new ideas as they are being created

some advice for hosting a reading series

me (and Eleanor and Dylan and Nicky and some other people) in the audience at the first Figure It Out reading, May 2024. Photo by Alex Tey @birdmotif

One of the first readings I did after moving to New York was Sarah Schulman’s “First Mondays” series at Performance Space in the East Village. I’ve been back many times since in the audience. At the head of the program every month, there’s some text that begins, “One of the great advantages of living in New York City is that we can hear new ideas as they are being created, instead of having to wait years for those books to appear on bookstore shelves.”

It’s true, and it’s one of the many things that people who live here tend to take for granted about this place: New York is a city full of working writers, and, if you really wanted to, you could go out and hear some work in progress basically every night. Readings are a constant fact of life for anyone who wants to make it as a writer; it’s how we socialize, promote ourselves and each other, earnestly support our friends, mark the passage of time in the form of the books and magazine issues we’ve all parceled our lives out into, eavesdrop on our rivals, etc. Appearing at a friend’s book launch or on a reading series is not quite as good as a publication credit, but it has a downsized version of the same effect.

It’s relatively common for writers to take it upon ourselves to put them together — publicity budgets at the big houses are shrinking, and, sometimes, it can be a way to stake a sort of claim on the scene. The thing is, a lot of New York readings (particularly one-off ones for book launches and the like) are really bad. Not bad in terms of the work being showcased at them — I’m often astonished by what people around me are coming up with — but in terms of the showmanship. I’ve seen brilliant work all but smothered in the fumblings and bad jokes of hosts, embarrassing technical mishaps, and a general atmosphere of awkward unease; I’ve attended readings that end with everyone (even the nonsmokers) flooding for the door and out into the night after the requisite hey congratulations, loved your piece has been delivered to the right person, and sometimes even before that.

I think writers may not realize that when they plan a reading, they are entering into the performing arts, whether they like it or not. If your goal is to foster a community around art, which is the only legitimate goal of hosting one of these things, you should host an event that people are actually capable of relaxing and having fun at.

I’ve been running a pretty successful series for a few months now, and I go to a lot of them as an audience member, so I think I’ve learned a few things from experience on how readings work, or don’t, and I thought I’d put attempt a sort of guide to anyone who wants to start a reading series.

I’ve become pretty opinionated about these things, but it’s because they’re so important to me — and I hope that if you’ve been thinking about it, this both encourages you to actually do it, and helps you avoid some mishaps that I’ve witnessed (and committed myself). It’s a great thing to do, wherever you are.

Should you host a reading series?

This is perhaps the most important question, and it often seemingly goes unasked.¹ If you produce a reading that flops, you won’t be doing yourself or your readers a favor. It’s worth considering, even for a moment, whether or not you have what it takes.

A good reading host is a nexus of a literary community, someone who knows a sufficient quantity of writers to people the stage month after month and is well enough respected that people trust their Tuesday evening to their judgement when they could be at home watching a Alice Rohrwacher film with their nesting partner. Can you provide someone a better evening than watching La Chimera with the love of their life would be? Additionally: are you an extroverted person who can handle a lot of logistics, stress, and a large quantity of unforeseen trouble? Are you going to keep your composure when you have to say “hey how’s it been” to maybe upwards of thirty people? People actually come to these things, at least the first time, and you’ll be the center of attention.

I was extremely unprepared the first time Joyce and I hosted Figure it Out, flying around the roof the day of the show, barely saying anything to anyone, stuttering through my introductions. It was a wake-up call in some ways. But people showed up, because Joyce and I had spent the last two years accruing goodwill with New York’s (mostly queer and Gen Z) literati. As awkward as I was, I discovered that people cared about my taste, and that Joyce and I could really bring people together, and I shaped up for the next one. Heed my warnings — but this might be true for you, too.

Who should you book?

You should obviously only book people if you would actually go to bat for their work, because you are. No one is getting serious clout from this; that’s not really what this is for. I’m a big believer in booking your friends, and asking them if they know anyone else who might be a good fit for whatever your particular vibe is. In this way, the circle of the reading’s influence grows outwardly in a fairly organic manner. A bit of cold-emailing is healthy, but do it too much and you end up with a lot of mere acquaintances.

I think a mixture of poetry and prose is best. Listening to several stories in a row is fatiguing, and listening to four different poets in a row is deranging. If you are only friends with prose writers or only friends with poets, change that. In terms of genre, I like as wide a variety as possible.

A mix of career “levels” is best, too. No one wants all “emerging” writers who all seem like nobodies, and no one wants all mid-career writers who look and talk like an establishment. If your friends are all novices, ask the most famous person you actually talk to if they would do you a favor. If your friends are all successful and famous, find some scrappy young people somewhere to counterbalance them.

