OUTloud at Out Week UBC

Posted by Andrea
Filed in Books & Lit
February 13, 2008

Gay or straight, if you happened to catch the OUTloud reading last night, consider yourself lucky. It was an incredible event that showcased the tremendous diversity of some of Vancouver's best queer authors.

I try my best to be un-biased, but my friend Mette Bach was the first to take the stage and she nearly brought everyone to tears with her sweetly observant story about the complexities of all types of love and the curious friendships we forge with strangers.

Michael V. Smith made us smile with his wonderful poem about "hard love" in Toronto. A brief interlude with the lovely drag queen, Isolde N. Barron, felt out of place, but this was an organizational issue, not a performance one. Michelle Miller's excerpt from her foray into fiction helpfully coined the new phrase: "Soft-cunt confidence." The evening drew to a close with the remarkable Colin Thomas (Georgia Straight) who really did bring everyone to tears with his intimate and erotic four-part story about the unraveling of his 25-year relationship.

A photo slideshow of the night after the jump....