All posts tagged Literary L.A.

  • 16 Feb Group2Verminators!
  • 16 Feb StallingsJosh Stallings
  • 16 Feb Gonzales1Rebecca Gonzales
  • 16 Feb Gonzales2Rebecca Gonzales
  • 16 Feb SothernScot Sothern
  • 16 Feb JuSiel Ju
  • 16 Feb MoffettKevin Moffett
  • 16 Feb ShookDavid Shook
  • 16 Feb JenJen Hitchcock
  • 16 Feb GroupPoor pinata

Gallery of Vermin: LA

February 26, 2016

Check out the photos from last week’s Vermin on the Mount event at Book Show in LA.

The unexpectedly saucy night of literary entertainment included Josh Stallings reading an excerpt of Young Americans, Rebecca Gonzales reading from a work in progress called Love, Sex, Family & Other Freak Shows, Scot Sothern reading from two works of street photography and text, Flash Flash Click editor Siel Ju reading from hilarious short story “Chef Grace,” and Kevin Moffett reading from work in progress.

Audio of all the performances will be posted soon!

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Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Rebecca Gonzales

February 16, 2016

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

GONZALES: My most unusual experience was when I traveled to NYC to feature at the newyorican poets cafe and the organizer double booked me for the night with a man who was having his book release… In our communication through email he gave me twenty min. So I prepared my work, I arrived early, he called me up and about seven min. into my set he walked over to me and cut me off the mic… I was mortified. The entire trip was built around that one event. He called me later that night and apologized several times and invited me to feature at another event the following day with a 15 min. set… I was running late to the space and very nervous and forgot all of my work in the house I was staying and only one piece with me…

Cultivated by the sun and moon peeking past the shoes dangling from the phone lines, Rebecca Gonzales was raised and resides “one block East of El Pino” in East La. Rebecca’s work has been published in various literary anthologies and journals such as Dryland Lit., Brooklyn and Boyle, Inchas de Poesia, the Mas Tequila Review, Cipatli, San Antonios St. Sucia, Literature for Life and others. She was the March 2014 winner of “The Poets of New York” series at the Bowery in New York City and has performed all over Los Angeles and Inland Empire . She has three self-published books of poetry and is currently working on a book of short stories, poetry and prose. As a mother she is humbled, as a poet she is obedient, and as a woman she is unapologetic.

Come see Rebecca read at Book Show in Los Angeles on Friday, February 19 at 7:30pm. 

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Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Josh Stallings

February 11, 2016

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

STALLINGS: My first writer’s panel was at Bouchercon, a huge, crime/mystery readers and writers yearly event. It was titled “Street Writers and Grit,” whatever that meant. The time slot was Sunday morning, traditionally reserved for, well, newer writers. Most people would be too hungover from the award dinner and parties the night before to show up, so I wasn’t too worried about showing my ass to a large crowd. Mistake one of many. Sitting on a raised platform with four other writers and the moderator, my guts did the old flip flop. The room was filling. Shit, writers I liked and respected started to fill the large hall. Sweat broke. Pull it together. Be here now. Fuck, that is Chris Holm looking up at me. Fuck. What is that buzzing drone? The moderator? Did he say my name? Fuck, was that a question? “… Stallings you write from the street, do you research…” I had just enough context to figure out the question. “Research, um, yeah, by that um, see I lived life and wrote about it.” I dropped back into my body and found I could form sentences. We were discussing craft and process, something I normally do when hanging with other artists. Easy-peasy. The audience isn’t hurling metaphoric spoiled vegetables at me. I may just pull this off. This may not be the day they discover I’m a total fraud. And then, the moderator asks the question. The wheels come off. “What animal would you describe yourself as, sexually I mean?” Fuck, what? Brain freeze. Down the line authors answer. “Tiger.” “Pit-bull.” “Lion.” And I’m next… Empty headed. “Unicorn,” I answer “yeah, unicorn, ‘cause the chicks dig a good unicorn.” The room laughs, not erupts into, but not just polite laughter either. I survived that morning, and I know it can’t get weirder, until the next time. “So, if you could engage in consensual bondage with any dead writer, who would it be?”

