Blogging and Alcohol Do, Apparently, Mix Quite Well

Cupcake does one of the most consistently excellent reading series in New York, focusing exclusively on women authors. Last night's reading was even more tightly focused, gathering seven female bloggers in the back room at Lolita. Eight, actually, counting special guest host Maud Newton. The first segment was shared by Jami Attenberg and Blaise K, who both had first-person narratives with weight gain as a dramatic device, though Attenberg's story (in which an ex-boyfriend tells the narrator how his parents met) had a slight edge over K's faux Bennington graduation speech. Next, Emma Garman read an excerpt from her novel-in-progress, followed by a bit of lesbian erotica from Rachel Kramer Bussel, which certainly reduced the ambient noise from chatty drinkers at the other end of the bar for a good ten minutes. The final third was given over to the unholy triumvirate of Maccers, who wrote about not being able to defecate in strange bathrooms and having sex with Dick Cheney, Eurotrash, whose monologue was the most stylishly brilliant piece of the entire evening, and Elizabeth Spiers, who gamely followed up with a semi-autobiographical story about getting her younger brother to jump from great heights.