After a day of books, commerce, and encounters with emotionally disturbed people, the Swink faithful and Vermin centurions braved cross town traffic for a night of no-holds-barred readings in the upstairs lounge at the Mountain bar in Chinatown. It's a dangerous game we play. Eight hours of book panels, book signing, and bookety bookishness is almost more than even the most fervent book lover can bear. Almost, but not quite. Salvador Plascencia is on the verge of hysteria.
Luckily, plenty of antidote was on hand. (Hint: it's cold and gold.) Cecil Castelucci, author of Boy Proof and Queen of Cool, is armed and ready.
Alexis Orgera is the poetry editor at Swink and a one-woman sales juggernaut at the Swink/Vermin booth. She's also a middle school librarian and a fantastic poet in her own right.
If you've been wondering when the next issue of Swink is coming out, fear not. You have three months to prepare to the onslaught of literary goodness that awaits you this summer. Neale DeSousa offers a sneak peak with a dispatch from Goa.
As is usually the case, there were last minute cancellations, missed flights, and viral emergencies that left us short a few readers. At ten o'clock the night before the reading the incomparable Lizz Huerta, a newly appointed director at the art, music and culture collective Voz Alta in downtown San Diego, volunteered to fill in, which she did in her usual spectacular fashion.
Did you know Salvador Plasscencia was in attendance at the very first Vermin on the Mount? It was held in a boiler room beneath the banquet hall of a Hualtuco hotel in September of 1891. Or maybe it was Scotland.
Ben Ehrenreich read from his debut novel The Suitors, a book that cries out to be aloud. At least the dirty parts do. Thankfully, that's exactly the kind of person Ben is, which makes him a very Vermin kind of a guy.
