Dawn Raffel

   Before the reading by Dawn Raffel I didn't have very many expectations.  I was not familiar with the author and I had never been to a reading before.  I half expected that the auditorium would be filled with more people because she sounded like a very successful, well-known author.

   She read from two of her books, Further Adventures in the Restless Universe and In the Year of Long Division.  These were intriguing book titles so my initial interest was peaked.  But after the first reading, I was ready to fall asleep.  I thought the maturity level was much higher, so for a person at 19, I was uninterested.  Her audience was filled with much older people compared to that of younger adults, which in my mind implied that her writing was on a more mature level of understanding.

   Her style was very different.  The way she structured the dialogue was weird to me, but for others might be enjoyable.  Even the structure of her sentences seemed a little odd to me.  I couldn't tell if her stories were a little dark or if they were just deep. 

  I was most interested in the questions the audience had at the end.   One man asked if the author saw her life as a series of books.  Other questions pertained to her writing structure and rhythm.  Overall, it was not a bad experience. I would probably go to another reading for fun.