Here’s Litseen’s video of a reading I gave at Inside Story Time, December 15, 2011. The story “Vacajun” appeared in Dark Sky Magazine.
23 09 2011
INTERVIEW WITH ALIA VOLZ
BY SETH AMOS
Alia Volz’s story, “Vacajun” appeared in Dark Sky’s Issue 11. Here Alia talks about stereotypes, insomnia, and her earliest memories of magical desserts.
Seth Amos: Your website says that you started writing during a long trek across the Iberian Peninsula, what was it about the journey that inspired you?
Alia Volz: The Camino de Santiago is a Catholic pilgrimage — which is odd because I’m not religious, and wasn’t raised Catholic. I stumbled onto it, so to speak. There’s a great deal of old power on that trail. It transforms everyone who sticks with it, though not necessarily in the ways you might imagine. That was a confusing process, and since I walked most of the 500-ish miles alone, I had to keep a journal, which I’d never done before. Writing made everything feel more vivid, which I loved. The smallest became significant. Plus, I’d always been a voracious reader, and if you consume enough words, they eventually start dribbling back out. So when I returned to the states a year later, I went straight into a Creative Writing program. I’ve been wrestling this beast ever since.
SA: Who are your biggest literary influences?
AV: I’m pretty disloyal. Maybe I will always be a Faulkner girl. Cormac McCarthy makes we want to smash my fingers with a sledgehammer, he’s so goddamn good. People like Carver and Goodis taught me dialogue, and Flannery taught me to be vicious. Then there’s Woolf, Bolaño, Díaz, Dickey, Ellison, Thompson (Hunter and Jim), Oakley Hall, yadda, yadda, yadda…
Honestly, my biggest influence is the book I have my nose in today. I’m a very receptive reader. So if I’m working with a particular genre, style or subject, I’ll look to a (local, independent) bookstore to ramp up my chops. Some writers worry about taint their output, but I’m thrilled to find shades of what I’m reading in my own work. It still comes out sounding like me. It’s hilarious: you can’t escape your own voice.
Read the full interview in Dark Sky Magazine
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Categories : Uncategorized
New work in Dark Sky Magazine
26 08 2011
VACAJUN
BY ALIA VOLZ
Way down in a bayou town. Just for kicks, my love, you and me, we don’t know this place. No infusion bars, vintage boutiques, or multilevel movie theaters; no yuppies or hippies or hipsters. People here lean too close, and slur through log lips, and you can count their swampy teeth. Hey, be nice, you say. Watch the stereotypes. I know it, I know it, but even so, those were some teeth.
I’ve got to hear live zydeco, would die to hear it, so we drive to the roadhouse, out where the town trickles off into the weeds. We get there as the light bulbs on the sign blink out. Two women stand smoking in the dirt lot. Is the music really done for the night? I ask. It’s so early. A brunette with wadded tissue cheeks says, yes, they’ve gone home already. But come on back tomorrow, seven o’ clock, they’ll be at it again.
But there is no tomorrow.
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BAN6 Presents: LDM at YBCA!
3 08 2011Saturday, August 20, 2011
6:00 PM
It’s the most exciting thing to ever cost absolutely nothing! BAN6 presents Literary Death Match!
Sponsored by ModCloth and The Written Wardrobe, this thrilling FREE event takes place at beautiful Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.
In a never-before-attempted feat of flexibility, four authors will read original work written especially for LDM, and inspired by paintings in YBCA’s BAN6 Visual Art Exhibition. Artists from the exhibition will judge.
Featuring slam superstar Chinaka Hodge (For Girls With Hips); the man who copyrighted his own mind, Jonathon Keats (The Book of the Unknown); the captivating Caitlin Myer (Founder of Portuguese Artists Colony), and cutting edge fictionista Susan Steinberg (Hydroplane)!
Three artists call the game: the mind-bending Chris Sollars (Director, 667Shotwell), lauded multimedia genius Tony Labat, and performance artiste extraordinaire Mica Sigourney (a.k.a VivvyAnne ForeverMORE)!
Hosted by Bucky Sinister and Alia Volz.
Where: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF
When: 6:00PM-8:00PM
Cost: FREE!
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Bastille Day Gets The Litquake Treatment
28 06 2011July 14th, 2011 – 8:00PM
San Francisco’s Literary Festival presents Cabaret Bastille, an evening that celebrates left bank bohemia and the American authors who left the US for La Ville Lumiere in the 20s to pursue their literary destiny, champagne (occasionally real pain) and sex, love and more, more, more; Authors who will channel their Jazz Age counterparts include Alan Black as his nemesis James Joyce, Alia Volz tapping into her inner Anais Nin and Joshua Mohr bringing dirty boy/literary savant Henry Miller for a visit to 2011, among others
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Categories : Uncategorized
Alia Volz <<< Litseen's Pick of the Week
13 04 2011Sun Jan 23 11, Fivepoints Arthouse
By (Evan Karp)
If you haven’t you should check out videos from {Blush}. This month’s Portuguese Artists Colony gave us several contenders for Pick of the Week, but ultimately there was no way we could pass on “Lani Lancaster and the Bionic Man,” by Alia Volz.
Aldo takes my face between his hands and kisses me softly on the lips. Then he gets eager and sucks my bridge right off my gum. I push away, trot to the bathroom and chuck it into the drawer. That’s when I catch my reflection in the mirror. My hair is frizz-frazzled and it’s all stuck to one side of my face. I look like that tabloid shot of Nick Nolte when he got the DUI.
