Vermin on the Mount kicked off 2015 with its first reading in Book Show’s new location in Highland Park. A packed house assembled on a rare rainy night in Los Angeles for a night of irreverent readings by Ashley Perez, Samuel W Gailey, Natashia Deón, Wendy Ortiz and your host Jim Ruland. The readings were followed by a musical performance by Nellie Bly. Poster art by Art Fuentes and tactical support by Razorcake. No one was harmed but all were bitten. Click above for images from the show.
Book Show!
Ashley Perez
Samuel W. Gailey
Natashia Deón
Wendy C. Ortiz
Brodie Hubbard & Elska
Michal Lemberger & Meg Howrey
Jim Ruland & Danielle Orozco
Ashley Perez
Jim Ruland, Ashley Perez, Wendy C. Ortiz
Poster by Art Fuentes
Vermin in Highland Park
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Samuel W. Gailey
Samuel W. Gailey
VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
GAILEY: I was at the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, AZ, last March. Unfortunately for me, this was also the final weekend for the NCAA basketball tournament…so the turnout was intimate. Seven or eight people, tops. During my reading, a man showed up late and joins the small circle of folks. He was stoic and looked uncomfortable, appearing as if this was the last place he wanted to be. He kept staring at me like I just kicked his dog, and when I looked his way, he would quickly avert his eyes. After the discussion, he waited until everyone else was gone (all eight of them), then approached me and asked if I would sign a copy of my book. He seemed embarrassed to be asking. Sure, I said. Who should I make it out to? He grinned and said, Jay Eberlin.
It took me a moment to process…I knew this guy. I come from a remote little town in Pennsylvania, population 379, and Jay Eberlin was one of my oldest and very first friend from that area. I hadn’t seen or spoken to him in over 30 years. He still lived in the same town, but happened to be in Scottsdale for a convention when he heard that I was having a reading at the Poisoned Pen. And fortunately for me, he wasn’t a huge NCAA basketball fan.
Samuel W. Gailey was raised in a small town in northeast Pennsylvania (population 379), which serves as the setting for his debut novel, DEEP WINTER. Drawn to rural life and the sometimes deceiving atmosphere therein, Gailey’s first novel and his works in progress are suspenseful mysteries and intriguing studies of human nature.
Come see Samuel read at Book Show in Highland Park on Saturday, January 10 at 7pm.
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Wendy C. Ortiz
Wendy C. Ortiz
VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
ORTIZ: Thanks to the Griffith Park Storytelling Series, the Griffith Park Bat Caves wins for most unusual and amazing place I’ve been for a reading.
Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir (Future Tense Books, 2014) and Hollywood Notebook (Writ Large Press, 2015). She’s written for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The New York Times, The Nervous Breakdown, The Rumpus, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and many other journals. Wendy has been curator and host of the Rhapsodomancy Reading Series since 2004.
Come see Wendy read at Book Show in Highland Park on Saturday, January 10 at 7pm.
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Ashley Perez
Ashley Perez
VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
PEREZ: I have not really had any unusual experiences where I have been a reader but as a participant, I would say Antonia Crane’s L.A. release party for her memoir, Spent ranks up there. It was a fantastic sex-themed night. Unusual and enjoyable.
Ashley Perez lives, writes, and causes trouble in Los Angeles. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She runs the literary site Arts Collide and does work of all varieties for Bleed at Jaded Ibis Press, The Rumpus, The Weeklings, and Midnight Breakfast.
Come see Ashley perform at Book Show in Highland Park on Saturday, January 10 at 7pm.
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Natasha Deón
VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
DEON: The most unusual place I’ve had a reading was in an alley in Echo Park. When I arrived, dressed in my six-inch heels, mini dress, and trendy big purse on my shoulder, it was about noon. I was preparing to go into the back entrance of the venue which happened to be in an alley when the bouncer at the door held up his hand and said, “Can I help you?” I said, “Sure, I’m one of the readers. I was told I was first.” At which point he pointed to the microphone on a stand directly behind me and I almost knocked it over with my purse when I twirled around to face it. Across the alley there were two vendors–my only audience–and one was selling books and the other one cookies. They looked across the alley at me with a certain level of pity and comfort, at which point I dropped my purse, took the mic, and read.
An L.A. attorney by day, Natashia Deón is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from Yale, PEN Center USA, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and VCCA. Recently named one of L.A.’s Most Fascinating People by L.A. Weekly, she has an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California, Riverside, and is the creator of the popular LA-based reading series Dirty Laundry Lit. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, The Rattling Wall, B O D Y, The Feminist Wire, Asian-American Lit Review, You. An Anthology of Second Person Essays, among others.
Come see Natashia read at Book Show in Highland Park on Saturday, January 10 at 7pm.
Same Rat Time… New Rat Channel…
Join us for a night of irreverent readings with Natashia Deón, Samuel W. Gailey, Wendy C. Ortiz, Ashley Perez and your host Jim Ruland at Book Show‘s new location in Highland Park. Poster art by Arturo Fuentes.
VOTM in Nomadic Sojourns
Many thanks to Christian Niedan at Nomadic Sojourns for this write up of the Vermin on the Mount event in Brooklyn last weekend.
Brooklyn-based author Jami Attenberg has long hosted sunset author readings in her South Williamsburg apartment. And she’s met many of those authors on the road while promoting her own work—highlighted by 2013 best-selling novel, The Middlesteins. Among them, Jim Ruland, whose “Vermin on the Mount” (VOTM) reading series recently paid a visit to Attenberg’s place.
