Recent iPod programming visitor Colleen Curran celebrated the release of her first novel, Whores on the Hill, last week at New York’s Slipper Room.
We were sorry to miss the fun, but, luckily, friends of the Happy Booker (FotHB) are everywhere. So here’s the full FotHB Report from novelist Lisa Selin Davis, who provides us with the scoop on Curran’s Slipper Room Soiree. (There will be plenty of information here in the coming weeks about Selin’s first novel, Belly—stay tuned!)
Au Curran, by Lisa Selin Davis
Colleen Curran’s Whores on the Hill may take place in Milwaukee, but the celebration of its release last night at the Lower East Side’s Slipper Room was a resolutely New York affair. The emcee for the evening — a drag comedian named Murray Hill (which is also the name of an unhip east side of Manhattan neighborhood, which sits just below the U.N.) — kept posing for the camera, espousing hope that s/he’d find her/himself in the New York Post’s celebrity-ridden Page 6 the next day, but it wasn’t that kind of event.
Instead, it was a very sweet tribute to a book about very naughty Catholic school girls — if it weren’t for the slight tinge of morality tale, the book might please Playboy readers as much as adolescent girls. Young girls in plaid skirts and ripped fishnet stockings were recruited to read excerpts from the book, and the Pontani sisters (another New York institution —one of the sisters happened to be the author’s roommate in college) performed their delightful burlesque numbers. With Carmen Miranda fruit hats towering above their heads, the three sisters forced strange smiles on their faces while they shimmied and shook their hips.
All the while, the author sat diffidently at her table, a smile sneaking from her lips. When Murray Hill offered her the chance to take over the microphone, she politely declined. Murray prodded her — 35,000 copies, he kept saying. They printed 35,000 copies, come on up here. But she continued to smile and shake her head. The rest of the first novelists in the room -— none of them yet worthy of Page 6 coverage either — who had until that point felt part of the joyous celebration, began to murmur among themselves. Thirty-five thousand copies? they asked, quietly comparing contracts by the bar. Luckily, the entertainment portion of the evening was over. Folks could speak loudly to one another, and, more importantly, speak loudly to the bartender, asking this time for a double.
Comments