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

HOWREY: Either nothing unusual has ever happened to me at a reading, or my bar for unusual is pretty high. But a girl can dream.

Meg Howrey is the author of the novels “Blind Sight”, “The Cranes Dance”, and the newly released “The Wanderers.” Before doing any of these things, she was a professional ballet dancer.

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

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

JAZZ: This kid came up on the street, “Hey, you’re Jimmy Jazz. I saw you naked when I was 15. I saw you read from your book 10 years ago, naked.” This delayed gratification proved better than the reading itself. We played this Avant-Garde fest at SDSU. It was fun, we spray painted FREE ART on the wall, Ted Washington came out glistening with body oil, we spit poetry and pissed on Salinger in a bucket, and some young couple started making out on stage and the whole thing ended in a cloud of dope smoke, cum, blood and broken glass. But the experience codified the next day, with a class of MFA students. This very severe adjunct with a German accent like a riding crop said, “This was not shocking.” Ha ha. And there was that time at the poetry slam, all the poets were inside competing for a high score. But I climbed up on the marquee of the condemned theater across the street and used letters I found to spell out our credo from Whitman ‘Resist Much, Obey Little.’ It’s the poem you don’t expect that wins.

Jimmy Jazz is a writer from San Diego. He is the author of several novels including The Sub & The Cadillac Tramps. His latest work is called The Book of Books.

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

Photo by Anthony Scoggins.

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

DEON: The most unusual experience I had at a reading was the first time I read for Vermin. I had planned to read an essay for the reading because at that point, I hadn’t read from my manuscript for Grace in over a year. It had been rejected multiple times by publishers and I had mostly given up. But, just before I came to Vermin, I felt inspired to read from Grace. To see if she was still alive and to breathe life in her. By the end of that next week I had two offers from publishers. How a person might interpret any of this is their own thing. What’s for sure for me is that Vermin on the Mount is a place for words to come alive. Or, come alive again.

Natashia Deón is the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel, Grace (Counterpoint Press), and is the recipient of a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices fellowship. Recently named one of L.A.’s “Most Fascinating People” in L.A. Weekly‘s People Issue, Deón is a lawyer, law professor, and the creator of the popular L.A.-based reading series Dirty Laundry Lit.  Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Buzzfeed, The Rattling Wall, The Rumpus, The Feminist Wire, Asian American Lit Review, and other places.

Come see Natashia read at Book Show in Highland Park on Friday, April 14 at 7:30pm.

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