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Live Lit Roundup for the week of February 16th, 2015
Tonight
Come out to another installment of Essay Fiesta at The Book Cellar (4736 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60625) tonight at 7pm. Your hosts for the evening are Karen Shimmin and Willy Nast and featured readers include Stephanie Douglass, Angela Benander and more. Don’t miss it! // Donations will be collected for 826CHI // 17+ //
Tomorrow
Story Club South Side proudly presents “The…
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Elena Colas reviews Essay Fiesta's December show
There might not be a better place to spend a rainy Monday night than the cafe at The Book Cellar in Lincoln Square. I arrived a little early to a full house and found a seat near the front. The reading takes place against a backdrop of lit zines with bottles of wine tucked into discreet cubbies between the stacks. Oversized prints of book covers line the top of the shelves, piled high with…
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Two Parts- A Review of Essay Fiesta
This is a review in two parts.
This is also a discussion on story telling.
They come together, trust me.
Essay Fiesta takes place every third Monday at The Book Cellar in Lincoln Square. It, like a vast majority of shows, is a first person, non-fiction story telling series. The first awesomely weird difference, though, is the theme song that hosts Willy Nast and Karen Shimmin play on toy…
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An essay I wrote that recently went up in the newest issue of Ghost Proposal (http://www.ghostproposal.com/issue3/chrisbower.php) was recorded at Essay Fiesta ar the Book Cellar. This podcast of All Write Already features my story, as well as great essays by Erin Diamond and Kelsie Huff. Thanks to Essay Fiesta and All Write Already hosts Willy Nast and Karen Shimmin.
An Open Letter to the Other Erica Price at My University, Who is Also a Psych Major
Dear Erica with a C,
I hope this letter finds you well. I would have sent it to you directly, but you seem to have refused my Facebook and Twitter requests. That’s fine, I understand your reticence completely — I usually don’t add strangers, either! I’m sorry if I creeped you out. I’m sorry if this letter creeps you out.
I had hoped we could become online ‘friends’. Not so that we could hang out, or so I could vicariously live your simple, innocent, twenty-one-year-old life by hate-reading all your status updates, but so we could remain in contact whenever Loyola University commits another grievous mix-up.
Like the time you accidentally received the package of Sherri’s Berries my mom mailed to my office! There they were, frozen and drizzled in chocolate-vanilla swizzle, sitting in the comfort of your dorm room, and you had the conscientiousness to march them back to the University Postal center and return them to me. Thank you for doing that, by the way. The berries were all melted and bruised by the time I saw them, but that’s totally the Loyola mailroom’s fault.
Then there was the time you received a personal, financially-oriented email from my Graduate Program Director, and you emailed him back to tell him that you weren’t the right Erika. Thanks for that! You’re a doll.
Since you have my email, though, you could have just contacted me directly! You could have forwarded the message, so I would have known right away that the class I was teaching was canceled. You could have signed up for that class and put it over the enrollment limit! I know for a fact that the class is a degree requirement for you. Or you could have just told the Program Director (who should know better for Chrissake) what my actual email was! Eprice3! Not eprice4! Do you ever wonder who eprice1 and 2 are? Maybe we should be friends with them, too.
Erica, did I ever tell you about the time I received your CTA U-Pass by mistake? You are a cute, angularly-faced girl with sad-looking brown eyes and side swept light brown bangs. What are the odds. Well, actually, considering that about 50% of Loyola’s student body fits that description, the odds were pretty high. I was halfway off campus before I paused, re-examined the photograph, and realized that you were not me. I returned the U-pass post-haste, so you never knew about it. Think nothing of it.
These and many other administrative screwups could have been abated if we were in contact. I know your email, eprice4, but I don’t feel right perturbing you, since you have deliberately ignored my social media overtures. You never acknowledge my brief and entirely sane-seeming thank-you emails. Therefore, I will continue to respect your privacy, and instead use this venue to communicate my gratitude and wildly speculate about what your life is like.
Recently, I went to pick up my prescription at the Loyola Station CVS, and there was a lengthy misunderstanding, wherein the pharmacist claimed I had unenrolled from the university health plan and moved my prescription elsewhere. I called Loyola’s tragically inept and Catholic wellness center in a panic. I nearly vomited all over the pharmacy tech assistant because I was worried I might miss a birth control pill and be rendered immediately pregnant. Then I remembered your existence, and was able to clear the whole thing up.
Are you okay, Erica with a C? Why did you take your prescription elsewhere? Did you drop out? I’m an instructor in the Psych department, and I know from a cursory and entirely non-stalkerish Facebook search that you are a junior psychology major. I would be more than happy to tutor you pro-bono.
Or was it something else? As a 21-year-old and therefore a legal dependent, did you decide to enroll in your parents’ medical insurance instead of Loyola’s dreadful, bargain-basement Blue Cross Blue Shield? That was a smart move, Price. On Loyola’s plan I can barely get a pap smear.
What prescription did you have on file at the CVS below Loyola Station on Sheridan? Was it Valtrex? Birth control? Do you take the off-brand, low-estrogen version of Ortho Tri-Cyclen? How do you feel about their recent packaging change? Does it make you break out in a series of small flesh-colored whiteheads on the third week of your cycle?
Me neither.
