Linh Dinh Report

Linh Dinh's Monday night reading and Tuesday morning colloquium, the first two events in the Emergent Forms series here at SOU, went off really well. Of course, I'm biased as coordinator for the series, but from all the external signs of response (attendance, questions, book sales, etc.), and from Linh's own feedback, it looks like we got off to a roaring start.

Linh read from his book of poems All Around What Empties Out (Tinfish 2003), his short story collection Blood and Soap (Seven Stories Press, 2004), and assorted newer pieces. As I said, the audience response was great (there were around forty or fifty people at the reading, I'd say, and nearly as many again for the colloquium). If anybody out there is trying to organize a reading series and is trying to think of potential guests capable of attracting a respectable crowd and leaving everyone feeling they got more than their money's worth, allow me to recommend Mr. Linh Dinh.

Added fun: David Larsen drove up from SF for the reading, and stayed through to read Iago to my Othello for my lower-division Shakespeare course on Tuesday morning just before the colloquium. David and Alli Warren had come up a couple of weekends earlier for a visit as well, at which time we recorded the musical recitations you may have heard audio excerpts from on The Ingredient.