LITSCENE: CARISSA HALSTON + SIG AMET

PROFILE | CARISSA HALSTON

This week, we decided to talk to Carissa Halston. She has two readings during the coming week (which, for us, starts on Wednesday): One at Harvard’s Quincy House and another at Literary Firsts.

Who is Carissa Halston? For one, she’s a co-founder of apt, a literary journal, and Aforementioned Productions. Aforementioned organizes the quarterly Literary Firsts reading series at Middlesex Lounge, which has become one of the most popular reading events in the city.

She is the author of A Girl Named Charlie Lester, which was called “emotionally generious” by Kirkus Reviews and snagged an honorable mention at New York Book Festival. She’s gone on a storytelling tour, she hosts Literary Firsts, she edits apt, and she has another novella due out next year on Aqueous Books.

Here’s an excerpt from A Girl Named Charlie Lester, available on le Internet:

Charlie Lester’s parents are dead.
Sometimes, she doesn’t remember that.
Sometimes, she remembers what her brother used to tell her when she was nine years old.

“Mom and Dad aren’t really dead, ya know,” he’d say. “They sent us to live with Aunt Jean because they don’t really love us. They never really loved us.”

At seventeen, she figured out that the latter part of his story was kind of true.

Her best friend, Abby Quinn, lived downtown.

Abby was a video game addict. She also liked tattoos. “Not because I want to rebel or anything,” she’d say. “I just think they’re cool.” If she had ever done anything to rebel, it was dropping out of high school to become a professional masseuse.

By the February prior to Charlie’s graduation, Abby had three tattoos: a pisky hanging from her nipple, a leprechaun peeking around her hip, and a gnome nestling between her cheeks. She was one of those girls.

She cajoled Charlie into tagging along for her fourth. Charlie was quick to jump at the chance to escape Jean’s white-picketed prison. Whenever she wanted to leave the house without Jean knowing, she would dangle from the second story of her aunt’s imitation Tudor, close her eyes, and release. She learned to tucker her legs on impact. …

Okay, busy lady: Here’s what she had to say for herself over the wire.

Where are you coming from? When you write, what do you think about? For example, do you think about your parents, middle school, Sigmund Freud, small animals, etc.? Is there anything in particular that gets you started on the first page?

Going by my track record, it would make sense if I were thinking about isolation and loss. But I mainly think about my characters and lately, I’ve been thinking about awful things to do to them: one of my recent stories features girls without fingers, girls without lips, and girls without hair (and the readers who love them); another has the protagonist give up food.

Now that I see them listed that way, maybe I really am thinking about middle school and my parents. I wonder how things would go if I thought about Sigmund Freud and small animals. I’d probably write different stories.

As for the stories I’ve written, the impetus to tackle that first page almost always comes from character. The novel that I worked on for the better part of last year that was supposedly about setting is actually about character. It’s my tried-and-true method of inspiration.

Who are your teen idols? (For example, right now, mine is maybe William S. Burroughs because of this, and Marlon Brando. And J.D. Salinger.)

Italo Calvino (just saying his name makes me want to reread Invisible Cities right now), Margaret Atwood (if you’re into dystopias, check out The Handmaid’s Tale), Natalie Wood (there was never a sexier burlesque dancer than Natalie Wood in Gypsy).

Who are your favorite emerging writers in the Boston area? Or, in the world is fine, too.

In the Boston area, there’s Rowdy Geirsson, who writes a hilarious column on McSweeney’s website called Norse History for Bostonians. Vincent Scarpa also consistently puts out great work (most recently in Monkeybicycle). Jeannie Greeley makes me laugh until my cheeks ache, and John Cotter’s novel, Under the Small Lights, is worth reading and then immediately rereading.

As for emerging writers outside of Boston, Katie Haegele (a writer from Philly) and Shannon Derby (who used to live in Boston, but is currently in Dublin).

Do you have any hobbies? Do you wish you had more hobbies, and if so, which ones? What is your greatest talent (besides being a writer)?

I love singing. I wish I could be a lounge singer, but I don’t have a lounge. I do wish I had more time for hobbies. Dancing would be great. Sometimes, I’m the most graceless kid around, so I think I’d do well to take some salsa lessons. Or I could take some kickboxing lessons to counteract all the times I’ve been laughed at for dancing.

My greatest talent besides writing is probably acting. But I realized a long time ago that I don’t like pretending to be something I’m not.

At Literary Firsts, I’ll be reading from my novella, The Mere Weight of Words, which is due out from Aqueous Books in mid-2012. Also, the reading will celebrate the one-year anniversary of the series, so everyone should come out because it’s going to be a great night.

Don’t miss Carissa Halston at Literary Firsts. She’ll read, along with memoirist and pop culture scientist Ethan Gilsdorf; April Ranger, Boston’s queen of Slam Poetry; and multimedia journalist Emily Sweeney, who has been featured on the Howard Stern Show (and has also won awards for her book, Greatest Hits: A Mob Tour of Boston).

Carissa Halston @ Harvard
Thu 4.14.11. Harvard University, Quincy House. 58 Plympton St., Cambridge. 7pm/all ages/free. aforementionedproductions.com]

Carissa Halston @ Literary Firsts
[Mon 4.18.11. Middlesex Lounge. 315 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge. 8pm/all ages/free. lf.aforementionedproductions.com]

Featured photo credited to Randolph Pfaff.

ALSO THIS WEEK

April’s Sig Amet Reading at Lorem Ipsum Books will  feature poets John Cotter, Gillian Devereux, and Chip Cheek.

John Cotter’s first novel Under the Small Lights appeared in 2010 from Miami University Press. Carissa Halston said the novel is “Worth reading and then immediately re-reading,” aformentioned. He’s a founding editor at Open Letters Monthly and his short fiction and poetry have appeared in Volt, The Lifted Brow, Lost, and (forthcoming) New Genre, among other spots. Originally from Norwich Connecticut — hometown of Benedict Arnold and the Mohegan Sun Casino — he now lives in Jamaica Plain with the poet Elisa Gabbert.

Gillian Devereux received her MFA in Poetry from Old Dominion University and currently teaches ESL classes in Cambridge, MA. Her poems have appeared in FOURSQUARE, apt, H_NGM_N, Open Letters, Gargoyle, 32 Poems, Wicked Alice, and other journals. Her chapbook They Used to Dance on Saturday Nights will be published by Aforementioned Productions later this year.

Chip Cheek is an instructor and staff member at Grub Street, a literary arts nonprofit in Boston. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Harvard Review, Washington Square, Minnetonka Review, Night Train, and Quick Fiction, among other publications. A story of his also appears in the current edition of What If: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers, by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter (Longman 2009). He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices, and has won a scholarship to the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop.

Get there early for refreshing libations and book browsing.

[Thu 4.14.11. Lorem Ipsum Books, 1299 Cambridge St., Inman Sq., Cambridge. 617.497.7669. 7:30pm/all ages/free. blog.loremipsumbooks.com]