In legalese, an "excited utterance" is a statement about a startling or exciting event made by a participant in, or a person who personally observed, the event.
In the live readings realm, Excited Utterance is the enterprise of poet, educator, journalist, and singer/songwriter Larry O. Dean. A longtime presence on the 'spoken word' circuit, Dean is no stranger to hosting such occasions, having done so as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, while living in San Francisco, and during his tenure in Chicago, including two 'mega-readings' during the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in 2009 and 2012. Organizing such ongoing events has become second nature to Dean, who has curated an annual concert dedicated to the sui generis Big Star guitarist, Alex Chilton, as well as a monthly songwriter round robin, Folk You!
In fact, Folk You! was the impetus for Excited Utterance. In a city with many noteworthy reading series, the distinguishing factor behind EU is that it also follows an 'in the round' format, with Dean and two other writers presenting material in three mini sets apiece. This gives each author a chance to present their work in more compartmentalized bites, rather than one singular spiel, and the audience an opportunity to savor the readers in a variety of modes.
In the live readings realm, Excited Utterance is the enterprise of poet, educator, journalist, and singer/songwriter Larry O. Dean. A longtime presence on the 'spoken word' circuit, Dean is no stranger to hosting such occasions, having done so as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, while living in San Francisco, and during his tenure in Chicago, including two 'mega-readings' during the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in 2009 and 2012. Organizing such ongoing events has become second nature to Dean, who has curated an annual concert dedicated to the sui generis Big Star guitarist, Alex Chilton, as well as a monthly songwriter round robin, Folk You!
In fact, Folk You! was the impetus for Excited Utterance. In a city with many noteworthy reading series, the distinguishing factor behind EU is that it also follows an 'in the round' format, with Dean and two other writers presenting material in three mini sets apiece. This gives each author a chance to present their work in more compartmentalized bites, rather than one singular spiel, and the audience an opportunity to savor the readers in a variety of modes.