Today is August 11, five months to the day since the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, and things are scarier than ever. At this point, no one is going to be going to any parties before the end of the year.

Except, of course, the Silent Reading Party, which you attend from the comfort of your own living room, although some people with patios and decks take their computers outside and attend the party from there. However long this nightmare lasts, we're keeping the Silent Reading Party going, and we're continuing to spice things up with *special guests.*

This week, the special guest is the award-winning poet Kary Wayson, author of the books American Husband and The Slip. In the grand tradition of reading party special guests, she won't do anything except sit there silently reading whatever she wants, just like you, while our resident musician Paul Matthew Moore plays relaxing and exquisite piano music.

Get your ticket here.

The more you choose to pay, the more the musician makes, and the bigger a donation you are making to The Stranger.

In a review of The Slip, Rich Smith wrote that the speaker of the poems "has reached the end of longing for love in the way you long for it in your wild 20s (and your even wilder 30s). She now reflects on what good any of that longing did her, whether she'll ever long again, whether longing means being alive, and, if so, what that says about what she thinks living means."

Smith added that nearly every poem in The Slip (order it here) carries a surprise flash of insight, and a combination of melancholy and humor. "It's a joy to try to keep up with Wayson as she unsettles every settled thought," he concluded.

Wayson joins a happy gaggle of recent reading party special guests that includes Sheila Heti, Garth Greenwell, Lesley Hazleton, Richard Chiem, Gary Shteyngart, and E. J. Koh.

You can get your ticket for August 12's party right here.