Sunday, Oct. 3rd | 4 p.m. | Iron Post
After a summer-long hiatus, the Smile Politely/HOBART collaboration we call Stories and Beer has found its way back to the Iron Post. As was the case last year, we hope to provide C-U with a wide array of local, visiting and U of I affiliated authors alongside a wide array of imbibements (honestly, as much as we like stories, we’re all probably a little bit more partial to the beer component here).
This particular reading is also special because it will serve as a book release party for HOBART editor and S&B host Aaron Burch’s first book, How to Predict the Weather. This is obviously a pretty big deal, so come on out and support the guy, he might even sign your (insert body part here).
And now, to introduce the people who will be reading while you drink:
Paul Wirth: He owns the Iron Post. Don’t heckle him or you’ll be barred from the joint.
Josh Bishoff is a librarian and thus-far-failed novelist who spends too much time at the Esquire. His enthusiasms include the film Aliens, avant-garde American lovemaking, and anything written by Jennifer Egan.
Russ Evatt spends too much time working on his jump shot and his crowning life achievement is being the league manager for a fantasy football league. He lives in Champaign and has a gym membership at Parkland College.
Continue on to read Aaron Burch and visiting reader Lindsay Hunter (you can also click here to see Aaron beg for money and Lindsay do the running man).
And if all that weren’t enough, here’s a little taste of what you may have missed last semester:
Chicago writer Joe Meno reads at Stories and Beer:
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Aaron interviews Lindsay, Lindsay interviews Aaron
Aaron: So. Lindsay. Your first book, Daddy’s, is out right now from featherproof books and it kicks a pretty amazing amount of ass. I was lucky enough to get to read with you at your book release party up in Chicago a month or so ago, which was the final reading of a small Midwest reading tour where we (along with Amelia Gray, Blake Butler, Mary Hamilton, and Jac Jemc) rocked our way through Madison, St. Paul, Iowa City, and Chicago. And earlier in the summer we were out west reading in San Diego, L.A., and San Francisco for our High Emission Reading Tour. Basically, what I’m getting at is that we spent a lot of time doing readings and driving around in rental cars and vans together this summer and so my question is: just how awesome am I?
Lindsay: Well Aaron, words cannot describe how awesome you are. I found myself missing you pretty much immediately after we parted ways (and even before – I made you say goodbye to me early in the evening at my book release, remember? Because I was afraid we’d be too busy or distracted to say goodbye?). I think you come off as this really laid back, easygoing guy, but that is merely a layer of you – your writing peels that back and we get to peek in to the amazing depth within. You are a great writer, a good reader (and I mean that in the sense that the way you read out loud and to yourself informs your writing), and an incredibly generous guy.
And I’m still laughing about your flipflop in Iowa City.
What I want to ask you is, as a revered editor and publisher, as well as someone who is in school, how in the world do you find the time to write? I recently had the honor of reading submissions for a few magazines, and man, some of the stuff that comes in is really disheartening, and I’d find myself worrying about the future of my own writing. Does reading submissions help you as a writer? How does your life as an editor/publisher work with or against your life as a writer? Or are they not different at all?
Aaron: Aw. Look at you. I was trying to be goofy and you went and got all sentimental on me.
I think, at this point, writing and editing and publishing is all one big blob of “lit stuff” that is inseparable from itself. Definitely in the first handful of years of working on Hobart I barely wrote at all — writing is awesome and I love it but it’s also usually the easiest thing to want to avoid and I’d excuse myself by saying I was still getting my “lit fix” by reading submissions or laying out an issue and, next thing I knew, years had gone by and I had barely written anything. Coming to grad school was actually a huge kick in the butt to write more and was one of the reasons why it seemed appealing — I’d never had deadlines or anything like that before and while the impulse is always to fight against writing as homework, it can be a good motivator. I’ve never really been on to write everyday, but I do something every day — schoolwork or submission reading or story or book editing, etc. Then, when I finally make myself sit and write, it usually comes pretty quick because I’ve been thinking about it while doing all that other stuff. Also, in a weird way, reading crappy submissions seems to inspire me as a writer and lets me believe whatever I most recently wrote probably wasn’t really as awful as I feared.
