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

STRADAL: Pat Schultz, who was the school librarian at Tilden Elementary in Hastings, Minnesota while I was a student there, came to my reading in Edina while I was traveling through Minnesota. When I was at Tilden, I was a dreamy little kid who loved dinosaurs and writing and drawing, and Pat would take me aside and give my special projects in the library during and after school to inspire my imagination and challenge my mind. There are few other adults outside of my family who have meant more to me in terms of helping me become a writer. Through her, I understood the effect of a concerned adult on a child, and I volunteer with kids today, and have for over a decade, because of her example. I hadn’t seen her since I’d left that school after fifth grade, and I unfortunately didn’t remain in touch with her, so it was a total shock — I had no idea that she was coming. She heard about it somehow, and came all the way up from Hastings — and it blew me away to see her. 

J Ryan Stradal works as the fiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown, is a an editor-at-large at Unnamed Press in Los Angeles, and volunteers for and is on the advisory board of the educational nonprofit 826LA. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Kitchens of the Great Midwest and his shorter writing has appeared in Hobart, The Guardian, and The Rumpus, among other places. He likes wine, sports, root beer, and peas.

Come see J Ryan perform at 3rdSpace in University Heights on Saturday, August 22 at 7:30pm.

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.

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

O’NEIL: I was at LitCrawl in San Francisco preparing to read an essay about a horrible sexual encounter that went very wrong (think bruised, broken, and swelling male genitalia – mine!) when the woman from the very same said sexual encounter walks into the reading…  And yes, I read the essay.

Patrick O’Neil is a former junkie bank robber and the author of the memoir, Gun Needle Spoon (Dzanc Books), and the excerpted in part French translation, Hold-Up (13e Note Editions). His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including: Juxtapoz, Salon.com, The Weeklings, Razorcake, The Nervous Breakdown, and Out of the Gutter. He is an editor for the NYC-to-California-transplant-post-beat-pre-apocalyptic art, writing, and music anthology: Sensitive Skin Magazine. He has been nominated twice for Best of the Net, and is a regular contributor to the recovery website AfterPartyMagazine. Patrick O’Neil holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, lives in Hollywood, California, and teaches at AULA’s inspiration2publication program, and Los Angeles Valley College.

Come see Patrick perform at Book Show in Highland Park on Friday, August 21 at 7:30pm.

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 9^th 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.

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

MOHR: i read in oakland this past saturday, and a probably off-her-meds woman cornered me at the break, saying that in 1979 i trashed her band on the internet and what’s my fucking problem? when i stupidly suggested that i was 3 in 1979 and there was no internet, per se, she told me to stop “pissing on her online platform.”  then i apologized and bought her a soda water.

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 on The New York Times Best Seller List.  His novel All This Life was recently published by Counterpoint/Soft Skull.

Come see Joshua 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.

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

ORTIZ: The host got tired of reading the writer’s bios in full and just started letting them trail off into “etc., etc.” and “yadda yadda yadda” like endings. 

Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir (Future Tense Books, 2014), Hollywood Notebook (Writ Large Press, 2015) and the forthcoming Bruja (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). Her work has appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Hazlitt, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and The Nervous Breakdown, among other places. Wendy co-founded the Rhapsodomancy Reading Series, which she’s curated and hosted since 2004 in Los Angeles.

Come see Wendy 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.

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

DOYLE: My most unusual experience at a literary event was the night I had to stop reading and work my way through a crowded bar to break up a fight and then make my way back to the microphone to finish my story. No blood was spilled.

Sean H. Doyle lives in Brooklyn, New York. He works hard every day to be a better person and is learning how to love himself more. His book This Must Be the Place was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2015. His writing has appeared in No Tokens, The Atlas Review, The Rumpus, Everyday Genius, and other places.

Come see Sean 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.