All posts tagged VOTM

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.

Nicole Vollrath writes short fiction and flash fiction and teaches creative writing when her day job doesn’t get in the way.  She earned an MFA at Emerson College in Boston and has placed in San Diego City Beat’s Fiction 101 contest a few times, and won it once. Nicole has served on the board of San Diego Writers Ink and relishes the supportive writing communities in San Diego. Major themes in her work are promiscuity and Christianity, but not necessarily in the same stories.
 
Come see Nicole read at 3rdSpace in San Diego on Nov. 10 at 7pm

 

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.

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.
 

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.

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.

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 PoemsHe 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. 

Vermin on the Mount Los Angeles

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.