Every seat on the humid patio of Liv Café & Bistro is occupied, and most patrons are sipping from a cup of Liv’s excellent iced coffee. The audience ranges from undergrads to an elderly couple and their dog, all of them watching the woman at the microphone. The only sounds are the hiss of the misters and the faint babble of the nearby pub. Kindall Gray looks up from her stack of papers. “This is called ‘Break Me In and Out.’”
Liv Café & Bistro has been hosting the LIVE at Liv series of literary and musical performances all summer. This most recent event featured UA English professors Kindall Gray, Sean Rys and Ted McLoof, who read some of their work. Gray read a fiction piece entitled “Break Me In and Out,” about a young girl from a disadvantaged household who wants to go to a reptile show. Rys’ poetry, starting with a sprawling imagistic piece titled “Tumbleweed,” ended with a selection from a series of poems called “Red Motel.” McLoof read two short and related fiction pieces of his own: “Space, Whether and Why,” and “How to Start Again in Twelve Easy Steps.” All the pieces read proved that the old adage, “those who can’t do, teach,” is far from a universal law — these three university instructors most certainly can “do.”
The café itself is the perfect place to attend a reading. By day, they serve breakfast and lunch; by night, Liv is a typical independent coffee shop with a variety of teas, coffees, smoothies, light snacks and baked goods. If you get there early enough, you can claim one of the cushy couches at either end of the patio, while between them are chairs of varying comfort for the stragglers. The staff is friendly and obviously enthusiastic about the events Liv is hosting.
Attending a LIVE at Liv event is a relaxing, low-key, social way to spend an evening in the foothills. There, you can enjoy a quality coffee or tea while you listen to the work of a local writer, bring some friends, make new friends. The next event in the series is scheduled for July 26, with more information to be posted on Liv’s Facebook page.
