Good beer and bad prose are the mothers of invention.

"I was just drinkin’ with Tim Huggins, who runs Newtonville Books," says Steve Almond, describing the serendipitous genesis of "Cover 2 Cover," a weekly authors-and-musicians showcase that debuts Monday at the Paradise. "Ethan Hawke’s new novel had just come out, and I had a review from the New York Times or something. I was reading a passage to Tim, but in this real, like, ‘This is some heavy shit I’m gonna lay on you’–type voice, y’know? Like, ‘Listen to what the Hawke has to say.’ Just totally bullshitting around, I said, ‘You know what, at my next reading at your store, I’m gonna read Ethan Hawke’s shit!’ "

But soon the joke wasn’t so laughable. "When I actually thought about it," says the Phoenix contributor and author of the short-story collection My Life in Heavy Metal (Grove), "I thought, I don’t wanna read my stuff, I wanna read stuff by other writers who I really dig. And then either Tim or I said, ‘What about having musicians doing covers, too?’ "

Almond and Huggins had worked together before, on the well-received "Earfull" series, where writers like Tom Perrotta and Dennis Lehane and musicians like Bill Janovitz and Tanya Donelly would read and play on the Kendall Café’s tiny stage. Perrotta and Janovitz became fast friends after the experience, says Almond. Even better, their respective fan bases got turned on to each other’s work. It’s that kind of camaraderie and community building — a convergence of different media and different genres, different artists and different audiences — that Almond and Huggins (and co-sponsors Newtonville Books and the Phoenix) are looking to foster again this time around.

But they’re also after something else. Almond sees "Cover 2 Cover" as like a lovingly crafted mix tape or a dog-eared paperback passed between friends — a casual, spirited way to pay tribute to writerly and musicianly influences. "All us little writer geeks have our little rock-star writer heroes, where we just read the same passage over and over again, and when we get together and get baked and hang out we go, ‘Check out this!’ and read it to somebody. It’s our own form of geekness.

"There are people out there who are heroes to us, whose words and sentences are really like songs, that we return to again and again. And that’s the energy we’re hoping we’ll come across."

So it is that this Monday night will find Perrotta, who evoked the festering nastiness of small-town life so well in Election, reading the stories of Raymond Carver, the pre-eminent chronicler of sublimated interpersonal violence and suburban anomie. Janovitz will play the drunky-tonk of George Jones. (Pray he doesn’t ape "No-Show Jones" to the point of skipping out on the gig.) Animal Husbandry author Laura Zigman will read the writings of Jen Trynin; Janovitz’s erstwhile Buffalo Tom bandmate Chris Colbourn will perform the compositions of Italian firebrand Pier Paolo Pasolini. That Trynin is better known as a local rocker than as a writer, and that Renaissance man Pasolini was better known as a poet, screenwriter, and director, are of a piece with the series’s genre-busting aims. In later weeks, look for Dennis Lehane reading Cormac McCarthy, Michael Tarbox channeling Charley Patton, and Elizabeth Searle doing David Foster Wallace. And in between performances, a different DJ each night — including Almond himself and Phoenix music editor Matt Ashare — will be spinning tunes. All covers, of course.

"I love hearing an artist that I dig doing a cover," Almond concludes. "It’s my favorite thing. Because the song is in there, but I’m not just hearing the song. I’m hearing their love for the song. It’s kind of an ‘art squared’ thing."

"Cover 2 Cover" debuts this Monday, May 12, at the Paradise, 967 Commonwealth Avenue. Doors are at 6 p.m., and seating is limited and by reservation only; call (617) 562-8819.