Burning Swamp V: The Awesome Continues

Fellow swamp enthusiasts, it’s a very special time here in Statesboro, a time with which Southerners are intimately familiar.  It’s a time of azaleas and the oft-celebrated magnolia.  It’s a time when the very world is abloom, even the swamps (though they may be abloom with flame).  It’s a time when the tall pine trees do their tall pine tree dance in the wind, seeking that other very special tall pine tree with which to make little baby pine trees.  It’s a time in which even the cleanest sidewalk will, five minutes after being washed clean, be bright yellow and green.  It’s a time of beauty and it’s a time of terror.  It’s a time survivable only through massive doses of Benadryl, Chloraseptic, and hand sanitizer.

In other words, it’s spring.  And God help us all.

In order to inspire you through the antihistamines and remind you that there’s beauty out there in the world, even if you can’t see it through all that pollen, I give you some photographs from the March edition of the Burning Swamp Reading Series.  Enjoy — and if you have an extra box of Kleenex, would you want to share with me?

Jared Yates Sexton attempts to calm a fevered crowd frenzied at the very thought of the awesome that is to come.

Thomas Klein reads from his translations and his modernizations of Southern folk tales.

James Devlin reads the heroic tale of a young boy battling his fears.

Peyton Callanan reads a series of poems about love and lust and everything in between.

Amanda Schumacher reads from the first chapter of her YA novel.

Tangled cords and Chucks — nothing could more say “Burning Swamp Reading Series” than this.

Since March is the month of St. Patrick’s Day, Emma Bolden decided to don her finest suit of green.

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.

Introducing: Hannah Frank

Though the official fire warning is no longer active, I’ve heard rumors that the National Weather Service intends to issue a Metaphorical Fire Warning effective until somewhere around 9:45 tomorrow night, when the first Burning Swamp Reading Series Reading of Two Aught One Three will have ended and left the city in embers of red-hot glowing awesome.  To give you a better idea of what I’m talking about, here’s the profile for our third reader, the awesome writer and Nessie enthusiast Hannah Frank!

A Little About Hannah Frank

Hannah Frank is a senior Writing and Linguistics major with a minor in Art—which pretty

This is a photograph of the lovely and talented Hannah Frank, about to organize a bake sale for cryptozoological witnesses in a field, because obviously that’s where you’d hold that kind of bake sale.

much means most of her time is spent in the studio painting or at home writing (Let’s be serious, it’s mostly in the studio). She enjoys writing fiction, and she participates in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) every November. She finished the 50,000 words in 2011 to become a “winner,” although, last year she was slacking and only did 24,000. (Okay, she wasn’t really slacking, but was rather painting.) Oil painting is one of her passions, and she would one day like to have an art gallery. After she graduates this spring, she hopes to become an awesome preschool teacher until she can support herself to become a full-time writer and painter, or until she wins the lottery—whichever comes first.

 Hannah’s Answers to Our Swamp Survey:

1. What’s your favorite cryptozoology creature?

Ummm… Loch Ness Monster, of course! Nessie exists! (Of course, I have to say this because of my Scottish heritage.) Oh, and unicorns are cool too.

2. Do you believe in Swamp Primates?

No—although my mom claims she saw some weird swampy primate outside her window one night, but I’m betting that it was actually a creepy neighbor. Stuff happens.

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

I think we should try to raise money for people who claim to have seen these Swamp Primates to get therapy. (Sorry mom!) Bake sales always seem to work—and I make a mean pumpkin pie.

Introducing: Evin Hughes

This morning, I awoke and realized I was freezing.  Then I realized that was because it’s cold outside, so I took out my iPhone to ask it some things about that.  One of its new-fangled weather apps showed me a picture of Larry King and told me to wear a windbreaker, skinny jeans, and purple docksiders today.  I don’t have any of those things and felt really confused about how Larry King related to the weather, so I went back to the old standard app.  And then I saw it.

A fire danger statement.

Surely there is no coincidence here.  Surely this is due to the quickly-approaching third edition of The Burning Swamp Reading Series, which shall take place this Thursday.  Surely “a cooler but very dry air mass” is merely code for “a chorus of rejoicing Swamp Monster voices, whose very joy shall burn the very earth.”

It’s time to learn about another of our earth-scorching readers: the ever-kind and ever talented Evin Hughes.

A Little About Evin Hughes (by Evin Hughes)

This is a photograph of Evin Hughes, who totally doesn’t look squirrelly at all. Though according to spell check, he might look like a squire.

I hail from another borough called Swainsboro, a small place that most people know as “that town I drove through.” We are a squirrelly race, what with the annual festival celebrating pine trees (seriously) and our obsession with pinecone sculptures.

At Georgia Southern, I am double majoring in Writing & Linguistics and Information Technology. I enjoy writing creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. I love to read, can sort of speak Arabic, am an avid stockpiler of stationeries because you can’t have too many sticky notes, really good at balancing spoons on the tip of my nose during dinner parties, and a devout name-dropper. Oh and I recently won this award for an essay I wrote on ethics that was given to me by the Muhammad Ali Center, The Norman Mailer Center, and The National Council of Teachers of English.*

Evin’s Answers to Our Swamp Survey:

1.    What’s your favorite cryptozoology creature?

Not enough people appreciate Barney—the psychedelic-colored, stickler-for-education, and sophisticated dinosaur.