Jami Attenberg
Antonia Crane & Nuvia Crisol Guerra
D Foy 
D Foy
Adam Wilson
Antonia Crane
Jim Ruland
This way to the roof
Skyline from the stairs
Admiring the view
Manhattan Skyline
Stephen Elliott & D Foy
Lindsay Hunter
Good night!
Vermin on the Mount in Brooklyn
Vermin on the Mount made one of its infrequent but not uncommon sojourns beyond Southern California for an event at Jami Attenberg‘s Sunset Series with readings in her loft apartment and a party on the roof with amazing views of New York and Brooklyn. It was a great East-meets-West-meets-Chicago kind of an affair. The readers were D. Foy, Adam Wilson, Lindsay Hunter, Antonia Crane and Jim Ruland (hey that’s me) who co-hosted the event. Minds were blown, hell was raised, and then sunset was quietly, patiently, passionately observed.
Department of Not Impressed
Don’t want the hype. Don’t need the hype. Will take the hype.
The tiny, 8,800-person community known colloquially as Frogtown suddenly is impossible to ignore. (Its official name, Elysian Valley, is rarely used.) Artists Shepard Fairey, Mark Grohjahn and Thomas Houseago recently opened studios there. Nomad Art Compound, a sort of hybrid print shop/commune, has established itself as one of the weirdest and coolest venues in L.A. Frogtown’s annual arts festival, the Frogtown Art Walk, is extending its half-mile track to accommodate the thousands of Angelenos (and counting) that show up every year.
Read the full article here.
A Decade of Filth and Fury
Some thoughts (and many thank yous) regarding the 10th anniversary of Vermin on the Mount.
I’m still trying to get my mind around the fact that Vermin on the Mount turned ten years old this month. A decade. That’s a lot of stories, essays, poems and drunken rants. During those 10 years I grew a beard, got married, moved to San Diego, got sober, shaved my beard, etc. A lot of living because ten years is a long time, but in the arts 10 years is a lifetime.
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Melissa Chadburn
VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
CHADBURN: It wasn’t my reading but during the Tin House Writer’s Conference as Steve Almond read in the outside auditorium this guy tripping on acid came out of the bushes and joined him at the podium.
When Melissa Chadburn is not teaching at UCSD, she can usually be found protesting somewhere. She has written for Guernica, SLAKE, Salon, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, American Public Media’s Marketplace, and a dozen other places. Her essay, The Throwaways, was noted in 2013’s Best American Essays and Best American Nonrequired Reading. Follow her on twitter @melissachadburn. She loves your whole outfit right now.
Come see Melissa read at Book Show in Frogtown on Friday, August 8 at 7:30pm, and if you’re going to take LSD, please bring enough for everyone.
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Sacha Howells
VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
HOWELLS: I was once at a reading where one of the readers turned her poem “Winona Ryder, I Want to Ride Her” into a song, accompanying herself on the clarinet. Another time, for some reason a poet started playing the piano with her top off while she read her piece. Poets are wild.
Sacha Howells grew up in Canada, Libya, and Bakersfield, California. His work has been published in Gauntlet Magazine, theMenda City Review, and the Coachella Review. He was a 2012 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow and a 2014 NEA Fellow at the Hambidge Center, and is at work on his first novel, about once-and-future hair-metal superstars Juggernott. He lives with his wife and daughter behind the Sunset Strip Guitar Center.
Come see Sacha read (full clothed) at Book Show in Frogtown on Friday, August 8 at 7:30pm.
Look Who’s Coming to Vermin: Karen Rizzo
VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
RIZZO: I was in a discussion with another author at an event on the book tour for Famous Baby. Surprisingly, it was a packed house, also a really attentive audience of mostly women. And wine was served, so most everyone had a glass of something in their hands. The moderator asked us about a favorite moment in our books. While the other author read a passage from her book, I panicked. I couldn’t think of a page or a paragraph. It was my turn. I started talking about the daughter, Abbie, comparing her mother’s hands with her own. Teenagers hate to be reminded of what they might have inherited from a parent, but in the book it suddenly dawns on Abbie that she has her mother’s hands, while her mother, Ruth, sitting in the passenger seat, wonders at what age she’ll be too old to rest her feet on the dashboard any more. A woman in the front row dropped her wine glass and it shattered on the concrete floor. I stopped, and she said, sniffling, “Oh! I’m sorry, but you made me cry and I dropped my glass and I can’t find a tissue.” “I’m glad,” I muttered. And I felt very calm while someone cleaned up the broken glass.
Karen Rizzo has spent a number of years writing non-fiction, mostly about her family and friends. The recipient of a MAGGIE Award for Best Essay in a West Coast Magazine, her stories and essays have been appeared on NPR and in the Los Angeles Times, Living Fit, Salon, Beatrice, Fresh Yarn and VIVmag as well as the anthology Life’s A Stitch: The Best of Contemporary Women’s Humor. She’s the author of THINGS TO BRING, SH#!T TO DO… , a collection of essays based on twenty years of personal lists, and a Book Sense/IndieBound pick for Best of The Month. Famous Baby, published by Prospect Park Books, is Karen’s debut novel. Karen lives with her husband, actor Jim Macdonald, and their two children in Highland Park.
Come see Karen break things at Book Show in Frogtown on Friday, August 8 at 7:30pm.