I don’t mean to pry. I just think it would be mutually beneficial for us to stay in contact, since there is such considerable overlap between us. We’re at the same school. We have almost the same name. That C is an essentially difference, though, and I’m sure you know it. People have probably been misspelling your name with a K for years, and you have resented it, and come to resent everyone who spells their name that way. We share that pain.
And then there’s academics. You’re a psych major, I’m a social psychologist. I have tread the same ground you will eventually tread.
Why psychology, Erica with a C? Did you major in psychology because you have an abiding interest in people; namely, in what’s wrong with people? Do people say you are a quote-unquote good listener? Can you sit beside an emotionally bereft person for hours as they unload their torments in a torrent of rambling, blubbering words, and kinda get off on it? Do you study the intricate, exquisite anguish on people’s faces and just feed on it like a tick? In social situations, do you feel like a looming, voyeuristic ghost? Are you an invisible, all-watching specter, simultaneously removed from and resonant with all things?
Me neither.
Did you major in Psych because you wanted to become a shrink, only to learn that no therapeutic style actually works, empirically? Did you realize halfway into college that labeling people with mental disorders is deeply prejudiced and elitist? That most people who are depressed, or anxious, or addicted, or otherwise ‘disordered’ have pretty good external reasons for it?
That it’s unproductive to treat a person for unhealthy behaviors without treating the social situation that has rewarded or forced those behaviors? Did you notice that the world is ruled and entertained by hoards of untreated antisocial histrionic borderline narcissists? Do you ever worry that you’re just a teensy bit too mentally ill to be an effective psychologist? Me neither.
But here we are, Erica. Soon you’ll have the degree, so you might as well use it. Are you disturbed by the job prospects for Psychology majors? You should know it’s the most popular major in the country with the fifth-highest unemployment rate.
Are you aware of how low your odds of getting into graduate school are? One in ten. And then of getting financial support? One in twenty, maybe less. And then of finishing? And then of actually getting a fulfilling, academic-type job, rather than some soul-sucking corporate circle jerk, doing research as a consultant for (let’s say) a dog food company?
Me neither.
But at any rate, I know what you’re going through. We Erika Prices have to stick together. We are a special subsection of society with unique struggles and gifts. And if you befriend me, you will be united with all of your sisters. I happen to be friends with every single Erica Price (with a K or a C) who has a public profile on Facebook. Most of them are black. One of them is a prominent homeopathic therapist and purveyor of magic plastic crystals. Each is a gorgeous, well-adjusted shining star of humanity.
Note, however, that I am not friends with those weird Erickas who spell it with both a C and a K. I think you and I can agree that we hate those people. It’s greedy, it’s redundant, it looks terrible, and they should be cast into flames.
Anyway, you will be welcomed into this collective of EPs with open arms and warm smiles. There is no jealousy or resentment of your misspelled, confusion-creating existence, my dear.
You must trust that I come to this clan out of serious commitment and love. I chose to be an Erika Price. When I was eighteen I paid 110 dollars to change my name, get a new social security card and driver’s license, and join these illustrious ranks. Some are called to serve, but for me the name was a banner I chose freely. My birth name was Erika Bohannon, which I also share almost exclusively with awesome black women I’ve needlessly friended on Facebook.
Growing up, my name was consistently mocked and mispronounced, and it tied me to a family I had little knowledge of, all of it negative, and by the time I was able to legally change it, I had been introducing myself as Erika Price for years.
Then I come to find that the moniker I had carefully chosen is not so special. That just because I have shed the surname of my mentally ill hillbilly ancestors doesn’t mean I have lost their genetic legacy. That there is another Erica Price, just like me, making the same mistakes, just a few years behind.
I know you don’t want me bothering you, Erica. You’re a young doe with a life full of phony identities and faulty career decisions ahead of you, and it’s imperative that I let you make them. But before I abandon your creepy doppelganger ass to the world and all its blood-thirsty perils, I figured I’d reach out one last time.
This is a peace offering. An offer of friendship and mentorship. And a promise that I won’t send you uncomfortable, overly familiar missives anymore. I am here if you want my help. I’ll always be with you. All you have to do is misspell your name.
Yours,
Erika Price
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This piece was read last night at Essay Fiesta, at the beautiful Book Cellar store and cafe in Lincoln Square, Chicago. If you're in the area, I highly recommend the event, as well as the locale, which is a gorgeous indie bookstore with a full cafe menu, booze (!), and reading events of all sorts, going on all the time.
For this month’s show, Essay Fiesta and Story Club hosts Keith Ecker and Dana Norris joined host Nico Lang and guests Patrick Gill (In Our Words), Julie Danis (Story Club) and Alyson Lyon (Essay Fiesta). This month, we decided to read about our past relationships, which include being one half of Joanie and Chachie, an unrequited obsession with Matt Dillon and lusting after Stacy’s Mom.
reading at essay fiesta, mon. 5/21
More info here.
7pm at the Book Cellar in Lincoln Square. Proceeds go to 826CHI. I'll be reading a new wigger jam that I'm working on.
This is the first podcast of Broad Shoulders, a new collaborative podcast to showcase stories from across Chicago’s Live Lit community. Each month, the show invites performers from various Live Lit shows to come and read their work, and those performers are either chosen by the audience or the hosts of those shows themselves. For the first podcast, Essay Fiesta and Story Club hosts Keith Ecker and Dana Norris join podcast host Nico Lang to share their stories. Each of this month’s pieces share a central theme of how we deal with and adapt to change in our lives.
