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Great stage, lighting, sound, space, crowd, staff, and tap offerings at Underbelly. It was the kind of bar reading where one gets the sense that either readings have been held here before or else the crowd is a moveable feast that knows what to do when a writer steps up the mic.
My colleague and friend Lynette Reini-Grandell's new memoir, Wild Things, is out. Her spouse and co-star of the memoir, Venus De Mars, asked her to read something that would make her cry, and Lynette obliged. I have read before with and know David Groff and Lee Ann Roripaugh, and have read and am acquainted with Jan Beatty. Jen Manthey lives in the Twin Cities and so I know of her and travel in orbits with many who also travel in hers, but this is the first time I have met her. Laura Bandy and her book are both new to me.
The best laid plans gang aft agley, right? I'm not sure if those listened heard my reading as I did, but via my ears as the words came out of my mouth, I heard something altogether different from the perfect plan I'd hatched over pizza and beer. After I'd read some of the opening prose and talked a bit, contextualizing things, I realized I'd used up a little more than half of my allotted time. I had to rush and cut on the fly. I read a couple of poems and skipped, didn't say what I'd hope top say about them, cut the additional contextualizing I'd plan to do, and got to the last prose section. I tried to skip anything skippable, editing out sentences/phrases/words as I was reading. What my ears heard bore little coherence to the scope and ends of my plan, and I'd gone a minute or two longer than I was supposed to. It felt like a complete and forgettable disaster. To top it off, I'd tried to play good citizen before it was my turn to read. Each of the readers' books had been stacked and spread along the right side of the stage, like a fanned out deck of oversized cards, which is the side people needed to step up on the dais from—it's where the step was located. The first couple readers had to step over the fanned out books and in doing so were balanced precariously on one leg before skip-hopping to the other. I didn't want anyone to fall, so in between two readers I stepped up and rearranged the books so that readers ascending the dais had a clear path. Backing into my seat stage right, I backed into the small, round two top atop which sat my beer, which tipped and spilled onto Jen and a bunch of stuff we had on the bench seat between us. This is also the story of why my reading copy of A Northern Spring is much more warped and timeworn than a brand book would otherwise be.
PHOTOS, CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: Lynette Reini-Grandell, Issam Zineh (author of Unceded Land), David Groff (author of Live in Suspense, Clay, and more), Jan Beatty (author of American Bastard, The Body Wars, and more), Lee Ann Roripaugh (author of #stringofbeads, Dandarians, and more), Laura Bandy (author of Monster Movie), Jennifer Manthey (author of The Fight).
My colleague and friend Lynette Reini-Grandell's new memoir, Wild Things, is out. Her spouse and co-star of the memoir, Venus De Mars, asked her to read something that would make her cry, and Lynette obliged. I have read before with and know David Groff and Lee Ann Roripaugh, and have read and am acquainted with Jan Beatty. Jen Manthey lives in the Twin Cities and so I know of her and travel in orbits with many who also travel in hers, but this is the first time I have met her. Laura Bandy and her book are both new to me.
The best laid plans gang aft agley, right? I'm not sure if those listened heard my reading as I did, but via my ears as the words came out of my mouth, I heard something altogether different from the perfect plan I'd hatched over pizza and beer. After I'd read some of the opening prose and talked a bit, contextualizing things, I realized I'd used up a little more than half of my allotted time. I had to rush and cut on the fly. I read a couple of poems and skipped, didn't say what I'd hope top say about them, cut the additional contextualizing I'd plan to do, and got to the last prose section. I tried to skip anything skippable, editing out sentences/phrases/words as I was reading. What my ears heard bore little coherence to the scope and ends of my plan, and I'd gone a minute or two longer than I was supposed to. It felt like a complete and forgettable disaster. To top it off, I'd tried to play good citizen before it was my turn to read. Each of the readers' books had been stacked and spread along the right side of the stage, like a fanned out deck of oversized cards, which is the side people needed to step up on the dais from—it's where the step was located. The first couple readers had to step over the fanned out books and in doing so were balanced precariously on one leg before skip-hopping to the other. I didn't want anyone to fall, so in between two readers I stepped up and rearranged the books so that readers ascending the dais had a clear path. Backing into my seat stage right, I backed into the small, round two top atop which sat my beer, which tipped and spilled onto Jen and a bunch of stuff we had on the bench seat between us. This is also the story of why my reading copy of A Northern Spring is much more warped and timeworn than a brand book would otherwise be.
PHOTOS, CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: Lynette Reini-Grandell, Issam Zineh (author of Unceded Land), David Groff (author of Live in Suspense, Clay, and more), Jan Beatty (author of American Bastard, The Body Wars, and more), Lee Ann Roripaugh (author of #stringofbeads, Dandarians, and more), Laura Bandy (author of Monster Movie), Jennifer Manthey (author of The Fight).
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