The late David Foster Wallace had a genius for describing thorny
emotions and ideas in bright, colloquial language. His
formidable intelligence is easy on the ears. Tonight’s readers include
Brian McGuigan, Veronica D’Orazio (“writer, teacher, florist”), Cienna
Madrid, David Schmader, and Paul Constant, who will read from “Shipping
Out,” Wallace’s Caribbean-cruise essay with the great beginning: “I
have now seen sucrose beaches and water a very bright blue… I
have heard steel drums and eaten conch fritters and watched a woman in
silver lamé projectile-vomit inside a glass elevator.”
(Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, 322-7030. 7 pm, free, all
ages.)

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....