I read with Chesley Hicks and Shelly Oria

Last night I read my own poetry at Barbes in a reading curated by Nelly Reifler and that included Chesley Hicks and Shelly Oria.

It's pretty weird to use this blog space to write about myself, but I'll just say, I was really pleased with how it went. I didn't have a nervous breakdown, I was confident in the work, and it seemed like it was well-received, so good for me!(I read three poems, one which was quite long).

Chesley Hicks is a memoirist who shared part of a larger work that concerns revisiting the circumstances surrounding her parents' death in a plane crash when she was a child. The section she read was riveting. It was written with a certain degree of emotional distance that somehow added to the intensity of what she was describing. I can't wait to read the whole memoir.

Shelly Oria read three short stories that were the kind of fiction I really love, somewhat experimental in form, but without letting it become *about* experimentation. The three pieces were savvy and sexy and smart, and I totally wanted to hear more!

All in all, it was a pretty fantastic reading, and I was honored to be part of it. Nelly Reifler does an amazing job putting people together whose work echoes each other in some ways. I thought all three of us wrote in voices that are on one hand vulnerable and confessional, and on the other hand distanced and "writerly" (meant in the best sense of the word). I thought it all worked very well together.

Also, I know it's weird to use a picture of myself in the post, but I didn't have a camera and a friend of mine took this one of me...