All posts tagged Vermin on the Mount

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

GONZALES: My most unusual experience was when I traveled to NYC to feature at the newyorican poets cafe and the organizer double booked me for the night with a man who was having his book release… In our communication through email he gave me twenty min. So I prepared my work, I arrived early, he called me up and about seven min. into my set he walked over to me and cut me off the mic… I was mortified. The entire trip was built around that one event. He called me later that night and apologized several times and invited me to feature at another event the following day with a 15 min. set… I was running late to the space and very nervous and forgot all of my work in the house I was staying and only one piece with me…

Cultivated by the sun and moon peeking past the shoes dangling from the phone lines, Rebecca Gonzales was raised and resides “one block East of El Pino” in East La. Rebecca’s work has been published in various literary anthologies and journals such as Dryland Lit., Brooklyn and Boyle, Inchas de Poesia, the Mas Tequila Review, Cipatli, San Antonios St. Sucia, Literature for Life and others. She was the March 2014 winner of “The Poets of New York” series at the Bowery in New York City and has performed all over Los Angeles and Inland Empire . She has three self-published books of poetry and is currently working on a book of short stories, poetry and prose. As a mother she is humbled, as a poet she is obedient, and as a woman she is unapologetic.

Come see Rebecca read at Book Show in Los Angeles on Friday, February 19 at 7:30pm. 

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

STALLINGS: My first writer’s panel was at Bouchercon, a huge, crime/mystery readers and writers yearly event. It was titled “Street Writers and Grit,” whatever that meant. The time slot was Sunday morning, traditionally reserved for, well, newer writers. Most people would be too hungover from the award dinner and parties the night before to show up, so I wasn’t too worried about showing my ass to a large crowd. Mistake one of many. Sitting on a raised platform with four other writers and the moderator, my guts did the old flip flop. The room was filling. Shit, writers I liked and respected started to fill the large hall. Sweat broke. Pull it together. Be here now. Fuck, that is Chris Holm looking up at me. Fuck. What is that buzzing drone? The moderator? Did he say my name? Fuck, was that a question? “… Stallings you write from the street, do you research…” I had just enough context to figure out the question. “Research, um, yeah, by that um, see I lived life and wrote about it.” I dropped back into my body and found I could form sentences. We were discussing craft and process, something I normally do when hanging with other artists. Easy-peasy. The audience isn’t hurling metaphoric spoiled vegetables at me. I may just pull this off. This may not be the day they discover I’m a total fraud. And then, the moderator asks the question. The wheels come off. “What animal would you describe yourself as, sexually I mean?” Fuck, what? Brain freeze. Down the line authors answer. “Tiger.” “Pit-bull.” “Lion.” And I’m next… Empty headed. “Unicorn,” I answer “yeah, unicorn, ‘cause the chicks dig a good unicorn.” The room laughs, not erupts into, but not just polite laughter either. I survived that morning, and I know it can’t get weirder, until the next time. “So, if you could engage in consensual bondage with any dead writer, who would it be?”

Josh Stallings is the massively dyslexic award-winning writer of the Moses McGuire novels, Anthony Award nominated memoir “All The Wild Children,” and 2016 Left Coast Crime’s Lefty Award nominated, “Young Americans.” A ‘70’s glam-rock disco heist novel. Raised by hippy activists in the mountain above Palo Alto, he now happily resides in Los Angeles with his wife, two dogs and cat named Riddle.

Come see Josh read at Book Show in Los Angeles on Friday, February 19 at 7:30pm. 

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

MOFFETT: I read at City Lights with the two other authors of the Silent History (Eli Horowitz and Matthew Derby). We arrived about 30 minutes early and there was one person there, a man sitting in a rocking chair reading from a book of poetry. I am always the last of my friends to recognize famous people but even I knew immediately who it was: Tom Waits. I thought, Well of course Tom Waits is at our reading, what else would Tom Waits be doing? As people started accumulating, the manager of the store started making martinis in plastic cups, then announced that the reading would be starting in 15 minutes. Tom Waits stood up, replaced his book on the shelf, and gracefully ducked out. Of all the readings I’ve given where people have walked out–including the couple in Philadelphia who stood up in the middle of my story and as they were leaving said, “It’s not you. We just remembered we have tickets for the opera”–this was the best.

Kevin Moffett is the author of two story collections and a collaborative novel, the Silent History, which was first released as an app for mobile devices and is currently in development at AMC. He is a frequent contributor to McSweeney’s and his stories and essays have appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Believer, The Best American Short Stories and elsewhere. He has received the National Magazine Award, the Nelson Algren Award, the Pushcart Prize and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. He teaches at Claremont McKenna College and in the low-residency MFA at the University of Tampa. 

Come see Kevin read at Book Show in Los Angeles on Friday, February 19 at 7:30pm. 

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

JU: There was a woman at this reading whom I’d met before, but whose name I couldn’t remember. I admitted this to her thinking she’d be cool with it since we’d really only met in passing. But she was really not cool with it! She yelled at me! Then she told me her name again, just spat it at me spitefully. I’ve since forgotten it.

Siel Ju’s novel-in-stories, Cake Time, is the winner of the 2015 Red Hen Press Fiction Manuscript Award and will be published in Spring 2017. Siel is also the editor of Flash Flash Click, and the author of two poetry chapbooks: Feelings Are Chemicals in Transit from Dancing Girl Press, and Might Club from Horse Less Press. Her stories and poems appear in ZYZZYVA, The Missouri Review (Poem of the Week), The Los Angeles Review, Denver Quarterly, and other places.

Come see Siel read at Book Show in Los Angeles on Friday, February 19 at 7:30pm.