Josh Stallings is the massively dyslexic award-winning writer of the Moses McGuire novels, Anthony Award nominated memoir “All The Wild Children,” and 2016 Left Coast Crime’s Lefty Award nominated, “Young Americans.” A ‘70’s glam-rock disco heist novel. Raised by hippy activists in the mountain above Palo Alto, he now happily resides in Los Angeles with his wife, two dogs and cat named Riddle.

Come see Josh read at Book Show in Los Angeles on Friday, February 19 at 7:30pm. 

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Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Kevin Moffett

February 6, 2016

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

MOFFETT: I read at City Lights with the two other authors of the Silent History (Eli Horowitz and Matthew Derby). We arrived about 30 minutes early and there was one person there, a man sitting in a rocking chair reading from a book of poetry. I am always the last of my friends to recognize famous people but even I knew immediately who it was: Tom Waits. I thought, Well of course Tom Waits is at our reading, what else would Tom Waits be doing? As people started accumulating, the manager of the store started making martinis in plastic cups, then announced that the reading would be starting in 15 minutes. Tom Waits stood up, replaced his book on the shelf, and gracefully ducked out. Of all the readings I’ve given where people have walked out–including the couple in Philadelphia who stood up in the middle of my story and as they were leaving said, “It’s not you. We just remembered we have tickets for the opera”–this was the best.

Kevin Moffett is the author of two story collections and a collaborative novel, the Silent History, which was first released as an app for mobile devices and is currently in development at AMC. He is a frequent contributor to McSweeney’s and his stories and essays have appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Believer, The Best American Short Stories and elsewhere. He has received the National Magazine Award, the Nelson Algren Award, the Pushcart Prize and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. He teaches at Claremont McKenna College and in the low-residency MFA at the University of Tampa. 

Come see Kevin read at Book Show in Los Angeles on Friday, February 19 at 7:30pm. 

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Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Siel Ju

February 5, 2016

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

JU: There was a woman at this reading whom I’d met before, but whose name I couldn’t remember. I admitted this to her thinking she’d be cool with it since we’d really only met in passing. But she was really not cool with it! She yelled at me! Then she told me her name again, just spat it at me spitefully. I’ve since forgotten it.

Siel Ju’s novel-in-stories, Cake Time, is the winner of the 2015 Red Hen Press Fiction Manuscript Award and will be published in Spring 2017. Siel is also the editor of Flash Flash Click, and the author of two poetry chapbooks: Feelings Are Chemicals in Transit from Dancing Girl Press, and Might Club from Horse Less Press. Her stories and poems appear in ZYZZYVA, The Missouri Review (Poem of the Week), The Los Angeles Review, Denver Quarterly, and other places.

Come see Siel read at Book Show in Los Angeles on Friday, February 19 at 7:30pm. 

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Vermin in LA Feb 19

February 2, 2016
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BOO! Vermin Returns 10/30

October 13, 2015

Poster design by Portland artist Keith Rosson.

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Vermin in the News

November 13, 2013

Vermin on the Mount received a very nice shout out from Carolyn Kellogg in the Los Angeles Times book blog Jacket Copy:

“The punk rock reading series takes its name from its original location, the Mountain Bar, where it began 10 years ago. Host and organizer Jim Ruland has found a new home for the semi-regular series, at NOMAD Studio near the L.A. River.”

Writing for the L.A. Weekly, Joseph Lapin’s generous profile explores the origins of the series. “Incredible writers have graced the stage at Vermin on the Mount. At the first ever reading, the performers were Joe Meno, an author and playwright from Chicago who has written six novels; Joshuah Bearman, the former L.A. Weekly journalist who wrote the story that would become Argo; and Andrea Siegel, author of Like the Red Panda and a screenwriter. There have been many memorable performances, Ruland recalls, including the time Stephen Elliot, the author who’s a founding editor of The Rumpus, appeared unexpectedly on Father’s Day to read a touching piece about his father.”

It’s a great beginning to our tenth year of programming in L.A.!