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Categories : Fiction, Press, Readings, Uncategorized, Videos
NOT SO FAST!… Writers Reading from New Works.
26 03 2011Thursday, March 31 – 8:00PM
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk Street, SF
Featuring new work by Beth Lisick, Kelly Beardsley, Bucky Sinister, Alia Volz, Jack Boulware and Alan Black.
Show up at our reading or we’ll beat up your mom.Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: Alan Black, Beth Lisick, Bucky Sinister, Jack Boulware, Kelly Beardsley, Literary Events, Readings
Categories : Fiction, Readings
Literary Death Match, Ep. 37!
28 01 2011San Francisco
February 11, 2011
Get your red hot discount tix here!
Have you missed us, San Francisco?
We vanquished 2010 with a bang and a splat! The new Literary Death Match now rises from the ashes. And we’re feeling fine.
Join us as we charge into the fray with a quiver of lethally funny surprises–beginning with special guest co-host Will Franken!
Set to do intellectual battle are luscious locker room deviant Monica Nolan (Bobby Blanchard, Lesbian Gym Teacher), award-winning poet Geoff Bouvier (Living Room), John Scott (http://straightmalefriend.blogspot.com/), and national best-seller Jennifer Solow (The Booster and The Aristobrats).
Three canny experts preside: former SF Chronicle book editor and new editor of ZYZZYVA, Oscar Villalon; novelist April Sinclair (Coffee Will Make You Black); and author, musician and HarperOne exec, Sam Barry (How to Play the Harmonica: and Other Life Lessons).
Four writers fight to survive a brutal smack down of words, punctuation, and ideas. Ink will run red!
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Categories : Literary Death Match
Before You Were Born: Stories from our parents’ surprisingly romantic youth. This week: two free spirits exchange psychic readings in ’70s San Francisco.
24 01 2011
Nerve.com, December 3, 2010
By Alia Volz
My parents, Doug and Mer, exchanged psychic readings on a blind date. Though they’ve since divorced, I recently reunited them to ask about their unusual romance.
I would like you, my beloved parents, to take a trip back in time. It is now January of 1977 —
D: Oh really? What drug are we smoking now?
You tell me. How did you guys meet?
M: We met because of Barb. She was my good friend and also my business partner at that time. She and I had a marijuana brownie bakery, and business was really starting to boom. Barb met your dad because she had a crush on your father’s roommate, John, and went out with him a couple times, though I don’t think they dated seriously.
D: I’m pretty sure I met John through the Berkeley Psychic Institute.
So Barb introduced you. Was it a blind date?
M: Well, how blind is two psychic readings?
D: It wasn’t a date. I think Barb gave me your number, and said I just had to call you. So we talked on the phone and came to the understanding — since Mer did tarot readings and I did aura readings — we decided to trade readings. I mean, if there’s a question about it, blame Barb. “Match-maker, match-maker, make me a match!”
Describe the moment you met.
M: I think you came to me first, Doug.
D: Yes, that is correct.
M: I lived in an apartment on Frederick Street, in the Haight. It had a big staircase where you could stand at the top, and it rounded around so you could see who was coming up the staircase. My bedroom was the first doorway to the right. I had a king-sized bed, and I did the reading right on the bed with the cards.
D: I had, of course, heard from the match-maker all about this incredible tarot-card reader, and I had goosebumps, like, “What am I in for here?” I remember ringing the bell. The door opened and there was this long set of stairs with this lady up at the top. I think the light was behind you. I knew there was no way you were going to come down, and I had to go up those stairs. It was kind of like one of those Twilight Zone things where the stairs get longer and longer. And I was very aware of Mer’s presence and her social power. You know, her aura was very — the way you were standing on that landing, you weren’t going to budge. I had to come up to you.
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Tags: Alia Volz, love at first sight, magic brownies, marijuana brownies, Nerve, psychic readings, Sticky Fingers
Categories : Fact, Sticky Fingers Brownies
“SFB” Excerpt
8 06 2010
Sticky Fingers Brownies is the true tale of a high-volume marijuana brownie business my family owned and operated during the 1970s. This excerpt is from an interview with Shari Mueller, The Rainbow Lady, who unwittingly founded “the biz”.
This oral history originally appeared in Instant City, Issue 6.
=====================================================
The Rainbow Lady of Fisherman’s Wharf
…So I went home and I said to the universe, “Look, I’m working with this concept of getting $10,000 as quickly as possible to go back to Findhorn and I really need some advice here. What do you think? If you want this to happen—if you want me to make marijuana brownies—let all the doors open. And if I’m not supposed to do this, just whup me upside the head and make it real clear.”
Then I just kind of sat back and waited for something to happen. Well, those people didn’t even wait for me to say yes. Next time they saw me, they gave me a substantial amount of marijuana and said, “This is a gift. You can start messing around with it in your kitchen. If you decide you don’t want to do it, just give it back to us.”
So I started working up a recipe and I found one that seemed pretty good. To differentiate between my regular brownies and the magic brownies, I put a single cashew nut on top of the magic brownies and individually wrapped them in cellophane. I kept them in a pouch on my shoulder, rather than in the basket with everything else. So you pretty much needed to know I had them. I wasn’t just pushing magic brownies on unsuspecting people.
Although, there was a funny episode, one afternoon…
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Tags: 1970s, 1976, brownie lady, fisherman's wharf, magic brownies, pot brownies, rainbow lady
Categories : Fact, Sticky Fingers Brownies, Writings
