VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
PASHLEY: I once read to a packed house in NYC when the one guy I knew in the audience (another writer) got up and rushed out following a series of text messages from a woman he was trying to date. He disappeared until long after the reading was over. But when he came back, he was super manic, and took to me to dinner and to the Waldorf Astoria where he proceeded to tuck himself into bed to cry about all the “beautiful, damaged women” he knew. I left at 2am, and a young custodian who told me he “sure would like to get my number,” hailed me a cab.
Raised in Syracuse, New York, by an accordion virtuoso and a casket maker, Jennifer Pashley is the author of two short story collections, States, and The Conjurer, and the novel, The Scamp. Her stories and essays have appeared widely, in Mississippi Review, PANK, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Butter, and Spectre Magazine, among others. Jennifer has been awarded the Red Hen Prize for Fiction, the Mississippi Review Prize for fiction, and the Carve Magazine Esoteric Award for LGBT Fiction. The Scamp is her first novel..
Come see Jennifer 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.