2.     Do you believe in Swamp Primates?

Where I grew up there was a swamp behind the woods in my backyard. I can still hear their mating calls.

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

They are deadly afraid of bad literature. Just read Fifty Shades of Grey over a megaphone and they will run in fear.

* That award, incidentally, would be this award, which is totally awesome and a really big deal and some serious evidence of what a remarkable human being and writer Evin is.  Also, that link will take you to a link to his essay.  Read it.

Introducing: Christina Olson

I think it’s pretty fair to say that everyone has had a good start to 2013.  I mean, none of us died in the Mayan Robot Zombie Apocalypse of Two Aught One Two, so that’s a good start right there.  Even the Swamp Monsters of Bulloch county have been full of joy and optimism: just yesterday, I noticed the trees near my neighborhood swamp were newly bedecked with moss, and Walgreen’s is newly stocked with all manner of green nail polishes, which seems related.

Here’s something to make the first month of your first Post-Mayan Robot Zombie Apocalypse of Two Aught One Two even more awesome: the third edition of The Burning Swamp Reading Series, and our first reading of Two Aught One Three.  Said reading will take place at Sugar Magnolia on Thursday, January 24th.  Sugar Magnolia will be serving up all manner of deliciousness before the reading — pizza night from 5 to 8! — and our readers will be serving up a whole host of delicious poems and stories and essays and other awesome pieces of writing for your mental palate’s pleasure at 8 pm.  Our all-star start-of-the-year line-up includes Christina Olson, Benjamin Drewlov, Hannah Frank, Evin Hughes, and Luca Inghilleri.

That means it’s time for me to make an awkward transition and for you to start to get to know our readers, starting with the talented and glamorous Christina Olson.

A Little About Christina Olson

Christina Olson is the author of a book of poems, Before I Came Home Naked. Her poetry and

This is a photograph of Christina Olson, fresh from salting swamp monsters.

nonfiction has recently appeared (or will soon) in The Normal School, Gastronomica, Rhino, and Hobart. She is the poetry editor of Midwestern Gothic, teaches writing and technical communication at Georgia Southern University, and recently completed a chapbook-length series of poems based on mid-1990s episodes of Law & Order. She lives in Statesboro and online at <www.thedrevlow-olsonshow.com>.

Christina’s Answers to Our Swamp Survey:

1.    What’s your favorite cryptozoology creature?

The coelacanth. Not technically a cryptozoology creature, but come on! It was thought dead for, oh, 65 million years, and then found alive in 1938. That’s pretty fantastic. Plus, it is ugly.

2.     Do you believe in Swamp Primates?

As much as I believe in poetry, which is to say, a lot.

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

Take care of them the same way you do slugs in the garden: set out a dish of beer and let them drink until they get sloppy. They’ll fall in and drown. We’ll need to scale up, but it should work.

11/29/12: Swampy Returns

Legends tells of an ancient curse so terrible it sent a noble clan of primate monsters to seek the comfort and safety of the swamps, and caused them to cause havoc all across the land.  For lo, the swamp monsters know not how to deal with joy, and so they express their positive emotions by causing technical difficulties in all forms of technology around them.

This curse began at the November edition of the Burning Swamp Reading Series, when a normally well-behaved mic decided to pretend like it was the mic in front of Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock.  And after the reading, the curse spread to just about every piece of technology owned by reading series co-founder Emma Bolden, whose camera and computer stopped speaking to each other, and her camera apparently made her computer so angry that it stopped speaking to its power cord.

Perhaps this is just another case of a cryptid attempting to obscure all evidence of its existence, for when Emma’s computer began speaking to its power cord and to her camera, vital documentation of the evening of November 29th was missing.  There is enough evidence, however, to post, and to gather that the evening was awesome.

Introducing: Marley Allsop

It’s a chilly evening here in Statesboro, Georgia, the kind of evening that’d make any Swamp Monster set their swamp on fire and then sit around it in their mossy mittens and scarves.  Thankfully, here’s something that’ll warm even the coldest cold-blooded semi-amphibian swamp primate’s heart: tomorrow (Thursday, November 29th) at 8:00 at Sugar Magnolia, you (yes, you!) are cordially invited to join us at the ever-cordial Burning Swamp Reading Series (note: though there will be beer, wine, coffee, and delicious treats for sale at the bakery, I can’t promise cordials).  Here’s a glimpse into one of the glorious readings you’ll see tomorrow night, via this profile of the astonishingly stylish and highly talented Marley Allsop!

Introducing: Theresa Welford

As I passed the border of Bulloch county yesterday, I could hear it: a thousand gargling, glugging voices raised in celebration.  Perhaps the Swamp Monsters were singing their seasonal song of gratitude.  I like to think they were singing in celebration, for the second installment of the Burning Swamp Reading Series will take place this Thursday, November 29th, at 8:00 pm, at Sugar Magnolia (that’s a lot of ats, but for this much awesome, many ats are necessary).  Come for the pizza, stay for the poetry and prose!

We’ve an excellent line-up of readers: Georgia Southern University faculty members Theresa Welford and Mary Marwitz will be reading along with GSU students Ethan Lavine, Marley Allsop, and Gerrard Davis.

You know what’s coming: it’s time to get to know our readers.  First up: talented and prolific writer, editor, teacher, traveler, activist, and cryptozoology enthusiast, Theresa Welford!