2/28/13: May The Swamp Be With You

It’s time for another super-exciting photo wrap-up to celebrate another super-exciting Burning Swamp Reading Series Reading.  On February 28th, Sugar Magnolia was packed to the prehistoric gills with so much awesomeness it was almost impossible to handle.  Seriously.  I mean, look:

People, people who love swamp people …

That’s a lot of love right there, and we thank you for showing it to our readers.  Here’s a little taste of the literary smorgasbord we feasted on that evening*:

Laura Valeri reads from her short story collection, Safe in Your Head, which isn’t exactly about mermaids but is certainly every bit as awesome as mermaids are.  Wait, I take that back: EVEN MORE AWESOME than mermaids are.

Tavidee Hoskins performed a spoken word piece, and it was exactly like what Jimi Hendrix would’ve done if Jimi Hendrix did spoken word, except, thankfully, Tavidee didn’t set anything on fire — EXCEPT MINDS.

 

Efad Huq read from a story about ghosts and women and awesome and rice balls and awesome.

It’s no mystery that Tina Whittle is amazing, and she proved it by reading from a chapter of Blood, Ash, and Bone, which inspired me both to purchase Blood, Ash, and Bone immediately and to wish I knew a martial art, or all the martial arts.

Jared Yates Sexton read the rules for what to do on the occasion of a Wendigo attack.

 

Emma Bolden was just hanging out.

Stay tuned for information about our March 28th reading.  Spoiler Alert: it’s going to be AWESOME.

* I’m trying a new thing where I see how many awkward metaphors I can awkwardly mix in one entry.  It’s like making Funfetti cupcakes with dynamite instead of sprinkles.  See?  Totally awkward.

1/24/13: The Legend Continues

Only now, weeks after the explosively awesome return of The Burning Swamp Reading Series, has the swamp-gas-smoke cleared enough for me to see my computer screen and post photographic evidence of said explosively awesome event.

And said event was so explosively awesome that I must begin this with a warning: please be careful with these photographs.  Their pure incredible may melt the very screen of your computer into a stream of diodes and plastic and glass-returned-to-sand (or whatever computer screens may actually be made of, because I don’t really know), and in the process, they may burn your retinas with the power of ten thousand white hotly awesome suns.

You have been warned.

And if you’re interested in witnessing this awesomeness yourself, you’ll have the chance in the next few weeks, with the February installment of the Series.  Keep your eyes open for announcements — just make sure that they’re open behind protective eye-wear.

First, a swamp miracle!  I was able to recover the photographs my camera kept for itself last time around.  Here’s a picture of Gerrard Davis, in the midst of filling the world with joy:

The posting of this may be belated, but that doesn’t make it any less incredible.

And now, the photos from January’s reading.  Sunglasses on.

Benjamin Drevlow starts off the awesome with a now-legendary reading of a story about an ER visit. I’d give more details but it would be physically dangerous to post so much awesome on this page.

Luca Inghilleri has one thing to say to you, and that is that this reading was AWESOME.

Here’s a picture of the audience. You, audience? You were the bestest ever.

Hannah Frank reads a heart-warming essay (and rends tears from the normally-stone-cold heart of Professor Bolden).

Our noble co-founder Jared Yates Sexton breaks out the jazz hands in celebration of this reading.

Evin Hughes reads a short story about the earth shaking so amazing that it shook the very earth itself.

Christina Olson rocks the hiz-ouse with her awesometacular poems, two of which can be found here (you’re going to want to follow that link. I mean it. I’ll wait.)
(Are you back? Good. Because now your life is changed, and for the AWESOMER.)

Emma Bolden listens carefully, if slowly, to the amazingness around her.
(Okay, actually, that’s not really a picture of me, it’s just a picture that looks a lot, lot, LOT like me. I’m always on the other side of the camera, so this eerily similar photograph is as close as I can get.)

Introducing: Benjamin Drevlow

PEOPLE OF THE EARTH AND PEOPLE OF THE SWAMP.

THE.

BURNING.

SWAMP.

READING.

SERIES.

RETURNS.

TONIGHT!

8 PM. Sugar Magnolia, where the pizza night starts at 5.  Come for the delicious pizza, stay for the delicious poetry and prose.  Here’s a little something to tempt your palate: our last reader for tonight, Benjamin Drevlow, who is composed of 50% awesome and 50% spectacular.  You can get Benjamin’s awesome and spectacular book, Bend with the Knees and Other Love Advice from My Father, here.  While you’re there, you can also get Christina Olson’s awesometacular book, Before I Came Home Naked.  Actually, I hope you’ve got room on that credit card, because you should also get my co-founder Jared Yates Sexton’s brand-spanking new book of stories that will spank you senseless, An End to All Things.  I’m serious about that.  Go ahead and get them.  I’ll wait.

…

You’re back?  Good.  You just made me and the US Mail system very happy.  Here’s more about Benjamin Drevlow:

A Little About Benjamin Drevlow

Benjamin Drevlow, grew up in northern Wisconsin, just off the shores of Lake

This is a picture of Benjamin Drevlow with the awesome book you just bought, along with two other awesome books. Good job, you.

Superior, where he farmed, played basketball, and acquired various semi-serious, non-life-threatening injuries. He and his ten fully intact and operable fingers currently live in Statesboro, GA and teach at Georgia Southern University. His collection of short stories Bend with the Knees and Other Love Advice from My Father won the 2006 Many Voices Project and was published in fall of 2008 by New Rivers Press.

1.What’s your favorite cryptozoology creature?

This is a picture of a hodag, which is my new most favorite thing.

There was a school a little south of where I grew up in northern Wisconsin whose mascot was a Hodag—the Rhinelander Hodags. I always loved the sound of that Hoe-dÃg.

Anyway, apparently it’s a mythological creature with “the head of a frog, the grinning face of a giant elephant, thick short legs set off by huge claws, the back of a dinosaur, and a long tail with spears at the end.” And apparently it was only ever found in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.

According to Wikipedia, which means this has to be true, the hodag was “the fiercest, strangest, most frightening monster ever to set razor sharp claws on the earth. It became extinct after its main food source, all white bulldogs, became scarce in the area.”

I like that. Leave it to a bunch of cheeseheads from northern Wisconsin to come up with a creature that is part frog, part elephant, and part dinosaur and call it “the fiercest, strangest, most frightening to ever set razor sharp claws on earth”—a creature that can only be found in their town—and then they go round up a hunting party to kill it and send a picture of the whole thing to the papers.

That’s Rhinelander, Wisconsin, which isn’t far from where I grew up in more ways

This is a picture of people hodagging, which I’ve just made a verb. You’re welcome.

than one.

2. Do you believe in Swamp Primates?

Aren’t we all just a bunch of all just a bunch of sad-sap swamp primates trying to fling our feces and find love before the burning swamp fumes drive us crazy or the flames burn all the fur off our asses? Or have I been out of line in my feces flinging all this time?

3. What do you think we should do about all of the recent Swamp Primate attacks?

Two words (one hyphen): cross-breeding.