Yiyun Li read some scenes from the point of view of Bashi, one of the more disturbingly fascinating characters from The Vagrants. Ali Liebegott read about 9/11, laundromats, and a duck called Slim. Sandy Florian read from The Tree of No, proposing that the principle that creates beauty must itself be ugly. Sean Patrick Conlon read slam poems, ghazals, and mutant haikus full of sweat, memory and wishes. The phantastic Alex Fokas told the story about the time he refused to serve Princess Margaret decaf.

“The religious migrations of peoples that died out, that died precisely of those migrations, like lemmings: this moves me more than all the faiths that persisted.” -- Elias Canetti, The Secret Heart of the Clock