Next on Deck! Reading for WordSpace, review

WordSpace is half-way through our spring season. We've had slam poets, and yoga poets, and a multimedia-multigenre caberet from Dancing Tongue that explored the genesis and meaning of "hip" and the several sub-cultures it marked or spawned. --- Next on Deck! is my program that gathers together writers from the local universities (there are a good number of them here) to get them on stage and reading to the public. Last Friday was my fourth show in the last year. All the writer's came from one school. The others Unis, as much as I pestered them, did not come to play. Too bad for them. Their writers could have been in good company. --- We got to giggle in the post-colonial melee with Neha Chinai's "The Lard Lane" playing with vanity and body image (much smart, arched, self-ironic humor), and to contemplate the larger truths in the poems of Laura Bowers. We developed some identity politics whiplash with Adrian Leigh Cook's "Breaking the Hoop," in which a white-appearing, male author writes a 13-year old, female, Ogalala Sioux narrator who smashes into history as the Anglo dominion of the West gets solidified. Brilliant story, very theatrically read, and that was a treat. Sobia Khan took us from Dallas to Karachi and back again in the rain in a creative non-fiction peice that sang with imagery and addressed some questions of conscience immigrants sometimes have. Jon Hart, our newbie, was adorably nervous, and triumphant with his "Stinky Feet," a story about a rock star's husband and the very uncomfortable intersection of his grief and the rapacious media. He was glowing when he got off the stage and was much applauded. And then Heather Wood read a piece on why it's bad to sleep with your girlfriend to get back at your cheating boyfriend while on mushrooms in the bathroom of a bar and then call that boyfriend to tell him off with the story -- and it was screamingly funny. All in all, a really lovely night. A mostly full house at the