Literary SALO+N Call for Readers

Every year in October, we co-host a 2-day literary event as part of the O+ Festival, which is a weekend-long event with tons of music, art, and other beautiful chaos. This happens upstate, in Kingston, NY.

We call it the Literary SALO+N. We call it that because it’s not so much a program or performance as an interactive reading, a meeting of minds and voices. If you attend the festival, you’ll get a sense of the festival vibe, which is very non-standard, community-based, volunteer-driven. We like to think the Literary SALO+N breaks a similar mold.

The readings take place at Outdated Café, a very colorful/retro place, the heart of historic uptown, socially and commercially speaking. Recently featured in Vogue for its antiques. This year, as part of a festival-wide effort to expand our presence beyond Uptown Kingston into Midtown, we’re doing one evening at Outdated, and a daytime event at ARTBAR Gallery.

Confirmed readers include Jacob Appel, Sari Botton, Jess X. Chen (a 2016 O+ artist who will be making a large-scale mural at ARTBAR that honors women migrants and refugees), Sara Eckel, Jane Liddle, Julie Novak, Eva Tenuto and Pauline Uchmanowicz.

This is an invite to you to join and read some of your work, whether fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, drama, epistolary, improv, found work, or otherwise. Every year we write to the festival-wide theme, and this year the theme is: “Mothers of Invention.” Whatever that means to you. Whatever it inspires.

Keep in mind that the Literary Salon happens, especially on Saturday night, during the peak of the festival. Festival-goers are seeing and hearing bands, marching in parades, making art, doing yoga. Energy is high, and readings that are received best tend to be energetic and lively. As curators, we encourage form-bending, mash-ups, props, visual aids, and anything else that will surprise and delight.

A 5- to 10-minute piece is best. Please rehearse reading your piece aloud using a clock or timer. If you’re not accustomed to doing this, you might be surprised by how few words can be delivered at a comfortable pace in minutes. It’s surprisingly short in story terms. If you go over, we won’t yank you, but we do have a schedule to stick to, so we might grow impatient.

Please write us if you’d like to take part, at ben@benobler.com, and indicate which of the two Salons you’d like to participate at, and what approximate time:

1. Saturday, October 8, at Outdated Café, 314 Wall Street, 8 PM to midnight.
2. Sunday, October 9, at ARTBAR Gallery, 674 Broadway, 10 AM to 2 PM.

We will assign you an available time slot, making every effort to accommodate your wants and needs. (Once the festival schedule comes out, you may wish to be elsewhere to see certain bands/acts, and we can adjust as needed.) Questions welcome, and sometime closer to October, we’ll write to confirm your participation.

Thank you!

Ben Obler, Sam Osterhout, & Johnnie Morello