After brief introductions, Mary Gaitskill approaches the lectern in room 250 of Shepard Hall, on the campus of City College.  The room is hot and crowded, filled with undergraduates who are there one might surmise because they are getting some sort of credit for attending, or likely also for the free pizza, the overpowering smell of it lingering in the air.

“I’m sick to my stomach, so If I flee the room it is because of that, not that I’m sickened by what I’m reading,” she says, stoically.

She is mid-way through “Folk Song,” which appears in her most recent short story collection Don’t Cry, when she crumples into a chair, announcing she’s ill.  She is hurried out of the room, and in the interim, one of the professors, who resembles Austin Pendleton, tells the crowd Ms. Gaitskill believes she has food poisoning.  Windows are opened during the awkward, lengthy intermission, and the noise level rises considerably as everyone wonders if she’ll return, if they should leave or wait it out. Some wondering if they should just send her home, in a car, and call it a wash.

She is greeted with applause when she re-enters, and after briefly conferring with the professor, she sits back down, one hand on her head, one clutching her stomach, while he reads where she left off.  At a certain point in the narrative, she tags back in and finishes out the story. 

“That was very weird,” she acknowledges, before taking questions from the crowd.