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How Not to Run A Panel on How Not to Run A Reading Series: A Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event

The first and only odd thing that happened at Tuesday night’s “How Not to Run A Reading Series” panel discussion at the KGB bar was when moderator Andrew Lloyd-Jones, in his opening remarks, said he’d rather be at one of the other Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend events that were taking place that evening. By the end of this sparsely-attended event, most of the ten audience members probably agreed with him.

But on a positive note, only one person walked out in the middle. In the interest of accuracy, I can’t count the poet who sat next to me and who said she found the program dull among the determined stayers because she was on crutches and could hardly skip out unobtrusively.

Lloyd-Jones runs KGB’s Liar’s League reading series, which is one of these readings series that employ actors to read or perform selected stories. He is a member of the book festival’s Bookends Committee.

His guests were Suzanne Dottino, who until recently ran KGB’s Sunday Night Fiction series. She said she’s still going to involved in some parts of it, although the bar has named a new curator. (see previous post).

The other Manhattan-based readings director was Katie Rainey of the Dead Rabbits series on the upper Upper East Side. Repping the city’s primary literary borough, Brooklyn, were Rachel Lyon of the Ditmas Lit series and Raquel Penzo, who runs the New Voices readings in Crown Heights.

The format consisted of Lloyd-Jones asking a series of perfectly appropriate questions and the readings directors responding. Rainey said that you should have at least one partner. Dottino said that she’d run her readings for as long as she had because, at least until recently, she felt that she was getting satisfaction from presenting the writers.

I was really impressed by the long-range planning that goes into running these readings, which in the case of Dead Rabbits and Ditmas Lit take place in bars. Indeed, Lyon said one necessary tool for her readings, which she runs with a partner, was her spreadsheet.

Penzo, who said she was handing off her curatorial duties soon, was the most amazingly organized of all the directors. She said she planned her events, had the printing of brochures set up and about a thousand other administrative details ironed out one year in advance. She also tries to suss out which of her scheduled readers for a given night might be able to pinch hit for her if she couldn’t make it.

Lloyd-Jones asked his guests what the worst thing that happened at one of their events was. Penzo said it was the writer who went on for 32 minutes, despite being told the limit was 15 minutes tops. Uptown at the Dead Rabbits reading, Rainey said that a couple breaking up loudly and close to the stage during somebody’s reading was a low point.

It’s always struck me that readings really are a form of improvisational theatre. I saw one writer breast-feed her child at the podium and another pass out. When you mix bars, or even bookstores, writers, booze and tight spaces, it’s no wonder the cops aren’t called in more often.

Other recommendations the directors noted were the importance of having the open mike section at the end and learning how to pronounce the names of the writers they’d be presenting. Although the second item seems self-evident, it generated the biggest laughs of session because Lloyd-Jones had mangled one of his guest’s names. The rationale for the first recommendation was that you don’t want the open mike readers and whatever friends they bring to leave as soon as their bit is over.

Beyond the interesting, but rather nuts and bolts aspects of running readings that Lloyd-Jones led his guests through, Penzo’s take on what she tries to accomplish at “Other Voices” stood out. She said she sees her role as giving other writers access to the kind of opportunities she has had. In particular, having paid $50,000 for an MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, she said she tries to share what she learned there with many of her writers who don’t have access to the benefits of getting a MFA.

One topic that didn’t come up was the role of readings blogs in what, for all its informality, can be described as the author event section of the publishing industry. The English Kills Review, a blog run by Ian MacAllen, is an excellent source of information about NYC readings. MacAllen also runs the Notable in New York readings listings in the Rumpus. That section is a must-read for the avid readings attendee. It’s not comprehensive and it tends to be Brooklyn-centric, but it’s one place to find out where the cool kids will be hanging.

Another good source I use is the Club Free Time listings, for some reason if you put 100 free poetry readings in New York into your browser, this site comes up. It’s fun because they list the author events, but they don’t say where they are. You’re supposed to pay a fee to get that information, but it is simple enough once you know the event exists to just find the address elsewhere.  

Another site I use is Thought Gallery, which lists a lot of events that don’t turn up on MacAllen’s sites or Club Free Time.

