Friday's reading at Jack Straw was utterly lovely. Matthew Schnirman read poems brimming with desire and loss, such as "American Shot" :"When I remove my clothes, I want the wood floor to blush." L.J. Morin read from her fascinating series about the lost language of the Atures, discovered by Alexander von Humboldt on his journey to Venezuela in 1800, his desire to catalogue and measure characterized as "a mine shaft down the middle of him, an inexhaustible need." Linda Andrews, who won the Washington State Book Award for Escape of the Bird Women, read a fabulous story about a strutting hen: "Any female with that authority would feel ready for the world. Go on. Fold your wings back and see if the body doesn't tell you something. CUTO an old friend called it. C-U-T-O. Chin up, tits out." And I read an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Paralegal, introducing the protagonist Binnie Greenson's parents, Albert and Arlene, in their Ocean Parkway co-op in Kensington, Brooklyn. I took particular pleasure enunciating the phrase "glops of rummy yam" and the word "trapezoidal." We, along with the rest of the Jack Straw fellows, all have work in the 2015 anthology, available at our readings all year, which will be at Folk Life on May 24, and at the the University Bookstore, the Seattle Public Library, and elsewhere in the fall. Kevin Craft, the 2015 curator, did such a fantastic job grouping each of the readings and introducing each of the readers.I was really happy with how my reading and its recording turned out. The voice coaching from Christine Brown and performance coaching from Elizabeth Austen were both excellent and super helpful. I've uploaded my reading to soundcloud. Podcasts from everyone's author interviews (conducted by Kevin Craft) with excerpts from our readings will be released in the fall here.Without further ado, an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Paralegal:[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/205960491" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]
The Jack Straw May Reading Series kicks off on May 1! I'm so excited to see my fellow fellows sharing new work and putting our voice and performance coaching into action. Each Friday evening at 7 pm, four writers (one prose writer and three poets) will perform their work. A suggested donation of $5 gets you a copy of the 2015 Jack Straw Anthology; a light reception will follow.