Contributed by Kristin Travagline for the Flatiron Hot! News
On Monday, September 14th, just before sunset on a rooftop in Williamsburg, 54 writers and friends gathered to listen to poems and stories. The reading was hosted by spring 2015 New School MFA creative writing graduates Artrit Bytyçi, Demetri Raftopoulos, and Brett Rawson. The New School, located at 68 Fifth Avenue, is less than a 10-minute walk from our own Flatiron location. The three writers have hosted one other rooftop reading so far, which took place in August, bringing to fruition a dream they have shared since their first semester of graduate school.
All three men displayed good-natured humor and paid homage to the last days of summer by greeting their guests in Hawaiian button-down shirts. Before the readings began, Rawson surprised his fellow co-hosts by asking members of the audience to step up to the mic to read Bytyçi’s and Raftopoulos’s horoscopes (which happened to be written by Rawson himself). Part of Raftopoulos’s horoscope read: “Three times a lady is a hell of a lot of lady, you might think. Your love life will take an interesting turn this month, bro. Wait, sorry, I misread your bicep: your love life will take ten interesting turns this month. An unexpected event will catch you off-guard, perhaps in a bath towel in your parent’s basement, toward the end of the month,” at which guests laughed.
During the first half of the event guests, with drinks in hand, gathered in a semi-circle to hear the first reader, Laura Jo Hess. An orange sunset illuminated the Manhattan skyline as she started to read. The audience was quiet, sipping PBR and smoking cigarettes, while Hess moved closer to the microphone to drown out the wind, adding to the event’s intimate feel. Hess recently graduated from the New School with an MFA in poetry. She has published in Barrow Street, The American Journal of Poetry, and Decomp Magazine, among others.
Ben Fama, another poet based in New York City, followed Hess. The last poem he read was composed on his birthday and involved a rhythmic repetition of celebrity names that have dominated headlines this past year. As he spoke and the sky darkened, his voice took on a hypnotic quality. His most recent book, Fantasy, published by Ugly Duckling Press in spring 2015, is described on their website as “operating in a world of Internet, glamour, and lonely 21st-century adulthood.”
After Fama, there was a short break. Guests pulled cold beers out of buckets of ice, and chatted with old friends and new acquaintances. They soaked in the skyline, now lit up and vast.
The reading continued with Leia Menlove, a 2015 New School MFA fiction graduate. Menlove captured the audience’s attention while reading from her feminist erotic novella, “How to Train Your Virgin”, released by Badlands Unlimited and ArtBook in March 2015. A breeze chilled the air. Rawson stood behind Menlove while she read, holding a light over her shoulder so that she could see. Menlove jokes in her bio that she is “currently finishing her first novel for the fourth time.”
Miracle Jones, whose energy and humor were perhaps the pinnacle of the evening, brought the reading to a close. His voice held the audience rapt as he charged through his prose, picking up momentum like a locomotive. He read from a short story entitled “Fulfillment” that describes working at, as he says, an “Amazon fulfillment center in Haslet, Texas as a seasonal, part-time picker.” The audience, myself included, laughed out loud while he described Kathy Jane, who runs the book printing machine:
“She punches some numbers into one of the book machines. The machine starts to whir and churn. We stand there side by side in silence. Eventually, the machine stops printing. The machine glues on the cover, and cuts everything to the proper trim size. She looks at the book, smells it, and then hands it to me. It is called ‘PUSSY PATROL ONE: MEOW MIXXXER.’
‘It’s sex stories, but for kitty cats,’ says Kathy Jane. ‘I have written ten so far. This first one is about a tom named Lester who throws a big party for all the cats and then things get a little crazy.’
‘Oh wow,’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘They’re not for everyone. Nobody has reviewed them yet on Amazon. I sell a couple a week, though. I price them pretty low so that people who really want them will be able to afford them.’”
At one point, Jones asked whether his reading was going too long. The audience urged him to continue. The full story is available for free at http://www.miraclejones.com/stories/fulfillment.html. Jones’s bio on his website reads: “Miracle Jones is from Texas. He is a Sagittarius. He is a very private person.”
Overall, the event was a reminder of the special atmosphere that can only take place in New York. At the end of summer, during sunset on a rooftop overlooking the glowing Manhattan skyline. Surrounded by friends, pleasant company, beautiful words, and humor. What could be more enjoyable?
Bytyçi, Raftopoulos, and Rawson plan to continue their reading series through the fall and winter. Playfully, they remarked how the readings will soon need to be held on roof bottoms instead. Learn more about their upcoming readings by following them on Facebook (Rooftop Readings NYC), Twitter, Instagram, or visiting their website http://rooftopreadingsnyc.com/.