A special shout out goes to Unnamable Books in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, which has great readings and I think a punk rock ethos about listings, i.e., they can’t be bothered.

The thing about all these scattered readings listings is that none of them are comprehensive. Maybe the super-organized Penzo could tackle this project when she retires from running her reading series.

I’ve always thought that never mind just listings, some kind of literary mafia, like the Brooklyn Literary Council, the parent organization of the Brooklyn Book Festival, or Lit Hub or Electric Literature, should do a roll-up of all the city’s reading venues. I’d like to see them walk into a bookstore like Books are Magic and say to its gifted events director, Michael, “That’s a nice podium you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”

Lloyd-Jones didn’t take any questions from the audience, but if he had, I wanted to ask about what I think is the cardinal sin of readings directors, which is reading your own work.

Nearly all readings directors are writers and they get into the field to promote their own work, but as my writing teacher, the novelist Nelly Reifler told me before my short foray into MC’ing, “Don’t read your own work. People will invite you to read at their events and that’s how you do it.” Attendees of other Bookend Events would have stumbled upon this faux pas the night before Lloyd-Jones’ event.

So, while “How Not to Run A Reading Series” wasn’t a total success, organizers of the Brooklyn Book Festival can take comfort from the fact that only one able bodied person and not a single poet on crutches left in the middle.

Changing of the Guard in the Red Room

After 10-plus years, one of Manhattan’s leading readings directors has stepped down. Suzanne Dottino, who has helmed the readings at downtown Manhattan’s KGB bar for at least a decade, has passed her director’s baton to new talent, as yet unnamed.

Dottino’s tenure saw the little-known reading series grow into a must-appear booking for fiction writers from newbies to literary institutions such as the Irish author and three-time Booker Prize nominee Colm Toiben.

The community of writers who presented their work under Dotino’s guidance stretches from Europe to the West Coast at least. This reporter recalls a chat with novelist Sarah Shun-lien Bynum in Los Angeles in which she said her KGB appearance in Dottino’s series was a highlight of the book tour for her first novel, "Madeleine is Sleeping."

Dottino, a fiction writer and playwright, who teaches at CUNY, will presumably spend more time on writing and teaching now that she has shed the administrative duties of her gig as one of New York’s most respected readings directors. Patrons will still be able to guzzle the authentic, if nasty, Baltica beer at the Russian-themed nightspot, but Dottino's curatorial touch will be missed.

 

There are no Sams on Italian Trains



Date: July 30, 2019

Venue: Books Are Magic

Authors: Emily Nussbam, Willa Paskin

Free Drinks: No

DroneoMeter Readings: Negative

Benefits: expired

 

On the train last week going to the Emily Nussbaum reading at the Books Are Magic bookstore in Brooklyn, I found myself standing over a young woman who had resting on her knees six or seven books.

The top one whose title I couldn’t make out looked new. The books were held in a bag from the Green Light Bookstore in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

There are some summer nights in the city, when everybody is off at posh writers’ retreats in Italy, when because of a certain electrical current in the heavy air, the inevitable meetings among those left behind, those of us stuck in town, hum along pleasantly with a felicity wholly lacking in the colder months.

Before getting on the train, as I stood at the turnstile fumbling with various expired Metrocards, a young man who had just paid and gone through the turnstile ahead of me, noticed I was having trouble. He said, “Here” and opened the gate so I could go through.

After I did, and we were both standing on the platform, I said, “If this was a movie, you’d be a cop and I’d be busted for fare beating.”

My new accomplice in crime laughed.

I continued. “The first thing I’d do is try to act like a tourist and pretend I didn’t know anything. But then you’d check my license and see that I live about two blocks away so that wouldn’t work.”

As I walked away from my benefactor toward the back of the platform, I said, “Finish the script by the end of the week and we can take it from there.”

It was cooler that my free pass was handed out by a citizen who’d just paid his fare than if I was assisted by somebody who’d just jumped the turnstile himself.

So, buoyed by the delightful anarchy of having been given this favor, I was emboldened to ask the young woman if she could guess which independent bookstore in Brooklyn I was on my way to a reading at.