The curation of your readers is also the curation of your audience. Think about how you can get groups of people in the same room who wouldn’t be otherwise — who should perhaps be talking to each other more than they currently are. This is one of the unique powers you now possess as a host.

Where should you host it?

Maybe this is controversial, but anywhere but a bookstore. If you’re doing it at a bookstore, you better really know what you’re doing, because you basically have to singlehandedly supply the vibes. With some exceptions (New York City has a lot of them) bookstores are not ideal settings for social events, which is what this is. The room has to be rearranged, for one thing; the lighting is often not great, and the general atmosphere can be kind of funereal — you’re putting living culture inside a place where culture is being packaged and sold. There’s some dissonance there that can be hard to overcome.²

A bar is a great place to do a reading, but I’ve seen good ones in parks, in cafés, and even in temporarily-repurposed nightclubs. Each comes with its own limitations, but I think each of them is, generally speaking, a better starting point. We do ours on a residential rooftop in Ridgewood during the summer only, which is a little extreme, but it works.³

Your reading should not have a “theme”

I’m of the opinion that telling your writers that they should try to find an excerpt about “desire” or “friendship” or “resilience” or what have you is evidence of a lack of curatorial confidence, not to mention an insult to the writers, who are creators of poetry and prose and not extemporizers upon “themes.” Your event will be coherent because you are the one selecting the writers according to your criteria of excellence; any constraint you then place on them is inexcusable.⁴ Themes are for magazine issues, because magazines can pay writers to write on spec. Reading host, as noble of a role as it is, is significantly lower on the totem pole than magazine editor. Be humble.

You have to be good at social media

I’ve noticed that this is usually the part that people need the least amount of help with, so I’ll keep it brief: Announce your event well in advance, and in the two weeks leading up to it, get increasingly incessant with reminders. Do a grid post once with an eye-catching flyer (and tag your readers) but post and re-post it on your story like it’s the most important thing in the world. Decrease the number of infographics or cat videos you put on your story while you’re in a promo cycle. If you haven’t done this before, ask your friend who’s in a band or DJs to help you out.

You have to have alcohol available

This is common practice in the art world for openings, but less so for the literary world, because we all generally have less money than galleries do. Regardless, you should contrive a way. A couple cheap boxes of wine are enough, or if you’re truly destitute, specify on the event flyer that it’s BYOB. It will go a long way toward enabling people to relax, even on a purely atmospheric level.

People should be encouraged to hang out before and after the event

I like a leisurely hour between doors and show, and a “hard out” of no less than an hour after the readings have concluded. The whole point of these things is to give the work you’re presenting a springboard into the world — the two hours on either side of the event are the space the work is entering. People will talk to each other, be introduced, connections will form, etc. This is the point of the event. Everyone will want to talk to your readers after the show to congratulate them, to ask questions, to exchange emails or Instagram handles, to find out where they can find other work — make sure your readers have enough time to really bask in this. They will be grateful to you.

You need to be enthusiastic

Be personable when people come in and after the show. Now is not the time to be endearingly dour. If you see a new face, introduce yourself without making it weird.

The really important part happens when the lights dim and you go onstage — you are setting the tone. You have to be professional, articulate, and — this is the most important one to me — enthusiastic. Your readers are allowed to mumble or talk in muted monotones because the idiosyncrasy afforded to all artists extends to the performance of their own work. Your job is to hone the audience’s attention toward them. You are not allowed to mumble or affect anything even close to an apologetic demeanor. You are stoked that you get to do this, and you have to make sure everyone else is stoked, too. This requires a kind of shamelessness. My mentor Cat Fitzpatrick laughs obnoxiously loud at the jokes in her authors’ work when they’re onstage, even if no one else is laughing. This is the kind of bravery that you need.

Do not let the venue staff talk if possible

If you let someone from the venue with no personal stake in the event come onstage at the beginning and intone a list of upcoming events (this is common at bookstores), you’ve already basically lost the vibe. Try asking the venue staff if you could deliver whatever announcements with your more thorough command of the room (and keep it brief), or, if they must, whether they could do it at the end.⁵

Let the readers stretch their legs

No one should have to figure out how to read for three minutes. You should assume that the audience actually wants to hear what these artists have come up with. Book fewer readers (I think four is pretty much always enough) and let them go for longer. I tell people at Figure It Out that they can read for up to 20 minutes and, for what it’s worth, only one person (Jeanne Thornton, who had the audience absolutely riveted) has ever taken me up on this.

If your readers go over their time limit, don’t cut them off

Seriously, I cannot think of anything more embarrassing. Literary people tend to be pushovers, so this isn’t something I see a ton, but the couple times I have seen it are seared into my memory. If a reader asks you “how am I doing on time?” mid-performance, the only appropriate response is “you’re good.”

