Thursday, January 17, 2008

Last night I read at Hugo House where I haven't been for a year or so, not since the changing of management, but still it looked the same except the guy at the front didn't know me and vice versa. I was a few minutes early so there were barely any people and nobody who wasn't reading too, chairs around the little round tables, little stage with too high lectern and black wall behind, a line of wine beer and water bottles on the bar on the left side of the bar, kitkats, peanut butter cups and skittles on the right. A lot of us read. All WITS writers. Rebecca introduced us via anagrams of our names which was lively and fun. Not everyone timed their reading beforehand which always bothers me ever since a poet at Arizona AWP read forty five minutes so that Philip Levine had about ten without going over time. We were all women last night: poet, young adult author, poet, poet, poet reading memoir, children's nature writer, poet, and poet. Subject matter: Hanford Nuclear Reservation, high school love triangle at the Showbox, deep play, three gringas (putas) in Mexico, lesbians in Yellowstone's landscape, service dog coming of age story, Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans for so many, sex swearing and silent suffering. Time well spent.

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