For understandable reasons, often women don’t appreciate strange men talking to them on the subway. But Sam, who works in publicity at Grove/Atlantic, didn’t seem to mind.

She said, “Books Are Magic.”

You may argue that to attribute her correct guess about which bookstore I was headed for to some midsummer’s night’s dream vibe that all the book people at all the Italian retreats, and even the relative plodders who were finishing their sessions upstate at Saratoga Springs and or who will be going to Broadleaf in August, would be kicking themselves for having missed out on is a bit fanciful.

It could more simply be explained by the fact that Sam is smart and correlated the train we were on to the independent bookstore I was headed for.

Well, obviously Sam is smart, they don’t hire dummies in the publicity department at Grove/Atlantic. But putting this obvious fact aside, how do the non-midsummer’s night dream believers account for the sign that accompanies this story?

Duh, we know Italy’s not only coming, it’s already here. That’s why bloggers who post pictures of Italian castles and swimming pools and who write, “At the most wonderful dinner party in the Italian countryside where everyone summarized the plot of their favorite . . . “ are more to be pitied than scolded.

Always the know-it-all, as soon as Sam said she worked at Grove/Atlantic, I mentioned Morgan Entriken’s name as if he and I went way back, which is only true in as much we both could have gone to Woodstock. (OK, I don’t know how many 13 year olds were wandering around Woodstock, but there must have been a few.)

Sam was probably relieved when her stop in Brooklyn finally came and she could get away from even a harmless gentleman like myself who wanted to gossip about books and writing, but she was gracious all the way from Chambers Street to Brooklyn.

When I got to Books Are Magic, I found the store packed. You could get in the front door, but just barely. Nussbaum covers TV for the New Yorker and before that she wrote for New York magazine. She was promoting her new book “I Like To Watch.” The overflow crowd was evidence of why publishers like authors to have a plattform, which means a pre-publication following from somewhere, magazines, TV, social media, stadiums, theaters or this blog.

It is, of course, ironic that what ammounted to a sell-out crowd, had there been tickets, was for a book about TV. I’d gone to another reading at the store two weeks ago for a novelist, a fairly, well-known writer and the turn-out had been respectable, but nothing like the numbers drawn by Nussbaum.

Books are magic and so’s TV, but the TV magic results in standing room only author events. Yeah, that’s another joke I inflicted on Sam. Within the publishing industry, I think you call readings author events so I had to show off that I was aware of that distinction if it’s even true.

I went around to the store’s backdoor where it was also full of people who were content to be sitting behind the stage, not able to see Nussbaum and her interviewer, the Slate TV critic Willa Paskin. I kidded around with the store’s readings, no, author events director, Michael, and asked him if I could get credit for showing up even though I was about to duck out because it was so crowded.

Michael, another person who has tolerently listened to me opine about bookish topics, said that I could and assured me my brief stay wouldn’t be held against me when the summer school semester’s grades were tabulated.

I was sorry to miss the program, but I’ll definitely buy the book at an independent bookstore and read it.  Had our train ride been longer, I would have pulled out one of my readings joke staples to entertain Sam about how important independent bookstores are, how they preserve a multiplicity of voices, how they give small presses equal footing with the bigger outfits and how they are much easier to shoplift from.

I found myself out on Smith Street in a jiffy, ready for whatever chance encounter might come next. Suck on that, Pasolini.

I went to Catholic school in New Jersey. The Italian kids used to punch me in the bicep. I never really got the hang of that game and I did not enjoy it.

I’ll read the new Natalia Ginzburg when it gets colder. For now, my brothers and sisters in the stuck in town community, remember to listen respectfully when everybody gets back from Vermont, Tuscany or Newark. They’ll never know what they missed. There are no Sams on Italian trains.

 

 

No Bridge Between Cultures for you, Funny Man!

 

 

 

 

Date: April 24, 2019
Venue: Italian Cultural Institute
Program: Fernanda Pivano: A Bridge Between Cultures
Writers: Erica Jong, Francesca Pellas, Gini Alhadeff
Free Drinks: Unknown
DroneoMeter Reading: Unknown

In the Milan Kundera novel "The Joke" that my visit to the Italian Cultural Institute brought to mind, the narrator is sentenced to prison labor as a miner because he made a joke about Stalin. My experience at the Italian Cultural Institute was more benign: I made a joke and the staff member vetting attendees merely wouldn't let me into the event.

