By Emily Roth

Combining the twin passions of most writers – drinking and listening to great writing – seemed like a no-brainer.  So in spring 2005, Julia Borchers (and a few buddies) founded Reading Under the Influence.  Since then RUI, as it is better known, has been serving up great stories and drinks the first Wednesday of every month at the classic north side pub Sheffield’s.  Julia, who is also a Chicago writer and teacher, sat down with HYPERTEXT to talk about the technicalities of the series as well as its implications for Chicago and literature as a whole.

Hypertext: What was the first spark of inspiration to start RUI?

Julia Borcherts: Rob Duffer, Joe Tower, Amanda Snyder, Carly Huegelmann and I were all grad students in the fiction department in 2005 and we were all getting ready to graduate. We all had thesis material and none of us had it ready for a book, but we were close, and we wanted to have a reading where we could invite agents and publishers and throw this sort of a party. What happened was, we contacted something like 200 agents and publishers and editors. None of them came. No one cared. But our friends came, and we felt like it was a lot of fun to have our friends come out for a night of reading. There weren’t a lot of reading series’ going on at the time. There were none, actually. There were a couple of open mics, but the literary scene really hadn’t exploded yet. We thought it was really nice because, as writers, we spend so much time at home just working, and it’s nice to be able to go out and talk to like minded people about books and stories. For the first few months, we were the only ones who read, and then we thought that eventually people might get tired of just hearing us read so we started adding other people to the lineup, like audience members, and then we added the trivia component to make it more interactive, which is something that Rob Duffer picked up from his time as a bartender. He knew that bar trivia was really successful and thought that it might be a fun component. We use the trivia to give away books and drinks.

HT: I know that you gather reading submissions at the actual event. Why did you choose this format? Is it just to keep people coming back, or is there more to it?

JB: I made the mistake for our first anniversary of suggesting to our group of co-hosts that it might be fun to do an open mic and invite people from all over the city to be involved, because at that point, almost everyone who was volunteering and wanting to be involved were people we knew from Columbia, and we thought we could bring this to the whole city.

What happened was, I learned very quickly that there are a lot of things that Columbia College does very well that you don’t necessarily see in other programs. One of the things that Columbia does really well is getting to the heart of the story immediately, you know, the whole “get right to the action” thing. And another thing we do really well is telling things as quickly and as fully as possible. And even in the semi-circle, the whole idea of getting your voice off the page and addressing your audience. People from Columbia College knew, without being formally trained, how to deliver a story. What I discovered at this open mic is that people would come, and despite the fact that I told them to only bring two pages, they’d read, like, fifteen pages into the floor, and they’d choose subjects that weren’t really bar-friendly. It goes back to the whole thing of knowing your audience. They’d choose stories that might be suitable for a podium, but weren’t really suitable for someone that‘s been standing on their feet for an hour and fifteen minutes. Someone brought a poem that somebody else wrote. Some guy opened up his journal but didn’t read from it, he just started talking about some crazy shit. It was a disaster. It was just awful, it was like the worst night ever. I learned my lesson.

One of the things that we realized is that, if someone wants to read at RUI, they need to understand our audience. If we just took a submission online from someone, they might not realize that there are going to be sixty people and the audience is going to be right in their face. We don’t have people read behind a podium because we don’t want there to be a barrier between the author and the audience, we want it to feel very interactive. So we want people to understand that they have to be quick, and we also want people to understand the trivia component. So, because it’s not something where you bring your story and you read it and then you sit down with everyone else, we want everyone who reads to have actually attended RUI, so that they can choose a story or write a new story that would be engaging for our audience. That just means that the story has to be very visceral and has to grab the audience right away in whatever tone you choose.  So that’s the main reason. Also, too, we want to support our community. If someone comes to RUI regularly, of course we want to feature them as opposed to someone we’ve never met. We want them to understand what they’re getting into. Otherwise they are going to get there and feel really uncomfortable, and we don’t want that.

HT: How much has the number of submissions grown since the first or second year?

