Pack your suspenders, I'll come meet your plane

Last night at the Slipper Room, I witnessed the indomitable writers of Featherproof Books get up onstage to read stories they'd crafted from stuff like vaguely icky greeting cards with cartoon bears on them and CDs with music composed by Barry McGuire ("Eve of Destruction"), to coffee mugs inexplicably touting internet abbreviations, to a pair of erotic suspenders. Keep in mind, if I were them, I, too, would be a bit crazed by the hours and hours they've spent packed into a van at this point. It was all part of the cross-country Dollar Store Tour. Observe:

Aaron Burch, editor of Hobart, pre-strip. (Sorry I didn't get that pic.)


Zach Dodson, framed by heads (I don't know, it kind of looks deliberate, don't you think?) IMHO, he's just as funny an actor as he is a writer...on MyBook and SpaceFace.



The lovely Amelia Gray, author of the just-out AM/PM, a book of very short fiction. (Don't worry, I won't say the f-word).

During a chat with Amelia, I asked her how they'd survived two weeks already in a van without killing each other, and she revealed that the group worked out one simple principle for surviving the long hours in the van -- whoever's most likely to throw up, gets the window seat.