a whole lotta love for louisiana at san francisco’s makout room

Stephen Elliott and Matthew Iribarne put on a spectacular event last night at the Makeout Room, raising more than $4,000 for the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Fund. Firoozeh Dumas kicked off the evening with a bit of black comedy about how her Iranian mother, living in an intolerant pocket of the U.S., pretended to be Turkish for two years. Peter Orner read a gorgeous piece about a father, a daughter, and a hurricane, which you cannot find in Esther Stories–but look for Peter’s new book in the spring. Kirk Read killed the crowd with an account of illicit sex with a businessman at a Raiders game. I recalled a hurricane that hit my hometown of Mobile, Alabama, in the 70s. Julie Orringer read a lovely Mark Twain piece about the Mississippi, and Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket) capped the evening off with a reminder that the next big San Francisco earthquake is only a matter of time, noting that he hoped San Francisco readers and writers could all get together once again to support the city when that event comes to pass. Other readers were: Tom Barbash, Michelle Tea, Daphne Gottlieb, Andrew Sean Greer, Micheline Marcom, Truong Tran, and Kaui Hart Hemmings.

Andrew Altschul, whose debut novel will be released by Harcourt sometime in the near future, auctioned off several event posters, featuring the signatures of all fourteen authors. Julie garnered $100 for one of the posters by promising the winning bidder kisses from the entire cadre of authors, who promptly hopped on stage to engage in the love-fest.

As a native of the Gulf Coast, it’s encouraging to see the huge support coming from the Bay Area. The Makeout Room event came on the heels of a reading at Book Passage that raised $40,000, thanks in part to the audacious auctioning efforts of Ayelet Waldman, who reminded audience members that she knew for a fact that many of them drove Mercedes and had spent upwards of a thousand dollars on bed linens. Guilt works…the checks started rolling in.

Remember, the Katrina story isn’t over yet, not for a long while. Keep up with recovery, reconstruction, displacement, and other news at the Times Picayune website.