Not as exciting sounding as THE IMPROV, but that’s where I’m gonna be telling stories and raising funds tonight. Don’t miss it. Wachovia Bank, 2555 Ponce, Coral Gables. 6:30 pm. $35 for the Women’s Fund. Includes booze and food.
This was my last show, performing with William “Rock the House” Lewis. Here he is wrapping his belly with raffle tickets for Lauren’s Light. Twice around William’s belly for $100. What a deal!
The famous Lip Service has teamed up with The Open Tent to bring South Florida…Jewish stories. True, personal Jewish stories told by real people. What could be more fun?
Check us out Saturday, Nov. 7th at 8 p.m. @ Books & Books on Lincoln Road.
Storytellers: Andrea Askowitz (that’s me), Richard Freedberg, Dale Hershman, Mort Laitner, Chaim LieberPerson, Li-Mor Raviv, and Mitch Weissner.
I know it’s not nice to say these are some of Miami’s most loud-mouthed Jews, but they are. We are! In the best way. Show is free!
Hello anyone who reads my blog. I want to ask you for a special favor. I’m the host of a really cool fundraiser for an organization that is close to my heart–Lauren’s Light. Lauren’s Light was founded in 2002 after the death of one of my best friends, Lauren Feinswog Millin. Lauren died of cancer at 33. She had two small children.
Now Lauren’s Light gives support to families with small children, in which a parent has cancer.
On October 8, 2009, Lauren’s Light is having its annual benefit–Lighten Up–and I am the host. Lighten Up is a night of comedy at the Miami Improv. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Come and laugh and if you can’t make it because you don’t live near Miami, PLEASE click and make a donation today. THANK YOU!
Click on the invite below to make it bigger.
And here’s my latest story called Who Have You Told? performed at Lip Service at Books & Books, Coral Gables, May 16, 2009. The video starts off shaky, but gets better. Let me know what you think.
We just had our 9th installment of Lip Service—true stories out loud. The show was awesome again. Eight people read their true stories to a standing room only crowd. This time Books & Books opened up their patio and the weather was perfect and like 140 people crammed in and listened to the best storytelling in South Florida. Well, that’s what I think. Here’s my story. The video quality is bad, but if you can ignore that and listen, I’d LOVE to know what you think. All comments welcome. Thanks for listening.
And if you want to submit a story for the next Lip Service, please send it to submissions@lipservicestories.com. The next show is May 16th. Submission deadline is April 24, 2009. Check out lipservicestories.com for guidelines and submission tips. We get storytellers from all over the world. Go on, it’s really fun.
I don’t like this place normally—it’s conservative, there’s a cultural void, you can’t ride your bike anywhere— but last weekend, thousands of people flooded downtown to buy books and listen to writers read their work at the Miami Book Fair International. 102 people came to hear me read My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy. Or maybe they were there for Martha Frankel or David Henry Sterry, my co-panelists. Either way, it was a packed house. And more than 130 people showed up to Lip Service. Makes me proud of my home town.
I had such a great time. I walked up to the author’s hospitality suite wondering if I really belonged there and two volunteers opened the doors, like Moses parting the sea, and I walked through. I laughed. I said, “Holy shit, this is hospitality.” Then I ate a million mini sandwiches.
I met NPR’s Scott Simon in the press room and we showed each other our books. He just wrote a new political novel, Windy City. I said, “It’s clear we do the same kind of work.”
He smiled and pointed at my book and said, “I was about to write that very book.”
He showed me pictures of his two daughters, who he and his wife adopted from China. He said, “People always say, ‘they look just like you.’” People are such dorks.
I had a booth all weekend because I was part of the Cultural Fringes Festival and met the coolest people and sold all of my books. A white guy named Billy, probably 35, wearing a striped shirt and a top hat, came up to my booth Friday afternoon and when I said he couldn’t miss My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy, he said he already had it circled on his program. Later, two black guys named Nezz and Caramelo (21 and 22) who are brothers, a photographer and a military man, came to my booth and then to my reading. They were so cool.
I didn’t have time to hear all the readers I wanted to hear, but I passed Sloane Crossley, author of I Was Told There’d be Cake on her way to her reading and we did a high five. I’d heard all about her and bought her book because I thought she had the second best title in the world. She didn’t know me, but she still high-fived me. That’s how cool she was. She was afraid people would be bummed at her reading because they were told there’d be cake.
Miami has it’s bad points, but I didn’t think it was hard to find cake.
This weekend is going to be awesome in Miami. The Miami Book Fair International is here. It’s one of the biggest book fairs in the world. I don’t know how many authors will be reading their work, but I heard 44 poets are reading in the next few days. That’s a lot of poets!
I’ll be telling stories and reading stories Friday and Saturday. Check me out at Heeb on Friday night at the Write Out Loud Cafe, 7 P.M.. Heeb is a bad-ass Jewish magazine. This is their first time in Miami, hosting a night of Jewish stories. This is storytelling, NOT reading. Seven storytellers get seven minutes each. 