Poison Pen Reading Series: Ed Porter, Jason Koo and Taije Silverman

A former actor-turned-poet brings drama to the Poison Pen Reading Series

Comments (0) By Dusti Rhodes Thursday, Mar 25 2010

More About

When Ed Porter left an acting career in New York to pursue creative writing at the University of Houston, he was thinking stories, not scripts. What he found was that the two were extremely similar. "Fifty percent of [writing] is the exact same job [as acting]...it is thinking about characters...it's drama...conflict," Porter says. Take the piece he'll read today for the Poison Pen Reading Series, "The Changing Station" (found in the collection Best New American Voices 2010). The story follows a tough Italian Brooklynite whose pride competes with a desire to save his relationship. "His girlfriend's daughter has gotten pregnant and had a baby, and now his girlfriend has no time for him," Porter explains. See this baby mama's mama's drama come to life when Porter adds his talent for performance to the mix when he reads with two national poets, Jason Koo (Man on an Extremely Small Island) and Taije Silverman (Houses Are Fields). Koo won the 2008 De Novo Poetry Prize and currently teaches at NYU, while Silverman has received multiple first-place awards from the Academy of American Poets and been published in journals including Five Points and The Antioch Review. 8:30 p.m. Poison Girl, 1641 Westheimer. For information, call 713-527-9929 or visit www.poisonpenreadingseries.com. Free.
Thu., March 25, 8:30 p.m., 2010