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: Luca Inghilleri

Listen: this whole January reading thing? It’s exciting.  It’s so exciting I can’t stop thinking or talking about it, and neither can the Swamp People.  I mean, it just looks like there’s a lot of bubbles in the swamp, but really it’s their swampy enthusiasm.  Because this is so exciting, I’m posting two — yes, two — reader profiles today.  The fourth reader on the bill for tomorrow night’s reading (8 pm! Sugar Magnolia! Pizza! Pastries! Poetry!) is the funny, football-loving, fellow-Southern-as-in-the-South-of-the-US-of-A Italian, Luca Inghilleri.  Let’s take a look at this awesomeness, shall we?

A Little About Luca Inghilleri

This is a picture of Luca Inghilleri near a body of water, in which he may or may not be communing with the merpeople who may or may not be living in said body of water.

Luca Inghilleri is a senior English major with a Writing minor at Georgia Southern University. This Riverside Military Academy graduate hails from an Italian family in Roswell, Georgia, he enjoys literature, sports (especially football), writing, music, philosophy, politics, cooking, eating and spending time with friends and family. He plans to pursue a career in teaching or law, but will eventually wind up in politics. Some of his literary heroes include Joseph Conrad, William Blake, William Butler Yeats, Milton, Orson Scott Card, Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Tim O’Brien, Ken Kesey and Jane Austen. An intelligent and outgoing person, he enjoys making people laugh and helping others.

 Luca’s Answers to Our Swamp Survey:

1. What’s your favorite cryptozoology creature?

I would have to say that aside from Aliens, the most fascinating cryptozoological search is for the elusive Merpeople, who reside somewhere at the bottom of deep sea trenches.

2. Do you believe in Swamp Primates?

I certainly believe in Swamp Primates. My eyes may have been playing tricks on me, but I thought I spied one on the roof of the Henderson Library on one eerily foggy night.

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

In my opinion, the most logical solution to the Swamp Primate attacks would be to attempt to establish peaceful contact by way of offering food, medical supplies and education. So really anything the U.S. Government wouldn’t do to solve the problem.