Our latest edition of Tuesday Funk at Hopleaf was a real humdinger. Were our audience members trying to hold onto their dinners because they were laughing so hard, or was there some other reason? If you weren't there, I'm afraid, you may never know.
The memorable evening started out strong with fiction from Jennifer Schaefer, poems from Kristin Lueke, and a sweet, affecting memoir from Dion Walton.
But after a break for beer and a biking poem by Bill—well, that's where the evening took a turn for the indelible. Seriously, we don't think anyone who heard it will ever forget the personal essay by Samantha Irby that brought the house down. We wish, seriously, that we could show it all to you, and not just the excerpt you'll find below, but it was so scorchingly vile that it must have broken our camera, because somehow the audio track became corrupted. We could only salvage the last few lines from Sam's reading, but we think you'll find that it conveys the, er, flavor of the piece quite well.
No one could possibly have followed that reading, but somehow Alex Shakar managed it, with an engrossing chapter from his L.A. Times Book Prize-winning novel Luminarium. We look forward to sharing that video with you soon.
So that's it—a Tuesday Funk for the ages. But if you missed it, don't fret. After a break in July, we'll be back on August 7th with our guests Stacy Bierlein, Jesse Jordan, Holly McDowell, Scott Smith, and our own Sara Ross Witt. Be sure to join us! The airsickness bags will be optional.