My appeal to the head of the institution, Giorgio Van Straten, went unanswered even though it included not a single joke because now I understand the seriousness and importance of the officials at this arm of the Italian government.
 

  

Dear Mr. Van Straten,

I am an American writer and blogger. I have a blog "In the Front Row, On the Dole" about my experiences going to literary readings. What happened to me at your institution last month was unprecedented.

I walked up to the guy manning the desk and I said, "I'm here for the Fernanda Pivano event." Ms. Pivano was an Italian writer who facilitated US-Italy cultural events.

He pulled out a list and asked me if I'd RSVP'ed. I said, "No, I'm a VIP, they usually just roll out the red carpet for me when I show up at these things."

He then asked me stand with about six others who hadn't RSVP'ed. Ten minutes passed and he told everybody else they could go in. He said I couldn't. He said he didn't like what I said. I said, "but it was a joke."

He acted polite and said I'll have to wait a while. After I waited ten more minutes and he let in a few more people, I realized, he wasn't going to let me in. So not only did he not let me in, but he toyed with me until I figured things out. Quite an exercise of power.
 

I guess I might have sounded arrogant, but it wasn't an insulting joke. The irony, of course, is that the event was in honor of Fernanda Pivano who facilitated cultural exchange between US writers and Italian ones. I'm pretty sure she must have had more of a sense of humor than this staffer displayed.

Brent Shearer VIP

Mr. Van Straten didn't respond to this letter. Of course, this rude treatment has constrained my reporting on the event. Should any of my readers decide to attend an event at the Italian Cultural Institute, I suggest they don't make any jokes on the way in.

Listening to Some Dope Shit, Sitting Between Raluca and Peter

Date: June 5, 2018

Authors: Chelsea Hodson with Leopoldine Core

Venue: Greenlight Books, Brooklyn

Free Drinks: Yes

Q & A: Yes

Drone-O-Meter reading: negative

UE Check Number: benefits expired

 

When you are a professional audience member at NYC readings, never mind my responsibility to note when authors drone on, it can be tough gig.

I probably would have gone to Chelsea Hodson’s reading at Greenlight Books in Ft. Greene Tuesday night even if I hadn’t seen her tweet that morning.

It summed up the whole philosphy of this blog, which I started a few years ago when the writer Brando Skyhorse told me I should write a blog about all the readings I was going to.

Chelsea tweeted: Life Lesson: go to readings, talk to strangers. Well, that’s what Brando told me to do. He added, then write up the results and post them.

Tuesday's reading was the kick-off event for Chelsea's new book, “Tonight I’m Someone Else.” She was joined by the author Leopoldine Core. Neither writer droned on.

Chelsea read a short, fascinating piece about her pre-teen crush on a member of the band Hanson. When a different member of the band turned up on the radio, she called in and talked to him, trusting that cosmic forces would communicate her love for his bandmate without her having to say it.

While it wasn’t quite the debut of “The Rites of Spring,” the bookstore was filled with an overflow crowd of Brooklyn readers and writers. There must have been some youngish-Brooklyn writers, agents and publicists who didn’t turn out, but not many.

At some readings, oddly, nobody talks to each other. But I was lucky to be squeezed in between the writer and editor Raluca Albu to my right and the writer Peter von Ziegesar to my left who turned out to be chatterboxes.

I mentioned to Raluca that I go to so many readings, I’m able to identify a lot of Brooklyn writers and publishing industry people on sight. Raluca, an editor at Bomb and Guernica among other gigs, knows even more. We played the fun game, while waiting for the reading to start, of trying to identify people in the audience.  

We both sat up a little straighter in our seats when we saw the gifted Lynne Tillman, not a Brooklynite, come in. Raluca pointed out a few Public Space editors who must have arrived too late to get seats.

We saw the writer Deirdre Coyle join the standing-room only crowd behind us. Chelsea’s publicist Lauren Cerand came in a few minutes after the reading started and stood by the bookstore’s door.  

