Thursday, April 30, 2020

Interview up on MassPoetry regarding the Virtual Fridays Dire Literary Series, to benefit Independent Bookstores

UPDATE 5/4: I'm no longer accepting queries for being a feature.  Apologies in advance.

Today there is an interview up about Virtual Fridays Dire Literary Series So, I made a bunch of links with the history of the non-virtual event, and also the original announcement / ground rules of the new on-line venue



artwork by Peter Urkowitz, as he often does at readings



In 2018, I ended the Dire Literary Series, after 18 years of running it as a monthly series.

1. Here's a link about the number of Dire Series readings and their location - if you want add 6 virtual Dires to this total for = 217 runnings!
2. Here's a link about the last line-up
3. Here's a link to an interview about ending it all (just the series...drama!)
4. Here's a link to the New Virtual Fridays (I know, another fucking link!)


     So, if I was happily retired from this event, as I've stated, why do it. Well, because of "these challenging times," "these times of Corona," "these strange, weird, odd, (insert adjective of choice) times," and "in the time of a pandemic," people need something to do!

     So MassPoetry is running a series of interviews about on-line readings, and poet Frances Donovan asked to interview me.
  It's a great interview by Frances---a few things that might be different from the time the interview was conducted and now:


1. Maybe I'll keep this going past social distancing?
2. Affiliation of bookstores. What I like to say now is that no bookstores are sponsoring us, we are sponsoring them! My features pick their favorite stores and we mention the shit out of them. For example Marianne Leone loves IAM Books in Boston, and Newtonville Books if you were interested in buying Ma Speaks Up
4. I was tossing around a virtual hat for the features, but this isn't currently happening. I hate asking people for money, but I love when people buy books.
5. If you are just there to listen, the camera being off is fine.
6. To feature at the live retired venue, all you needed was a published book. Currently I am querying all the features, as I'm shooting for some really big names. So far I've booked Marianne Leone, Anna David, Kathy Fish, Nick Flynn, and Kim Addonizio.

1 comment:

Igor Goldkind said...

Where and how can I apply to be considered for reading my work?

I’ve included a link to my pre-production manuscript and you can find example of my reading performances in the following links.

Gaiman


You Tube samples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRnmT_aE0acoowdNBvFtK_VW2OkNN2wWp

SoundCloud samples : https://soundcloud.com/igor-goldkind/sets/is-she-available-spoken-word


Please contact me by email on igorgoldkind@me.com for further communication.

Regards,

Igor Goldkind