What happens when two acclaimed Austin authors imagine the future of our changing world?
Join Deb Olin Unferth and Mary Helen Specht for a lively conversation about their acclaimed new “cli-fi” novels, “Earth 7” and “Mudlark.” Stay for an audience Q&A and book signing, with books available for purchase from BookPeople
Don’t miss this thought-provoking evening of storytelling, conversation, and community. The event is a collaboration with Texas Book Festival.
Deb Olin Unferth is the author of seven books, including Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and four Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Granta, and McSweeney’s. She’s a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches for the New Writers Project and the Michener Center for Writers.
Mary Helen Specht is the author of Mudlark (July 2026) and the novel Migratory Animals, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Best First Fiction Award and the Writers’ League of Texas Fiction Prize. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Prairie Schooner, and numerous other publications. A Fulbright Scholar to Nigeria and Dobie-Paisano Writing Fellow, Specht currently teaches creative writing at St. Edward’s University in Austin.