Raluca and I really had fun identifying Chelsea’s agent, who was sitting in the front row.

Raluca said this young woman’s name started with an M. I agreed, adding that I heard her speak at last summer’s Catapult writing conference.

“With an M, but with a funny spelling,” I said.

A few minutes later Raluca won that round of our game by identifying Chelsea’s agent as Mo Knee Ca Woods. Her pinned tweet says, “My clients are dope and they write dope shit.”

In fact, Chelsea is so dope that I’m always a little disappointed when I go to one of her readings and she just walks onto the stage, or up to the mike, and starts reading.

This is because when Chelsea, who is also a performance artist and a musician, read at Dixon Place a few years ago, she enlisted a bulky guy in a suit to carry her onto the stage and to hold her up during the reading. Then he carried her off.

Neither performer broke character when the reading was over. I think the guy just carried Chelsea out the door.

As a result, I think of Chelsea as the writer most likely to someday fly onto the stage or podium perhaps by use of one of those wire harnesses that elevate Broadway actors around above the stage and the audience.

But whether the authors stride up to the microphone or parachute in through the roof of the independent bookstore, it is important to support these retail outlets that are so vital to presenting new and overlooked voices. Plus, they’re much easier to shoplift from.

Joking aside, I talked to Peter after the reading. He told me he is the author of the memoir “My Mirror Image Brother.” After he described the book I was struck by his seriousness and figured it was probably a pretty good book. For some reason the Michael Greenberg classic memoir “Hurry Sundown” popped into my mind and I mentioned it to Peter. He said that when his book came out, he and Michael did a reading together at Greenlight.

The next reading I go to will probably be one where the audience members don’t talk to each other. That’s fine, too. Brando didn’t tell how to write this blog, but I’m sure he would agree that all conversations aside, it’s the work that matters.

“Tonight I’m Someone Else” is a must-read for this professional audience member.

 

Novelist Lauren Stahl Shocks Grizzled Strand Vets, Other Audience Members w/ Really Short Reading

Date: February 2, 2018

Author: Lauren Stahl

Venue: Mysterious Bookstore, Tribeca

Free Drinks: white and red

Q & A: no

Drone-On-Meter Reading: event too short

Email: diordream@gmail.com

"The fingernails of the corpse were intact" is the passage I remember from Lauren Stahl’s reading from her first novel., "The Devil's Song."  No sooner had I taken that in, than the reading was over. The Kaylie Jones Books author had said she would only read two paragraphs and she did.

It might not have been the debut of Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring in 1913 or Bob Dylan going electric in the early 60s, but in its own modest way, the brevity of her performance was revolutionary.

It was handy for my new pal, George, because he had to get to his job as a legal proofreader. He told me he was friends with Stahl’s publisher, Ms. Jones. Apparently, they studied martial arts together. “We got the same belt,” he said.

A publisher who can kick ass is a scary thought. Part of her job, no doubt, is to deal with her writers’ egocentric demands and the martial arts training means she has an option that, presumably, more conventional publishers like Johnny Temple or Jonathan Galassi lack.

Stahl’s quickie reading also meant that what I intend as the primary civilizing mission of “In the Front Row, On the Dole,” namely, telling authors when they have droned on too long was moot.

Luckily, it turned out that George and I both worked at the Strand bookstore in the early 80s. We talked about the former Strand owner, Fred Bass, who died last month. George lasted longer at the store than I did. It sounded like he had worked in every department.

Bass was a generous man and someone who helped support legions of young writers and artists by hiring them. I used to fetch his lunch every day from the First Avenue Deli. Some young people arrive in New York from places like Kansas and understandably everything seems strange. I had counted myself a relative sophisticate. But every afternoon, when I had to yell Fred's order to the counterman, tongue sandwich on rye, I realized I had a lot to learn.

Anyway, at the Mysterious Bookshop last night people mingled and bought books. I’m looking forward to reading "The Devil's Song." Employees at the Strand nowadays really like Maggie Nelson. Watch for the super-short reading coming to an independent bookstore near you soon. George left for work. I put the Drone-On-Meter back in its case and headed for home.

I still haven’t tried tongue.