Highlights from Open Mic Night

Photo Credit Liberty Schauf

WNBA Open Mic Night was a resounding success! With some repeat readers from last year’s event and new faces, the night at DTUT was funny, sad, beautiful, and cozy. Many of the attendees

Photo Credit Liberty Shauf

loved the cafe’s atmosphere and getting ‘smores from the bar. One attendee said of the event that, “The readers represented different literary styles, forms, and traditions, from acerbic poetry to poignant personal essays spanning the globe.”

Photo Credit Liberty Shauf

Linda Rosen’s “Through the Peephole” was a thrilling creative non-fiction piece about a home invasion. She immediately hooked the listeners when she began speaking: “Cigarettes. Armpits. Stench. Sweat.” was how she began her account.

Photo Credit Liberty Schauf

Marilyn Berkman, who read a short story from her novel presented in stories, had lovely descriptive prose. One such description was “soft earlobes that demanded pearls.”

For her open mic night contribution, Jacquie Herz read from her novel-in-progress titled “Circumference of Silence.”

Irene O’Garden shared poems from her collection entitled “Fulcrum.” Her poem about the tsunami of 2004 questioned

Photo Credit Liberty Schauf

“All we love becomes debris; why fight the battering?”

Sharon Riley shared her touching personal essay “Finding Dad.”

Sherring Dartiguenave opened her hilarious piece “Maybe Next Life You’ll be a Flamingo” with the straightforward statement that “Crushes suck.” The piece, which was about work crushes, was alternatively vulnerable and funny, but was all around easy to relate to.

Sarah Woodruff’s poignant short story “Congratulations” included heartbreaking lines including “poking the internet with my pain” and “I’m 20 years old and I don’t belong to anyone.”

Photo Credit Liberty Schauf

Jane Murphy shared excerpts from her novel “Finding Sylvie.”

Alexandra Patz discussed a disastrous interview in her creative nonfiction piece “An Interview.” Her animated voice shifted as she read her simultaneously funny and painful piece about everything that went wrong.

Sheila Lewis read an excerpt entitle “Late Bloomer Boomer” with the fantastic line about her son that, “Zach said the Jews killed Jesus. What’s he talking about, I wasn’t even born yet.”

Photo Credit Liberty Schauf

Harriet Shenkman read some of her poetry from Westchester Review and from the chapbook “The Present Abandoned.”

Every reader at the Open Mic Night was excellent. Attendee Mindy Liss said it was a “Great evening at DTUT listening to some excellent women writers read their work. There was a good variety of styles and some big emotional moments. A nice cozy feeling to the night and inspiring to me as a writer. Thanks WNBA for making this happen.”