As someone who co-hosts your own reading series (Quickies), I’m wondering how that has affected your own readings. You are easily one of my fave readers I’ve either read with or even just seen/heard and I’m sure that talent has been helped in its growth by doing it all the time. But… also… when you read at other people’s series, do you ever steal their good ideas? Do you judge them when they go badly. Ever want to just Jimmy-Fallon-on-SNL-as-computer-nerd-guy them and say, “Move!” and take over yourself?
Lindsay: Thanks man! It means a lot to hear that. And yeah, having my own series helps enormously – you get to do great or do terribly and at the end of the day it’s still your fucking reading series, THIS MY HOUSE, and it doesn’t matter. Actually Mary and I started Quickies! in part so that we could practice reading in front of people more – so we could write the crazy shit we wanted to and then try it out in front of an excited and drunken crowd. We’ve both grown so much in terms of reading, and even in terms of writing – the Quickies! experience has been invaluable, and so much fun.
In terms of stealing, Mary and I steal readers from other series all the time. That’s how it goes here – if you were awesome at someone’s reading series, 3 other people will want you to read at theirs. I don’t now that I personally steal anyone’s story ideas or performance ideas or anything like that – that makes me feel kind of gross, so I hope I don’t do that. Although I am hugely inspired when I see someone just kill it at a reading – it makes me want to get better.
I feel badly when people bomb – I’ve definitely been there before and I will be again. So I don’t generally judge – the only time I judge is when someone is going on and on and on – I get ants in my pants really easily and I hate when people aren’t considerate of time. Bombing is part of being a writer though – it’s necessary. It keeps you humble, helps you learn how to do better. No one is immune.
I also want to ask you what you are working on right now – how is it different or the same as what you’ve always worked on? I find that I return to the same themes and atmospheres to mine for inspiration – are you the same way? Do you work against that ever? How do you keep surprising yourself?
Aaron: Right now I’m working on a novel for my MFA thesis. It’s pretty new — I’ve technically been writing it only since the beginning of summer or so — but, really, I’ve been writing or getting at it for years. It’s a roadtrip story and is kind of about the stuff that interests me, meaning the stuff I always write about, meaning driving and video games and tattoos and memory and reminiscing about the past and girls and generally being awkward. Which is to say I totally know what you mean about returning to the same themes. That’s what everyone does, right? My Keyhole book that this reading is kind of a book release party for is something of a novella (hopefully it works as a novella!) but it was never intended as such. It was really just a collection of my really short fiction. But it turns out I had so many pieces that covered the same territory, over and over and over, that I went back and tweaked them, and added some pieces, and dropped some others, and put them in a kind of order that hinted at something bigger so, again, ideally, it works as a book instead of an annoyingly repetitive collection with the same short piece of fiction given to you like 50 times.
All that said, I have made pushes to get away from that in my stories and I have been pretty excited by them. I work against repetition and keep surprising myself by throwing challenges at myself. I joked once about returning to a WWBED (What Would Brian Evenson Do?) bracelet when I get stuck, and you can probably see that in my stories where characters lose limbs and teeth and stuff like that, often by their own doing.
And here I’ll push this back on you. Currently working on? Has the collection of stories come out pushed you in a new direction, now that that’s out and done and all that? And, finally, in something of a summation of some of the above questions, how has your reading series and being such a kickass reader affected your actual writing. Do you ever find yourself writing stuff specifically because it would get laughs (or some other reaction) when read in front of people, and do you let yourself go with that or fight against it or both or neither?
Lindsay: Right now I’m working on a novel, and when I say “novel,” I mean something that is novel-length, but won’t necessarily have any kind of traditional plot whatsoever, since that kind of stuff is not in my wheelhouse. At least, that’s what it is right now. It’s kind of in the early stages and I haven’t been able to devote the time I want to to it, which has been frustrating.
The collection has definitely pushed me – I love those stories a lot but I am also sick to death of them, and I want to expand and keep getting better. I also want to find out if I’m even capable of writing something novel-length…I did write one in grad school but it’s a terrible sham of a novel.
I think reading in front of an audience affects my writing in weird ways – I don’t sit down and think “I need to write a funny story” but I do sit down and think “I don’t want to bore myself when I’m up there.” But that maybe has to do with my writing in general – I hate being bored. I think entertainment is a huge part of writing for me – I want to entertain, as smarmy as that may be to admit. But I try to write my stories as something that is just as compelling on the page as it is read out loud – it’s been a huge boost hearing from people who’ve never heard me read and who’ve liked the book – it makes me feel like my integrity is at least partially intact.