All posts by Jim Vermin

VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?

KLAM: Years ago we put on a show called “Poems, Paintings and Piledrivers.” Between poems, wrestlers from Tijuana smacked each other down on the museum floor at SDAI. By way of miracle, nothing broke, and poets and crudos and tecnicos and transvestite ring girls won the night.  I remember Steve Kowit’s last reading with us and how Jimmy Jazz and I merrily pointed out the sandwich stains on his sweatshirt and loved him for making absolutely zero pretense in life in general. Most of all I remember the wee hours, the champions who stayed to the bitter end, stacking chairs, mopping the floor and putting the museum back in order. Finishing the beer and embracing each other and locking up after another show… friendships, loyalty, some of the best kind of bad behavior mixed in…

Michael Klam organizes and hosts the Poetry & Art Series at the San Diego Art Institute in Balboa Park. His freelance journalism has appeared in San Diego CityBeat, The San Diego Daily Transcript, Voice of San Diego, and La Prensa San Diego. As a teacher, Klam cocreated the Page to Canvas to Stage program, bringing poets, painters, and K-12 students together to create visual art and perform poetry. His publisher is Puna Press.

Come see Michael read at 3rdSpace in San Diego on Saturday, April 15 at 7pm. 

VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?

LEWIS: The strangest experience at a reading for me happened when I was hosting an improv storytelling show called Long Story Short. The idea was that anyone could walk on stage and tell a 5 minute story based on a theme. A guy from the audience went up and instead of telling a story, proceeded to do the worst freestyle rap I’ve ever heard. I didn’t want to be rude and pull him off the stage, but this guy was just garbage. When his time was finally up, he wouldn’t stop. Then another guy from the audience got up and tried to take the mic away, and he was doing his own freestyle rap, and it was just as bad! So these two idiots were just yelling terrible rhymes at each other for another 5 minutes before they finally gave up and the two other people in the audience gave them a pity clap. It was this experience that made me want to pursue a career in editing.

Matt E. Lewis is an editor for Ayahuasca Publishing and The Radvocate magazine. He reviews books for Horror Talk and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Come see Matt read at 3rdSpace in San Diego on Saturday, April 15 at 7pm. 

VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?

QUINN: At Bread Loaf in 2009 Luis Alberto Urrea stepped away from the podium and recited, from memory and without stumble or hesitation, an entire chapter from his novel, INTO THE BEAUTIFUL NORTH.  A bravura performance with zero bravura on his end, just earnest devotion to telling a great story. The room was rapt with attention. Best nearly-an-hour “reading” ever, that’s for sure.

Bridget Quinn is the author of Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order), which NPR’s Susan Stamberg calls “a terrific essay collection” with “spunky attitudinal, SMART writing,” marking the second time “attitudinal” has been used about her work (first: Kirkus 1996). Raised on the high plains of Montana with two sisters, six brothers, a devout mother and a WWII Marine-turned-lawyer father, in a home surrounded by cows and nuclear missile silos, today Bridget lives in San Francisco with her husband, two children, two dogs and a ridiculous number of bikes.

Come see Bridget read at Book Show in Highland Park on Friday, April 14 at 7:30pm and at 3rdSpace in San Diego on Saturday, April 15 at 7pm. 

VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?

WAPPLER: My own first reading is forever imprinted on my mind. I was 18 or 19, and I went to an open mic at a place called the Hot House in Chicago with a teacher-friend and my boyfriend. I got to the stage and read my poem, and was amazed at how quiet the room got. For some reason, I expected people to keep talking, or to maybe even heckle me, but everyone politely listened. Afterwards, a few people — proper adults! — came up and said nice things to me. I was incredibly thrilled and flattered. To calm my nerves before the reading, I’d gotten my hands on some illicit booze. I had slugged back a lot of it, and suddenly it all hit me at once. I ended up rushing out of the club and throwing up in a newspaper box on the corner (I still feel sorry for the Chicago Tribune person who had to deal with that the next morning). Despite my inglorious exit, I remember feeling so excited and proud the next day. I’d made it through my first reading! I haven’t thrown up at a reading since.

Margaret Wappler has written about the arts and pop culture for the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Elle, Cosmo, New York Times, and several other publications. Her debut novel, Neon Green, published by Unnamed Press in July 2016, has been praised as “witty and entertaining” by the Los Angeles Times and a depiction of “life in the nineties as it was actually lived ” by Electric Literature. She lives in Los Angeles and can be heard weekly on the pop culture podcast, Pop Rocket.

Come see Margaret read at 3rdSpace in San Diego on Saturday, January 21 at 7pm. 

VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?

MOHR So many unusual readings over the years! The one that comes to mind right now is the the gig I had opening up for a fucking didgeridoo. To make matters worse, the event was in a shoe store.

