A Night Together

By

A NIGHT TOGETHER: Presented by The Rumpus, Tin House and Flavorpill

On April 6, The Rumpus, Tin House and Flavorpill joined forces and presented a night of fiction, music, comedy and general mayhem at the Highline Ballroom. Despite the large size of the Highline, it was a remarkably cozy evening.

Photographed by Shoko Takayasu.

PART I

Our magnanimous host Stephen Elliott who kicked off the night with a short personal essay about a hook-up with someone that someone in the room knew.

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Lorelei Lee, fiction writer, NYU student and porn star read from a short story on which her novel is based.

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Comedian Michael Showalter who somehow managed to make hilarious routines based on old car games like 20-questions.

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Writer Colson Whitehead who read a satirical piece about a fictional product that would prevent the novel, the short story and fiction, in general, from ever dying.

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Comedian Eugene Mirman who brought on stage a Russian Animal Sounds Pad that he bought in Brighton Beach. At one point he simulated the sounds of an animal orgy.

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Alina Simone, and variously, Conrad Doucette, Shawn Setaro and Satish.

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INTERMISSION

Lorelei Lee and Chris Corrigan

Rob Spillman of Tin House

Rob Spillman and Colson Whitehead

Dave Hill and Kay Sarlin

Andrew Bulger and Rozalia Jovanovic

Stephen Elliott and Lorelei Lee

Stephen Elliott and friends

Merch Table

Nikhil Melnechuk, Rozalia Jovanovic, Lincoln Michel, Kristen O’Toole, Caroline Seklir and Ann DeWitt

Sam Lipsyte and Colson Whitehead

Sara Marcus, Kimberly Parsons and Mark Doten

Alina Simone, Conrad Doucette, Shawn Setaro and Satish

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PART II

THE SAM LIPSYTE PLAYERS: Four winners of the Jump-Off Contest, An Homage to Sam Lipsyte, read short stories using a sentence from Sam Lipsyte’s novel, The Ask.


Shya Scanlon

Snowden Wright

Maureen Miller

Lincoln Michel

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Sam Lipsyte reading a scene from The Ask where the main character Milo meets Ben Franklin in a dream.

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Comedian Dave Hill

A short film that Dave Hill made composed using John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The film was a montage of scenes of New York interspersed with images like the above, of Dave Hill “masturbating” in public places.

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Singer songwriter Jeffrey Lewis performed some favorites, like Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror and showed some short films he made using his cartoons, like one about Sitting Bull and another about a crazy red hand on the loose that gets mistaken for the hand of the devil by some nuns.

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Rozalia Jovanovic is a founding editor of Gigantic, a magazine of short prose and art. She is the Deputy Editor of Flavorpill and has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and Columbia University. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming from Unsaid, The Believer, Everyday Genius, Guernica, elimae, and Esquire.com. She blogs at The Astonishing Egg and is The Rumpus New York Editor. More from this author →