 

 

 

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Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Juliet Escoria

November 7, 2013

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

ESCORIA: I once went to a poetry reading in Hell’s Kitchen. The crowd was loud and drunk, causing one reader to yell things at them like, “Shut up or I’ll fucking stab you.” Strippers danced during the break, wearing black strap-ons and eagle masks, while the audience slipped dollar bills into their g-strings. Fun fact: Melissa Broder was also at that reading.

Juliet Escoria writes things for Electric Literature’s blog, The Outlet. Her story collection, Black Cloud, will be published by Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2014.
 
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Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Melissa Broder

November 6, 2013

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

BRODER: Panic attack in which everyone looked like they were made of plastic.

Melissa Broder is the author of three collections of poems, most recently MEAT HEART and the forthcoming SCARECRONE out from Publishing Genius in 2014. Poems appear or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Fence, Guernica, The Missouri Review, et. al.

Come see Melissa read at Book Show in Frogtown on Nov. 11 at 7pm.
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Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Louis Armand

November 5, 2013

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

ARMAND: The strangest thing was reading in front of a picture of Benny Hill (surrounded by a bevy of bikini-clad girls), with a signed dedication to Anthony Burgess.

Louis Armand is the author of seven collections of poetry and five novels, most recently the neo-noir Breakfast at Midnight (2012) and Canicule (2013), both from Equus (London); Cairo, a novel about time-travelling dwarfs, is due out in January. His screenplay, Clair Obscur, received honourable mention at the 2009 Alpe Adria Trieste International Film Festival. His work has been included in the Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry and Best Australian Poems. He is an editor of VLAK and lives in Prague.

Come see Louis read at 3rdSpace in San Diego on Sunday Nov. 10 at 7pm and at Book Show in Los Angeles on Nov. 11 at 7pm. 

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Vermin on the Mount Los Angeles

October 30, 2013
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Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Scott O’Connor

October 23, 2013

VOTM: What was your most unusual experience at a reading?

O’CONNOR: When I was in fourth or fifth grade, I entered an oratorical contest for the local Optimists’ Club. I’d breezed through the school-wide heat, and secured a place in the finals. The competition was held in a motel by the Syracuse airport, in a small conference room looking out onto a runway. A few rows of banquet chairs were filled with adult members of the club, various relatives of the competitors, friends, possibly a few vagrants just looking for a place to sit, furtive couples taking breaks from the kind of clandestine trysts that take place at motels by the airport. My speech was entitled, “Optimism: A Way of Life.” There were three contestants, myself included. I came in third.

SCOTT O’CONNOR is the author of the novella Among Wolves, and the novel Untouchable, which won the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award. His new novel, Half World, will be published by Simon and Schuster in February, 2014. He lives with his family in Los Angeles.

Scott will be reading at 3rdSpace in San Diego on Sunday, Nov. 10 and at Book Show in Los Angeles on Monday, Nov. 11. 

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Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Dina Gachman

March 30, 2013

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

GACHMAN: My first reading was at a comedy theater in Hollywood. I was nervous. I asked a friend to bring me some Beta Blockers, and I took half a pill, just to keep myself from shaking. I figured the other readers would be on Beta Blockers too, or at least drunk. You know, writers. Not so. They were all actors – thespians – people who love rolling around on a stage and emoting. Fine, I can make friends with most everyone, I thought. Why should thespians be any different?

They told us to hang out in the green room, and to my horror all the other readers were doing stretches, voice exercises – one woman was miming. I felt totally alone. I focused on my essay and read and re-read the thing over and over, pretending not to be distracted every time someone yelled out, “ooo-eeee-oooo-aaaa!” or “blah-blah-blah-BLAH!” These people were not easing my nerves.

Nothing too crazy happened after the green room insanity – I got out there and read my essay about crazy people in coffee shops – one man in particular who told me about a play he wrote several years ago where he played a Tampon. If I see someone miming in a green room at a reading again, you can find me by the bar.

Dina Gachman is a Texan adrift in Los Angeles. Her comedic blog Bureaucracy for Breakfast has been featured on NPR and Chelsea Handler’s Borderline Amazing Comedy. She writes comic books for Bluewater Comics, and has written for Forbes, Ask Men, The Nervous Breakdown, Red Bull, Glamour, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She’s on Twitter.

 

Come see Dina Gachman read at 826LA Echo Park on Friday, April 5.
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