Drinking, Smoking, and Bookslut

"When I was younger, I used to try and charm women into taking me home so I could, you know, get a look at their ... bookshelves." Troy Jollimore says this about judging people based on what books they read, and as a preface to his poem consisting of the titles of books he's read or owned. Jollimore, alongside authors Emily Flake and Rebecca Barry, read their work last night at September's Bookslut reading, nestled into the cozy, upper room of the Hopleaf bar.

Jollimore's poetry from his latest book, Tom Thompson in Purgatory, is haunting, with everyman stories about the title character, who struggles at one point with looking out his window facing the street as a metaphor for hell, and tries but fails to imagine heaven on the other side.

We love Emily Flake's Lulu Eightball comic strip and were excited to see her new book about her love/hate relationship with cigarettes, These Things Ain't Gonna Smoke Themselves, projected in a witty, PowerPoint-like presentation.

Rebecca Barry read the beginning of her book, Later, at the Bar, the story of a woman's life spanning her youth, when she moved from Alaska to start a bar whose patrons were "more interested in longing than love," to her death at eighty, freezing in a storm in upper New York.

The reading lasted just under an hour, and then people were back to drinking, carousing, and chatting with the authors.

Bokslut holds their next event on October 4th at the Hopleaf, featuring Benjamin Percy, George Murray, and Porochista Khakpour.

Image via lasumprema