VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
MAHIN: My father-in-law fell asleep sprawled out across the banquette at the mmHmm Room at the Standard during the panel reading at my recent book launch. One minute he was running around clustering people into groups to snap photos and then…he needed a nap. I didn’t find out about it until afterwards. I’m not mad. It’s too bad, because he missed out on a stellar performance by David Francis, in character as a young lad from the Australian bush who came to Hollywood to be an actor and fell into porn instead. I laughed so hard my face hurt. Then Sam Dunn spilled an entire glass of wine down my dress. That part wasn’t really so unusual, though.
Shanna Mahin is a high school dropout with a fierce desire to disprove her 9th grade English teacher’s prediction of “a lifetime of wasted potential.” She mourns his passing, in part for the missed opportunity to point out her PEN Center USA Emerging Voices fellowship, her MacDowell and Norman Mailer Colony fellowships, among others, and her first novel, Oh! You Pretty Things, just out in hardcover from Dutton.
Come see Shanna read at Book Show in Highland Park on Friday, August 21 at 7:30pm and at 3rdSpace in University Heights on Saturday, August 22 at 7:30pm.