Series co-organizers Shelton, Mattison, Czepiel, and Jessen.
A room full of writers and fans of the written word gathered Thursday night at Best Video for the first installment of the Sleeping Giant Reading Series, an event aimed at creating a space where authors not only share their works, but gather in community with others to offer support, make connections, and have a little fun.
Co-organizers Alice Mattison, Sandi Shelton, Kathy Czepiel, and Heather Jessen — all New Haven-based writers — will be curating a two-hour event every third Thursday of the month. The first hour will feature professional readings by published authors. The second hour will be dedicated to shaking away that oft-felt sense of isolation many writers have by sharing a “Writer’s Happy Hour” where they can chat with each other about their work and writing in general.
“This was a long time coming,” said Czepiel as she came to the mic first to welcome everyone, explain the group’s long journey to now, and talk about how the night would proceed. According to Czepiel, they were all ready to go back in 2020, when COVID hit. Four years later, they felt it was time to get back on track. The seeds of the event were originally planted when Mattison was interviewed by Czepiel for the Daily Nutmeg.
“I didn’t want to lose this lady,” Mattison recalled thinking while she was being interviewed. The two struck up a friendship and realized that Czepiel had frequented a reading series run by Mattison in the basement of the Anchor Bar called Ordinary Evening between 2005 and 2010.
“We wanted to try to do that again,” said Mattison.
Czepiel brought in her friend Jessen, and when the group was reforming this year, Shelton, who had been friends with Mattison for years, asked if she could be a part of it.
The four greeted attendees eager to be a part of the proceedings as they entered the performance space, chairs and tables set up in more of a lounge style. The readers for this evening included Shelton, reading from her latest novel written under the name Maddie Dawson, and Hirsh Sawhney, a New Haven based fiction writer.
Czepiel explained that the reading would be “more of a salon” than a classroom-type reading, and encouraged attendees to think of the event as “an evening out.”
“We want to create a space in which writers support one another,” she added. “We’re hoping to create a space where writers can meet and hang out.”
Czepiel welcomes the crowd.
Mattison — who Czepiel introduced as “one of our great New Haven writers” — came forward next to introduce Sawhney, who she said she met when both were interviewed by Paul Bass on WNHH for a book called New Haven Noir that they each had contributed a story to. Their paths crossed again as the two walked their dogs in East Rock Park. Mattison also praised Sawhney’s novel South Haven as having a “lovely localness” and vivid characters, adding that he would be reading from a new novel he was working on.
Sawhney came to the microphone grateful for Mattison’s kind words — “when I grow up I hope I can be like them,” he said — and to be a part of the new series, noting that Sleeping Giant had “spiritual significance to me.”
Mattison introducing the authors.
He said that as a teacher he always included a trigger warning, which on this night would include “drugs. depression, and the specter of death, which could also be the title of the book,” a statement that garnered laughs from the audience.
Sawhney had said the book was about a teenager in the 1990s growing up in the New Haven area, though it was not autobiographical. The piece he read was rich in description of that teen and his friends heading to a concert in Worcester, on a snowy evening where altered perceptions become a new way of looking at the world and the self.
“I had a sense my life was about to go through a seismic transformation,” said the character of Vikram, called Vic by his friends. Vic is getting to enjoy an evening away from his familial stress, tensions that include a sick father he has had to help care for. Sawhney infused his reading with a kinetic energy, telling the story of a teen holding his own amongst his peers on one crazy night that offers him a new perspective as maybe a little more of a “bad ass” than he thought he could be. The sizeable crowd, responding often with laughter and smiles, received the reading with gratitude and gusto.
Sawhney expresses his gratitude before his reading.
Mattison came back to introduce Shelton, who she said she had met “when our babies were at the same daycare.”
“Those babies have grey hair now,” she added with a laugh, noting that back then they were writers “only in a theoretical sense,” but had talked about writing a lot then “and still do.”
Mattison said Shelton’s books were like Jane Austen in that “you can’t put the book down.”
“The characters are so real,” she added, also noting that Shelton’s highly relatable stories make the reader say “how does she know what I’ve been through?”
Shelton would be reading from her latest novel, Let’s Pretend This Will Work (written under the name Maddie Dawson). Mattison noted that the book had a wealth of minor characters that were memorable and exemplified how Shelton “knows what it’s like to live through a day.”
Shelton came to the mic expressing gratitude, to the audience for attending, to Mattison for her friendship and kind words, and to Sawhney, who she said she was “in awe of.” She would be reading the first chapter of her book, about a teacher who “couldn’t decide which guy to go to” — her fiancé or another guy from the daycare in which she worked.
The story begins on March 19, 1982 with a proposal. The reading immediately gave the listener a colorful and wonderfully humorous description of Mimi, the psychic-consulting heroine whose thrift-store skirt may possibly be bringing her good luck, and Ren, a drama teacher hotter than Robert Redford in his heyday who thinks Mimi may be the great love of his life. We learn so much about not only these two characters, but Mimi’s mother and her college friend. After nearly 30 minutes of reading — where the audience was held rapt but also was found to be smiling and nodding at many of the descriptions — the crowd asked for more. Mimi thinks she “may have arrived on earth already broken,” but in the short time we got to know her, it sounded like in Shelton’s capable and loving hands, she would fill those broken places with light and lightness.
Jessen offered final thank yous to the readers and the audience, expressing her joy at the event’s success. She also announced the readers for next month: poet April Bernard and novelist Tim Parrish. Parrish was in attendance this evening, one of too many local writers to list who stayed and chatted with one another during the second hour. The four co-organizers could not have been more pleased with how the event turned out.
Jessen thanking the crowd.
“Writers need each other and to hear what other people are writing,” said Mattison.
“It’s important to have conversations about writing,” said Czepiel. “Having a community is as important as the readings themselves.”
The Sleeping Giant Reading Series will be held every third Thursday from 7 to 9 p.m. at Best Video and is free of charge, though donations are accepted. For more information please visit Best Video’s website.