Colby Buzzell, a man whose writing has been compared to Bukowski's, let us know in his humble and matter-of-fact way what his tour of duty in Iraq was really like. David Corbett, whose Blood of Paradise has been compared to Greene, read a passage including the line “Most of what I've learned about music, food, and sex, I've learned from strippers.” Ann Cummins observed that “characters who make mistakes is where stories start,” before reading her story “Billy by the Bay,” accompanied on the piano by Steve Willis. Holly Shumas read from Five Things I Can't Live Without about life in a city where it is normal to have a roommate at age thirty, the deconstruction of dreams, and the difference between goals and objectives. David Ira Cleary read his story “Rising,” a Grecian tale about neuron mapping.