JB: When we first opened up submissions, we got a ton right away, so we would kind of curate them. There were some where people would show up for the first time and bring a piece with them rather than coming once and seeing the event before deciding what to bring. They just showed up at the door with a piece they already had planned. So we got some things that weren’t really suitable, like poetry. Unless it’s a certain style of poetry, we have to be careful with that, because it’s not a poetry reading, it’s a fiction or nonfiction reading. Since then, we maybe get about two per month. It’s been pretty steady over the past seven years. We also have authors and publicists contact us when someone has a book just released or coming out, or if someone has a literary journal coming out, and they’ll ask if they’d be able to collaborate with us. Perhaps someone who runs one of the other great reading series’ in town will want to come in and read at RUI, if they’ve attended and they know what it’s about, and they’ll just contact us and ask if they can come and bring a story rather than submitting an actual story. A lot of people do submit ahead of time, even if it’s someone who is publishing their book. But, generally, we get about two formal submissions per month and then a lot of interest from people’s publicists and things like that.

HT: What are some of the major factors in RUI becoming so successful so fast?

JB: Well, actually, the first RUI we had was a formal reading. We had a formal catered dinner, and we charged 20 dollars for it. That was a specific audience. Then we moved to Sheffield’s because the primary owner of Sheffield’s had been a Fiction Writing student, and the department held grad events there, so he opened up the back room for us. The first time, we were still hoping to raise money to bring editors and publishers. We asked for an eight dollar cover charge and eleven people came. It was not a success. So, we realized right away we had to slash the cover charge. We charge three dollars now, but that’s because we buy a shot for each of the readers to toast the crowd, or if we have someone reading who has a book, we buy copies of the book to promote it, or if someone is helping us out by watching the door, we buy them some drinks. We really just wanted to charge enough to cover the books, so we didn’t have to pay out of our own pockets for them.

I think reducing the cover charge helped, and I think also because it’s such an active series, our goal is really to break down the barriers between the authors and the audience so that whether you’re a writer, or a reader who loves books, or you just want to get out and meet people who have interesting things to talk about, it’s really easy to meet people because the space is not huge, and because of the way it’s laid out it’s impossible to stick with a clique, you almost have to talk to strangers. The trivia format encourages shouting and people are making jokes all over the place. I think it’s very easy to approach someone, or turn to the person next to you and ask them how they knew the answer to that.

I also think it’s very easy for people to meet authors. If they like a story, it’s very easy to approach that person rather than be intimidated, because they’re standing a foot away from you, and it’s a call and response format for the trivia. So you’re already kind of having a conversation with the audience. When the featured author is reading their original work, it’s right there, and when they look up, they see you’re smiling, or laughing, or ready to cry. It encourages an audience connection.

Part of it, too, is that with all of these advances in technology you can connect virtually to people without leaving your house, so people really need a reason to leave the house.  I think stories provide that. It’s something you can do professionally or personally that feels good, it doesn’t feel like sleazy networking. And at the same time it doesn’t feel like going to a meat market bar, although plenty of people do hook up at reading series’, as we’ve all observed. It’s a great way to meet people in an environment you know is going to be friendly.

We try, in so many ways, to make it a community event. I think it does feel like a community for people and that’s probably one of the things that’s appealing.

HT: One of the interesting things about RUI is that it is a format that can survive print because it doesn’t have a print component. Do you ever think about the future of print and how it might impact RUI?

JB: Yes. We are aware of what the limitations are of a live series. We have thought several times that we would really like to produce an anthology. But, some of the pieces that have been so huge at RUI might not translate so well to the page. Sometimes that human connection is really necessary for the story, so it might not be as vibrant on the page. And we also have very short stories, maybe five minutes, and sometimes that’s enough to connect to a crowd and get the story out there but maybe you would want a longer story when coming up with a book. We also feel like we would like to go to podcasting to save some of these great stories.

We deal with this idea that this event is live, it’s right now, and if you aren’t there, you missed it. There have been some moments of brilliance that are gone forever. We feel that in some ways that’s part of the charm of a live reading series; that you’re there when history is happening, that something huge is going on and you don’t know what it’s going to be, only that it will never happen again.

I feel that in this day and age, anyone can be an author, anyone can publish a book, and there are so many doors open and there are so many ways to market your book. You’re not depending on the big publishers. You can get in a car and go from city to city with a box of books in the trunk, and stop anywhere and develop your own audience that way. But, I do feel like, because there are so many opportunities for people, it’s overwhelming for them to try to develop an audience. I think that because it’s so much harder for authors that they do rely on things like reading series to try to develop their audience. I think that as long as authors are trying to promote their books, that RUI and other reading series’ will be a part of that community.

