spotlight on songstory: vanessa veselka

[wow, i like how the angles in the little logo make it look like the logo is breaking loose and about to fly off the screen.]

I'm excited to have such outlandishly good writers in the lineup for my reading SongStory, which is coming up fast - March 7th. Vanessa Veselka is up for the Oregon Book Award, for Pete's sake! Here's a little taste of what Vanessa will be reading - a piece of fiction called "Flora in Pregnancy."

*

There’s not going to be a baby shower because there’s no one to plan it. Everyone thinks someone closer to me is taking care of that but they aren’t and I’m sure as hell not going to ask people to come over and throw a party for me.

             

I ran into Jenny Blitz at the Laundromat.

          

 “When’s the baby shower?”

            

 I told her it was on my calendar at home.

             

My midwife says I should look at my pregnancy as an opportunity to get closer to my women friends. But I figure they’ve had their chance. Ten years of punk shows, basement parties, and having sex with all the same people should have been enough to break the ice.

                         

“Don’t you have any female friends?” asked my midwife.

            

 “None I’d let near a child.”

*

Vanessa will be reading with Kevin Sampsell, Lidia Yuknavitch, Courtenay Hameister, Brad Rosen and me on March 7th at Someday Lounge as part of the March Music Moderne music festival.

Facebook invite is here. And info on the other great events that are part of March Music Moderne is here.

Vanessa Veselka is a writer and musician living in Portland, Oregon. She has been, at various times, a teenage runaway, a sex-worker, a union organizer, a student of paleontology, an expatriate, an independent record label owner, a train-hopper, a waitress, and a mother. Her work has appeared in Bust, Bitch, Maxmum Rock ’n’ Roll, Yeti Magazine and Tin House. Zazen is her first novel.