Seven Minutes in Heaven
Heirloom Rustic Ales
December 5, 2024
Just as Tulsa saw its first wintry weather of the season, we got two very welcome ways to warm up: the return of Liz Blood’s Seven Minutes in Heaven reading series at Heirloom, and the return of Dante’s Woodfire (a pizza truck behind the brewery) on Thursdays.
Eager to take part in both, I’d arrived early enough to secure a drink and a pizza (The MJ, a white pie with mushrooms, spinach, goat cheese, and pistachios)—and then heard Blood officially open the evening by urging us to do just that. Heard consistently throughout the night: best pizza in Tulsa. And Dante’s really is damn good: just the right balance of chew and char.
This was the 12th installment of Seven Minutes in Heaven, which over the last almost nine years has featured 48 different local (or nearby) readers at several different venues, from Mainline (RIP) to the Tulsa Artist Fellowship to Whitty Books. The series focuses on fiction and nonfiction (that takes up to seven minutes to read) rather than poetry; though I love poetry, it’s good to have a forum in town just for prose. It also features a wild-card reader: anyone with a short enough piece can put their name in the hat, and whoever’s name is drawn gets to read at halftime.
The night’s first reader was Batool Alzubi, a Ph.D. candidate from OSU who read two flash fiction pieces. One took place in a school where girls were sent “to change the rebellious nature of their personality.” One day, the narrator helps her friend escape school to break up with her boyfriend. It rains for hours, then floods, and the friend never returns. I’ll leave it there: You can read the piece online. Beware the banger of a line in section four.
Next up: Jerakah Greene, who read from their novel in progress, featuring Oklahoma natural (and manmade, with earthquakes in the mix) disasters, adolescent life with Mom following Dad’s death, and the pressures of gender conformity: I want to look distorted, the narrator says. Not boy, not girl. Greene’s piece was potent, and their presentation was pro. No thanks to some Chatty Kathies in the back (they shushed up pretty quickly)—and the unfortunate timing of someone’s pizza beeper.
Liz Blood (L) and Jerakah Greene (R). Photos by Cassidy McCants.
At halftime, we got great news: You can silence your pizza buzzer. Bad news: No one had entered their name to be the wild-card reader, even with the promise of a $50 Whitty Books gift card for the lucky winner. Finally, a brave attendee offered her name. With a 100% chance of being drawn, Kathryn Parkman (my date for the evening) was selected by fate as our wild card. She read an essay (the only nonfiction of the night and a piece I love) detailing her experience with a palm reader after a fairly significant injury to her hand. Among the many things she learned from the palmist: The scar is a continuation of my fate line, which starts at the bottom of the palm near the wrist and runs up through the center, toward the middle finger. (Not everyone has one.) Apparently fate was hard at work this particular night: Parkman was also the very first reader at the very first Seven Minutes in Heaven, in 2016.
Scheduled reader No. 3 was Tulsan Jonathan Gaboury, whose cute kid clapped for him as he made his way to the stage. He expertly—i.e., theatrically, energetically, engagingly—read his story “Nonfiction Man,” a fun, irreverent piece in which a character, Cassandra, stands aghast as the titular man inopportunely reads from a dull essay amid chaos (think tragedy, car crash). Another moment with a fated feel: Cassandra’s phone buzzed (in the story) with a call from her mother right as a pizza buzzer (in the real-life Heirloom) went off (but: bless our new knowledge of the silencer).
“Thanks for that. I’m never writing nonfiction again,” Blood joked before introducing the final reader: Bailey Brooks, Tulsa native, OU professor, and winner of “Best in Prose” in The Aster Review. After announcing that her voice was shot after screaming the Wicked soundtrack on the drive from Norman, she introduced an excerpt from the historical novel she’s querying, set at Tulsa’s Milwaukee Tavern in the 1970s (she took some artistic liberties; the lesbian bar was actually around in the ’40s and ’50s). Her main character, a newcomer from Chicago, notes that while the bar is full of white people, at least it’s integrated. Brooks delivered a tense and powerful scene in which her character navigates race and sexuality in this decidedly not-Chicago setting. I’ll echo Blood’s words: I hope she gets the book picked up. I would love to read it.
This was at least the third Seven Minutes to take place at Heirloom, an establishment that consistently shows up for local artists. I love the venue for literary events (including the OSU Center for Poets & Writers’ Live Lit Nights). The sound and space are good for a reading in the sometimes cavernous-feeling brewery, even when kids and families who didn’t plan to be part of an audience are around.
It had been a while since the last Seven Minutes installment, but I have it on good authority that we can expect a twice-a-year cadence moving forward, which is good news for local writers (and listeners). If you think readings aren’t your thing, I encourage you to give the next one a try anyway. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone truly bomb at one of these, and even if one story or essay were really, really bad—it’s only seven minutes.
