Written and photographed by Sara Terrell
On Friday The Book Lady Bookstore on Liberty Street hosted a Seersucker Live Shots event, along with one of Seersucker Live’s founding members, Zach Powers, and Joseph Schwartzburt, the evening’s MC. This was one of their smaller Seersucker Shots events, showcasing the following authors respectively:
Peacock reading three of his poems.
Joshua Peacock, a writer for Empire of Sound and Do Savannah, who read three poems: “90 Atoms,” “Fight or Flight” and a third untitled piece.
Kristen Greshen, a second year SCAD graduate student studying for an M.F.A. in writing. She read an excerpt from “Cullen Culver’s Funeral Survival Guide,” a young adult novel about an adolescent boy whose family runs a funeral home.
William Todd Seabrook, who read from his recently published work, “The Imagination of Lewis Carroll.” The chapbook is the third in a series of fake biographies or, as Seabrook himself claimed, “glorified fan fiction.”
This was Greshen’s first reading with Seersucker after previously attending these events. She said, “I’ve been to many of them before. They’re very involved in the community.”
C.J. Hauser, author of “The From-Always” and Seabrook’s girlfriend, attended. The Redding, Connecticut, native showed enthusiasm for the readers as well as the venue. “It’s very warm and cozy. It makes a wonderful community atmosphere,” she said.
Seersucker Live is a nonprofit corporation founded by Powers – a Savannah native – along with Christopher Berinato and Brian Dean as way of creating a more accessible community for Savannah writers. Schwartzburt, in addition to working in the SCAD admissions department, is also a board member and recipient of the Wilkes-Etruscan Prize.
Greshen (in the black) talking to other attendees. Seabrook in the plaid, Powers furthest right.
“The original idea was just to build a writing community. If we have a mission it’s building and maintaining and promoting the
writing community here in Savannah,” said Powers.
Seersucker Live also aims to reach out to a more general group by making literature more widely accessible. Recently they have worked together with SCAD for a live event and with The Deep Center, a local nonprofit that provides writing workshops for public school students. The group advertises itself on their website as part literary reading, part talk show and part cocktail party.
Three of the most notable guests have been Amelia Gray, Patricia Lockwood and Daniel Handler (known best by his pen name, Lemony Snicket).
Unlike the quarterly Seersucker Live variety shows, Seersucker Shots readings are smaller – making this local bookstore ideal. “Seersucker Shots is a more traditional reading in which the one thing we do is we try to keep it quick,” said Powers. Joni Saxon-Giusti, originally from Opelika, Alabama, and the owner of The Book Lady since 2002, has provided the venue for the past four years.
Schwartzburt introducing the readers.
“Zach introduced himself and said they were forming a group to do sort of a literary fun event,” she said, “and I thought it sounded really exciting and different and that it would fill a real need in Savannah, because nobody was doing anything like that.”
Saxon-Giusti went on to say that they’ve been sold out since their first event. Schwartzburt reinforced the statement, saying that attendance “really depends on the time of year and how you get the word out.” While the turnout for this night was fairly small, Schwartzburt stated the usual head count is between 80-100 people.
The next Seersucker Shots event will be held October 25.
On October 16 The Book Lady will host an event open to the public sponsored by the Sierra Club discussing a new book concerning an environmental study of the Atlantic coast.