However, we did have an instance where we had a very fine author who only had an eBook, and we did everything we could to promote the eBook, but I don’t know how many people actually bought it, because it wasn’t physically there for them to take home.

I think the transition is awkward, right now. It will be interesting to see where it goes. People will figure it out, but it seems like right now people are still sort of navigating what all of this means. I think that because people are becoming more comfortable with electronic books, that there are still a huge group of people who still want to hold a book in their hands. Especially for bookstore readings, that is going to be huge. It’s comforting, to take a book you love with you. So I think that for something like that, it’s great. For RUI, no matter what happens in publishing, the world is still going to want authors.

HT: You mentioned earlier that there weren’t really any other reading series’ when RUI first started. Do you feel like RUI was a catalyst for the explosion of Chicago’s reading series community?

JB: I do. I think we definitely influenced a lot of them, because I think people realized that readings could be fun. Before the mid 2000s, I think a lot of readings that we were invited to were very formal, where someone stood behind a podium and everyone sat in rows with their hands in their laps. We felt like we could present literature as being more alive. I think the other component is that Chicago, because you don’t see this kind of literary explosion in any other city, has such a collaborative storefront theater scene. I think there are 250 different theatre companies in Chicago and they are all really supportive of each other. I think that the fiction department at Columbia College Chicago is also a super supportive environment. I think there’s always been an attitude of, you know, there’s room for everyone. If you work really hard, you’ll find what you’re good at and there will be a place for you, and we should support that rather than competing or knocking others down, you know, so it can make us feel better. And I think because the theater scene is so collaborative a lot of people who are in the literary scene have that same mindset and I think that sort of helped to build that scene too. One of the new trends is the idea of a storytelling series rather than reading series.

HT: Like Second Story?

JB: Second Story is a storytelling series, but at RUI we tell stories too. I think the difference between a reading series and a storytelling series is that with a storytelling series, the stories are supposed to be true. The stories are real stories, whereas with a reading series like RUI the stories are sometimes real stories and sometimes they’re fiction. With Second Story, it used to be both fiction and nonfiction, and now they’ve moved into just true stories.

HT: Do you believe that RUI would have been as successful in another city, or is there something special about Chicago’s literary community that has helped it to thrive?

JB: I believe that Chicago really supports its own. I feel like Chicago has a huge literary community.  it’s funny because people will say that Chicago is the best next to New York but I don’t agree. New York has more celebrity authors, but Chicago is much more collaborative. Every month there are people from other reading series coming to RUI, you know, big reading series, and vice versa. I think the literary scene in Chicago understands that the sum of the parts is greater than the individual. You can have a good writer here or there, but put it together and it’s just this magic that happens. Chicago has these strong literary traditions anyway and very much a DIY aesthetic, which is what these series are about. Even Second Story, which is very polished, is still very handcrafted. I feel that this work ethic, and these working class roots that the city has and the DIY aesthetic all come together to support all of this. I think that when Second City started, Chicago became the place that you could go in order to make something happen. And I think it’s still that way. There are so many supportive people from so many parts of the city that are working really hard to make it happen. They all seem to have this sense of joy about stories, understanding that this is a way that we can connect. I think that if you’re at home writing something, you get the same respect as someone who just promoted their book on Good Morning America. If you’re doing the work, everyone is an equal. I think that’s a good kind of community to have.

HT: What have you personally gleaned as a writer from hosting RUI?

JB: I have a much greater sense of audience awareness, because I see which stories really connect with the audience and at what point they connect. I understand the importance of being able to get something done very quickly. My best stories tend to come in around fifteen minutes, and that’s too long for RUI. So I’ve had to start to be able to develop flash fiction. It’s also made me more concise in my writing, because we have a lot of audience there, so when I get up to read I can read the audience immediately, because I read the audience every month and their reactions to our authors. It’s a friendly but demanding audience. People love stories, so I think because of that, and also because I try to go to all of these other reading series’, to see what everybody else is doing, and to sort of see what patterns I notice in what people are reading and also maybe some interesting techniques that I wouldn’t have otherwise been aware of. The nice thing is that there’s that immediate audience response. So whether you’ve got a great audience or a not-great audience, there’s still a sense of what a writer can do to connect, so I think that’s been the most helpful thing. I learn just from hearing other people’s stories, and also reading on my own and seeing what people respond to.

Reading Under the Influence, Sheffield’s, 3258 N. Sheffield Avenue, on the first Wednesday of every month (except for a break in January)

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