You need amplification, even if you think you don’t

Even if your venue is small, the sound of a lone human voice will not carry all the way to the back of it, and your readers should not be forced to shout. Adjust the levels so that it’s not deafening before people get there. Some of them will regardless choose to do away with the microphone (this is a mistake), but for every one of those belters, someone else will want to talk quietly and normally and still be heard.

You need to confirm that the sound equipment works several days before the show

You’d think this is obvious, but experience indicates that no one seems to have time to check if their amp and microphones work until the show is about to start in an hour. It will ruin the show if something’s gone awry. You definitely know someone with a backup PA or amp or microphone or whatever — check that yours work in enough time to find this person and ask them for a favor.

For God’s sake, turn off the lights everywhere but the stage

Again, you’d sort of feel like this is an obvious one. Overhead lights on while someone is standing up and talking at them will make everyone feel like they’re in grade school again. If there isn’t a good way to do this with the lighting at the venue, turn off all the lights in the venue and bring your Ikea floor lamp from home to aim at your readers. I’m serious, this is important.

You need to be able to run through the whole show in your head

Do you know how to pronounce everyone’s name? What are you going to say before and after the show? Are you going to ad-lib some sort of appreciation for each piece when you go up to do the author bios, or not? You need to know this, otherwise, you will be faced with a room full of expectant and perhaps slightly bored people and you will forget how to use language. Language will come out of you regardless, but now isn’t the time to discover what you’re like when you’re nervous. If you really have to, write down every word you’re planning on saying and take it up there with you.

Only try to be funny if you’re actually funny

I don’t want to be cringing at your attempts at humor, especially if you’re riffing badly on the pieces between each set and in so doing trivializing them.⁶ If you are not funny by nature, don’t force it, and don’t force anything else, either — the persona you present on stage should be (to paraphrase Andrea Lawlor) like yourself, only more so.

For the love of God, no Q&As

That’s what after the show is for. I don’t think anyone enjoys hearing anyone’s half-baked questions, or listening to the author try and fail to justify or explicate some aspect of their own work. Q&As bring out the worst aspects of literary people — the prying contrarian, the teacher’s pet energy, the show-off. If someone really has a burning question (they probably don’t) they can go up to the author and ask them about it after the show, on a more social terrain where whatever question they have has to compete with reality.

Thank your readers the day after the show

A simple, sincere email is best. No need for anything too personal — hopefully, you’ve already talked enough to your readers during the show that a simple thank you for being a part of this will feel personal enough. And it’s gauche to say that you hope to see them at future readings. You’ve done them a kindness by booking them, but they do not owe you their attendance. If you’ve done well, they will be back on their own.

Nit-picking

There needs to be some way to enter and exit quietly mid-reading, ie, don’t put the only door behind the stage so that anyone who needs or wants to leave has to walk right past the writer onstage. Drinks should likewise be in the back. If you read all the author bios at the beginning of the event, people will forget them —and the brief caesura provided by the host going onstage and reading the next reader’s bio is a sort of palate cleanser between different aesthetic universes. If you’re doing the whole Venmo donations thing (a good idea), it’s sleazy to use your personal account for it; also, only mention that you’re taking donations at the beginning and the end of the show. You should really consider putting a HEPA filter or three in your venue if you aren’t requiring masking; a couple big cities have programs that rent them out at low or no cost. It doesn’t matter if you start on time, no one is expecting you to. You should have an email list now that people of good conscience are abandoning social media in droves. (We don’t, it’s on my interminable to-do list.) Readings that have an after-party are readings that went to heaven; have a spot in mind ahead of time.

1. If you’re doing a book launch, you have to do a reading for the sake of your literary dignity if nothing else, and this (and most of the advice in this article) doesn’t apply to you. You must do it, even if your publisher won’t help you. Good luck.

2. Unnameable Books in Brooklyn does readings in their beautiful backyard during the summer, which strips away all these limitations.

3. When we moved it to Topos Books for the “winter special,” it worked because Topos is a bookstore that looks and feels a lot like a bar, and is a beloved neighborhood institution on top of that: it’s the exception that proves the rule. (If anything, the problem was that so many people came — close to seventy — that the event exceeded the capacity of the bookstore for both comfort and fire safety.)

4. Sarah Schulman, the host of the aforementioned First Mondays series, does curate her readings with an eye to their thematic import, but she does so on the level of who the writers are rather than what they write about. So she’ll title a reading “New Adventures in Nonfiction” or “New Trans Literature” but never anything as crass as what I’m talking about here. Likewise, Leah Abrams and Heather Akumiah, who run the wildly successful Limousine Reading Series, will give their readings vague titles that give some sense of what the audience is in for but not ever say that the reading is “about” anything.

5. Don’t be an asshole about this. They have a job to do, one that they actually get paid for, unlike you. But if there’s any flexibility there, take advantage of it.

6. A pair of reading hosts who do this well are the brilliant duo of Anton Solomonik and Jeanne Thornton, who host the World Transsexual Forum in Brooklyn.