To recap: me warming up a didgeridoo in the proverbial foot locker.

And he wasn’t even good at the thing. Not that I’m some expert but it was clear he was still cutting his teeth on the thing. My hope is that he’s vastly improved and if our paths cross again, to share our art in some other shoe store, I’ll stand back in didgeri-awe.

Joshua Mohr is the author of five novels, including “Damascus,” which The New York Times called “Beat-poet cool.”  He’s also written “Fight Song” and “Some Things that Meant the World to Me,” one of O Magazine’s Top 10 reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle best-seller, as well as “Termite Parade,” an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times.  His novel “All This Life” won the Northern California Book Award. His memoir, “Sirens,” came out last week.

Come see Joshua read at Book Show in Highland Park on Friday, January 20 at 7:30pm and at 3rdSpace in San Diego on Saturday, January 21 at 7pm. 

VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?

CHANG: The first time I ever went to any sort of literary event was in high school, when our English teacher (RIP Liba Feuerstein) took us to hear the magnificent Galway Kinnell read at the Chateau Marmont. Everything ever after has been far less glamorous…

Jade Chang‘s debut novel, The Wangs vs. the World, was published by HMH. It has been named a NYT Editors’ Choice, is one of Buzzfeed’s 24 Best Books of 2016, and was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham prize. The Wangs will be published in 11 countries and NPR said this: “Her book is unrelentingly fun, but it is also raw and profane—a story of fierce pride, fierce anger, and even fiercer love.”

Come see Jade read at Book Show in Highland Park on Friday, January 20 at 7:30pm and at 3rdSpace in San Diego on Saturday, January 21 at 7pm. 

VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?

JOHNSON: Once I was reading to a packed house from my short story, “Melvin in the Sixth Grade,” which is a story about many things, but focuses on an awkward black girl’s crush on a bellbottom wearing hillbilly from Oklahoma. It’s a sweet story–I think–but I accidentally turned it into soft porn when I misread my own line from a moment where they were just walking home from school one hot day.  The line should have been, “Melvin took off his jacket.” Instead, I read “Melvin took off his pants.”

Dana Johnson is the author of the short story collection In the Not Quite Dark. She is also the author of the novel Elsewhere, California and Break Any Woman Down, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Callaloo, The Iowa Review and Huizache, among others. Born and raised in and around Los Angeles, she is a professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Come see Dana read at Book Show in Highland Park on Friday, January 20 at 7:30pm

VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?

ROWAN: In May 2008 I was booked into a radical London bookstore, to read as part of an artistic celebration of the protests of May 1968.  I began the reading to a small group with a story in which “my brother’s” problems are ascribed, probably not seriously, to his worship of “Bob Dylan.” The first mention of “Bob Dylan” provoked the MC to cut in and reminisce about Dylan’s contributions to his personal growth, and the reading was blown away by heated discussion of the “revolutionary” folk singer.

Lou Rowan’s books include A Mystery’s No Problem, novel, 2016; Love’s, poetry, 2016; The Alphabet of Love Serial, stories, 2015; My Last Days, Superman’s autobiography, 2007;  Sweet Potatoes, stories, 2008.  A native of Southern California, he received most of his formal education in the Atlantic states.  Living in and around New York City, he earned his living as a teacher, and as an institutional investor. The early onslaught of the derivatives “revolution” drove him to Washington State, to a then-stable pension investment firm, and in 2003 he forwent finance to write full-time. The same year marked the advent of Golden Handcuffs Review, which he continues to edit. His informal education began in the Lower East Side of New York City, when the artistic experiments in and around St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery flourished. He is eternally grateful to the English Department at Harvard University for making the formal study of accepted literature repugnant to him.

Come see Lou read at Book Show in Highland Park on Friday, January 20 at 7:30pm and at 3rdSpace in San Diego on Saturday, January 21 at 7pm. 

VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?

YANCY: One of the more interesting things was when an audience member called out Junot Díaz during a Q&A. She all but called him a sucio, implying they had personal history. Actually, a lot of atypical things happen at Junot engagements. The last time I saw him, there were 500 people waiting ahead of me in line–in Los Angeles–and when he told a personal story about the 1980s, the college girls around me realized he was almost 50. They seemed to think he was 25. He continues to have quite an effect on the ladies.

Melissa Yancy‘s short fiction has appeared in One Story, Glimmer Train, Zyzzyva, and many other publications. she is the recipient of a 2016 Literature Fellowship, and her story collection Dog Years won the 2016 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was released in October 2016. She lives in Los Angeles where she works as a fundraiser for healthcare causes.

Come see Melissa read at Book Show in Highland Park on Friday, January 20 at 7:30pm