All posts tagged Vermin on the Mount
Vermin + VLAK
Vermin on the Mount is teaming up with VLAK Magazine and the Prague Microfest for a series of unforgettable readings in Berlin, Brno, Prague and London:
05/15 Berlin, Germany 7pm
Vermin on the Mount & VLAK
with Thor Garcia, Catherine Hales, Jim Ruland, Jeroen Nieuwland, Louis Armand & David Vichnar
Normal Bar
Forsterstrasse 46
10999 Kreuzberg
05/16 Brno, Czech Republic 7pm
Vermin on the Mount & VLAK
with Thor Garcia, Olga Pek, Louis Armand, Jim Ruland & David Vichnar
Sklenena Louka (Glass Meadow)
Kounicova 23, 602 00 Brno
05/17 Prague, Czech Republic 7pm
Vermin on the Mount & VLAK
Prague Micro Festival with Louis Armand, Morgan Childs, Sophia Disgrace, Phil Shoenfelt, Jim Ruland, Thor Garcia, Ken Nash + music
Cafe NoD
Dlouha 33, Prague
05/23 London, England 7pm
Vermin on the Mount & VLAK
with Thor Garcia, Richard Makin, Jim Ruland, Louis Armand & David Vichnar
Top Office Machines
133-135 Bethnal Green Road
London, E2 7DG
05/24 London, England
Vermin on the Mount & VLAK
with Lou Rowan, Stewart Home, Ulli Freer, Jim Ruland, Louis Armand & David Vichnar
Power Lunches Arts Cafe
446 Kingsland Road
Hackney, E8 4AE
World Wide Vermin
Vermin on the Mount is hitting the road this spring with new shows in Berlin, Prague and London. Stay tuned for dates and venues!
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Lisa Brackmann
VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
BRACKMANN: I had teamed up with author Dana Fredsti for a series of book events. Our last event together was at a bookstore that I absolutely adore, a beloved independent that has done so much for the community and offers an amazing selection of books. But, I’d done an event there for my first book release, and it hadn’t gone so well. Not the bookstore’s fault, just a bizarre confluence of events involving street construction, a basketball playoff game, and a parade. So I was nervous about this one.
We got to the store early, because I like to be early for these things. My book was displayed all over the place, which felt really good. But the event coordinator thought that the event was an hour earlier than we did. He wasn’t wrong and neither were we. It was just one of those things. Not surprisingly, hardly anyone showed up. This combination is the kind of situation that triggers my not so latent social anxiety, big-time. I felt terrible. Not so much for the time confusion; that wasn’t my fault. But that I couldn’t get many people out to this event.
We soldiered on. I read a short selection from my latest novel, Getaway. Then it was Dana’s turn. Her novel, Plague Town, has been described as Buffy the Vampire Slayer Meets Walking Dead. It’s a lot of fun, and the section she read has some great humor in it. Just as she opened her book to read, a man wandered in off the street and sat down in the back. He wore tattered, rainbow-colored clothes, a towel for a cape, and a turban with various Tarot cards stuck in it. And he thought that everything Dana said was hilarious. Every. Single. Line. Also, that everything she said was utterly perfect, and that she deserved a diamond-studded genie bottle, which he would be happy to provide, because his mother was Barbara Eden. I lost it. I dissolved into helpless giggles, covered my eyes with my hand and did my best not to peak at Barbara Eden’s turban-clad son.
Lisa Brackmann is the author of the critically acclaimed Ellie McEnroe series set in today’s China (Rock Paper Tiger, Hour of the Rat and the upcoming Dragon Day), and the thriller Getaway (an ALA summer reading pick and SCIBA finalist). She is a California native and a former film industry professional who has lived and traveled extensively in China. Lisa once was an issues researcher in a presidential campaign and was the singer/songwriter/bassist in an LA rock band. She just bought a bass ukulele.
Come see Lisa read at MCASD in downtown San Diego on Friday, February 6 at 12pm.
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Steph Cha
VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
CHA: Most unusual thing… At my first book launch party at Skylight, this man came up to me afterward and told me he’d read about me in the Korean paper and came to my reading because he had a daughter named Stephanie Cha. He then ran into a high school friend of his who was also at the reading, a friend of my parents I’ve known since childhood. Small world, Koreatown.
Steph Cha is the author of Follow Her Home, Beware Beware, and the forthcoming Dead Soon Enough, all published by St. Martin’s Minotaur. She’s a regular contributor to the L.A. Times and the L.A. Review of Books. She lives in her native city of Los Angeles with her husband and basset hound.
Come see Steph read at MCASD in downtown San Diego on Friday, February 6 at 12pm.
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Ben Loory
VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
LOORY: One time I was approached to do voiceover work for a taco commercial. In the end, I didn’t get the job– they went with someone “more grandfatherly.”
Ben Loory is the author of the collection Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day (Penguin, 2011) and a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus (Dial Books for Young Readers, 2015). His fables and tales have appeared in The New Yorker and on This American Life and Selected Shorts. He lives in Los Angeles and is an Instructor for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.
Come see Ben read at MCASD in downtown San Diego on Friday, February 6 at 12pm.
Vermin in the News
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.!
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Nicole Vollrath
VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
VOLLRATH: The fifth year anniversary party for First Friday open mic was held at the Swedenborg church and had about 80 people in attendance. One participant drank so much free wine, he had to be escorted outside against his will. As I read my piece, he pounded on the church door, screaming at us “mother-fucking hypocrites” as the police sirens approached. No one heard a word I read, but no one will forget that party.
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Juliet Escoria
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.
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Melissa Broder
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.
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Louis Armand
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.
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Scott O’Connor
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.
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Dina Gachman
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.