NYC Theater News
Flatiron as Literary Incubator: Hawaiian Shirts, PBR, and Cat Porn at a Rooftop Reading Hosted by New School MFA Graduates
Contributed by Kristin Travagline for the Flatiron Hot! News
On Monday, September 14th, just before sunset on a rooftop in Williamsburg, 54 writers and friends gathered to listen to poems and stories. The reading was hosted by spring 2015 New School MFA creative writing graduates Artrit Bytyçi, Demetri Raftopoulos, and Brett Rawson. The New School, located at 68 Fifth Avenue, is less than a 10-minute walk from our own Flatiron location. The three writers have hosted one other rooftop reading so far, which took place in August, bringing to fruition a dream they have shared since their first semester of graduate school.
All three men displayed good-natured humor and paid homage to the last days of summer by greeting their guests in Hawaiian button-down shirts. Before the readings began, Rawson surprised his fellow co-hosts by asking members of the audience to step up to the mic to read Bytyçi’s and Raftopoulos’s horoscopes (which happened to be written by Rawson himself). Part of Raftopoulos’s horoscope read: “Three times a lady is a hell of a lot of lady, you might think. Your love life will take an interesting turn this month, bro. Wait, sorry, I misread your bicep: your love life will take ten interesting turns this month. An unexpected event will catch you off-guard, perhaps in a bath towel in your parent’s basement, toward the end of the month,” at which guests laughed.
During the first half of the event guests, with drinks in hand, gathered in a semi-circle to hear the first reader, Laura Jo Hess. An orange sunset illuminated the Manhattan skyline as she started to read. The audience was quiet, sipping PBR and smoking cigarettes, while Hess moved closer to the microphone to drown out the wind, adding to the event’s intimate feel. Hess recently graduated from the New School with an MFA in poetry. She has published in Barrow Street, The American Journal of Poetry, and Decomp Magazine, among others.
Ben Fama, another poet based in New York City, followed Hess. The last poem he read was composed on his birthday and involved a rhythmic repetition of celebrity names that have dominated headlines this past year. As he spoke and the sky darkened, his voice took on a hypnotic quality. His most recent book, Fantasy, published by Ugly Duckling Press in spring 2015, is described on their website as “operating in a world of Internet, glamour, and lonely 21st-century adulthood.”
After Fama, there was a short break. Guests pulled cold beers out of buckets of ice, and chatted with old friends and new acquaintances. They soaked in the skyline, now lit up and vast.
The reading continued with Leia Menlove, a 2015 New School MFA fiction graduate. Menlove captured the audience’s attention while reading from her feminist erotic novella, “How to Train Your Virgin”, released by Badlands Unlimited and ArtBook in March 2015. A breeze chilled the air. Rawson stood behind Menlove while she read, holding a light over her shoulder so that she could see. Menlove jokes in her bio that she is “currently finishing her first novel for the fourth time.”
Miracle Jones, whose energy and humor were perhaps the pinnacle of the evening, brought the reading to a close. His voice held the audience rapt as he charged through his prose, picking up momentum like a locomotive. He read from a short story entitled “Fulfillment” that describes working at, as he says, an “Amazon fulfillment center in Haslet, Texas as a seasonal, part-time picker.” The audience, myself included, laughed out loud while he described Kathy Jane, who runs the book printing machine:
“She punches some numbers into one of the book machines. The machine starts to whir and churn. We stand there side by side in silence. Eventually, the machine stops printing. The machine glues on the cover, and cuts everything to the proper trim size. She looks at the book, smells it, and then hands it to me. It is called ‘PUSSY PATROL ONE: MEOW MIXXXER.’
‘It’s sex stories, but for kitty cats,’ says Kathy Jane. ‘I have written ten so far. This first one is about a tom named Lester who throws a big party for all the cats and then things get a little crazy.’
‘Oh wow,’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘They’re not for everyone. Nobody has reviewed them yet on Amazon. I sell a couple a week, though. I price them pretty low so that people who really want them will be able to afford them.’”
At one point, Jones asked whether his reading was going too long. The audience urged him to continue. The full story is available for free at http://www.miraclejones.com/stories/fulfillment.html. Jones’s bio on his website reads: “Miracle Jones is from Texas. He is a Sagittarius. He is a very private person.”
Overall, the event was a reminder of the special atmosphere that can only take place in New York. At the end of summer, during sunset on a rooftop overlooking the glowing Manhattan skyline. Surrounded by friends, pleasant company, beautiful words, and humor. What could be more enjoyable?
Bytyçi, Raftopoulos, and Rawson plan to continue their reading series through the fall and winter. Playfully, they remarked how the readings will soon need to be held on roof bottoms instead. Learn more about their upcoming readings by following them on Facebook (Rooftop Readings NYC), Twitter, Instagram, or visiting their website http://rooftopreadingsnyc.com/.