In Conversation: Deb Olin Unferth & Mary Helen Specht
Library Fdn & Texas Book Fest Event
710 W. César Chávez St.
Special Event Center (1st Floor South)
This event is in collaboration between the Texas Book Festival and The Library Foundation.
Austin-based authors Deb Olin Unferth and Mary Helen Specht discuss their buzzy "cli-fi" novels, Earth 7 and Mudlark.
Join us for an evening with Austin-based authors Deb Olin Unferth and Mary Helen Specht. Conversation will be followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.
Books will be available for sale courtesy of BookPeople.
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, Texas, where she lives with her family.
This event is free and open to the public. Please register for this event.
Meet the Author events provide an opportunity to hear a writer read their work aloud and discuss it with an audience.
For accessibility accommodations: 512-974-7400