda, worked at Alienated Majesty for almost 10 years before entering publishing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been amazing to see how society, but also myself as an organizer in our press, as a publishing house, evolve with the needs of our communities and the people that we love and the people that we champion,\u201d Ver\u00f6ld-Miranda said.<\/p>\n
Working with Ver\u00f6ld-Miranda to book performers for the event, Nichelle selected a mix of different artists, reflecting the multi-genre style of \u201cGrownfolk Blues,\u201d which is part poem, play and musical. The launch features friends and collaborators M. Mick Powell and Amanda Johnston, 2024 Texas Poet Laureate, as well as local saxophonist Bianca Bailey.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you go to a regular bookstore, you know it\u2019s people that read all the bestsellers and they\u2019re in book groups and they think of themselves as readers,\u201d said Melynda Nuss, co-owner of Alienated Majesty. \u201cBut, we\u2019ve gotten a lot of people that think of themselves as musicians or punk rockers or just people walking down the street who happen to find books that they like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nichelle said she looks forward to introducing audiences to \u201cGrownfolk Blues,\u201d and hopes even when not performed live, readers engage with the piece in a thoughtful way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want my success measured by the things that I do that contribute positively to my community, to my society, and are less focused on the external validation, things that we\u2019re taught to pursue, achieve, dream of,\u201d Nichelle said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writer and performer Jae Nichelle will debut her poetry collection this Friday at Alienated Majesty Books. Titled \u201cGrownfolk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-461039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}