Making Your Audience Squirm
Tim Jones-Yelvington at Open Books in Chicago.
One way to heighten the tension at a reading? Well, if you’re reading a story called “Slime Me,” and it’s about a boy who passionately longs to be slimed, then one way to make your listeners squirm is to open up a plastic container of neon-green slime and hold it at a slight angle, just enough so that a tiny bit starts to ooze out. It helps if you have purple sequins glued to your face. That tells your listeners that you are more theatrical than most and that maybe, just maybe, you will draw them into your story by giving them what your protagonist wants most of all, the thrill (or horror, depending on your point of view) of being slimed. Tim Jones-Yelvington takes this approach tonight at Open Books. There’s a ripple of apprehensive laughter as he tilts his little cup o’goop and reads, “He hungered for the spread of slime across his skin, his favorite the viscous kind that crept to cover, coat, encase.”
Jones-Yelvington is one of five authors brought to us this evening by Rose Metal Press and Barrelhouse Magazine. We also have Mary Hamilton reading from We know what we are, the winner of Rose Metal’s fourth annual Short Short Chapbook Contest; James Tadd Adcox reading three stories published in Barrelhouse, including “No One in the Office Knows What the Work Is”; and Simone Muench and Phil Jenks reading from a collection of poems they wrote and published collaboratively, Little Visceral Carnival. All in all, excellent prose and poetry–and no one is getting slimed.
Related Blog Posts
Open Books: Not Your Average Bookstore
Last Night at Open Books in Chicago
Peter Venkman Gets Slimed
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH6n-1anfxo
EVENT: ROSE METAL PRESS & BARRELHOUSE MAGAZINE | WEDNESDAY, JULY 28 AT 7PM | OPEN BOOKS
Thank you for the generous write-up!
1You’re very welcome! I’ll definitely keep an eye out for your work in the future.
2