I MISS HOSTING!

For five and a half years, I MCed a literary readings series called Dogfish. My friend Jessica lived in a former bakery in the Saint Roch neighborhood of New Orleans, and every month, she would open her home and we would provide drinks and snacks and bring in two featured readers, then we’d have a sort of mixerish intermission, and start back up with an open mic to close out the night. Hosting that show eased the pain of stepping back from standup comedy, and while it is yet one more casualty of the Pandemic, I remember it fondly. Tonight, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I’m co-hosting Funny But Make it Fashion with Kechi!

This is one of my favorite New Orleans productions—one of my favorite productions, period. It’s a standup showcase, modeling competition, and usually, a drag show, all rolled into one. Kechi is bringing it to the Big Couch comedy theater as part of the Big Gator Comedy Festival’s inaugural year, and since her usual cohost, Laveaux Contraire is unavailable, she has turned to me to help out. I’ll be doing some jokes and some patter, and we’ll see whether hosting is like riding a bike. (Show is at 7pm, for any of you readers in the NO.)

I’m still mightily enjoying teaching at Stonecoast. It’s a wonderful program with great students, and this session, I’ve had two first-semester students, and one graduating student working on his thesis that is honestly one of the most original volumes I’ve encountered in a while. I hope he publishes it, and I have no doubt that if he keeps working, he’ll find it a home.

I’m also putting in grad school applications of my own, working feverishly on DEAD END BOYS, and posting short stories and poetry over on Patreon. It’s not yet a priority, but every now and again, I do some work on the title poem of the collection I’m slowly building and hope to complete in 2024, POWER COSMIC. (I keep going back and forth on whether to begin the title with THE, and I guess I’m currently not.)

Christmas will be low-key, with little-to-no travel, and then I’ll be heading up to the Stonecoast Residency to teach and run a workshop in January! What a year!

I’ll be updating more frequently again in the New Year--I know I've been slacking on the videos, especially. I’ve come across a trunk novel that’s been languishing unpublished on my hard drive for quite some time, and instead of posting DEAD END BOYS chapters, I’ll start sharing that here on Patreon. We’ll see if I have time to do any revision before putting the chapters up. I’ll also be regularly posting interviews—hopefully one a month!