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To see the Naked Girls in action, join us for Literary Boston on Feb. 25th!

Boston has inspired much good writing (and writers) in its long history. Join The Naked Girls as they explore the literature of “The Hub of The Universe” from Edgar Allan Poe (born in Boston in 1809) to Dennis Lehane (a Dot rat since 1965) with a stop at “Good Will Hunting” in between.

The salon will be held at the Boston Academy of Burlesque Education, 119 Braintree St., Allston, MA. at 8pm

Tickets are $20 in advance and $30 day of the show. Admission limited to 30 seats.

Call (800) 838-3006 or visit http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/221496 for tickets.

We’d been lead to believe it would take about 2 hours. It took three and a half. Our audience’s endurance was amazing. You can see some of the survivors in the Weekly Dig.

The readers this time were myself (Miss Mina), Vikki Likkerish, Jena Kitten, and first-time Naked Girl Devora Darling. We knew the story was sad, and scary, and heartwarming, so we were pleasantly surprised at how funny it is too.

There are lots of versions of A Christmas Carol out there, but we read from this one, illustrated by P.J. Lynch. It was to bad we really couldn’t share the lovely images with the audience.

Our next salon will be help in late February. In 1212 we’ll be hosting more regular salons in a brand new location. Check back here for details!

What do you do if you want one of those tickets? Show up at Oupost 186 at about 7:50 p.m. with $30 in cash for each ticket you’d like. Please do not show up earlier than that. Please do not bring a credit card. Please do not call or email and ask us to hold a ticket for you.

Outpost 186 is located 186-1/2 Hampshire St. (Rear), Cambridge, MA. We’ll see you Saturday night!

It’s that time of year again: a time for baking cookies, attending tree lightings and wrapping gifts. And don’t forget to attend a reading of your favorite holiday tale, “A Christmas Carol,” by Naked Girls Reading. Baby Jesus shouldn’t be the only one allowed to go bare this December.

Naked Girls Reading was founded in Chicago and is an international group, with chapters in most major cities. The name says it all: It’s a group of naked women who love to read.

“We’ve had a lot of interesting themes, but this is the first time we’ve done Christmas,” says Boston chapter hostess Mina Murray, who has been a reader since NGR hit the Hub.

The Girls’ holiday event is at Outpost 186, which only seats 35. Murray says this suits their birthday suits.

“I think it’s a much more intimate space,” she says. “There is very little barrier between the audience and the performers.”

That’s what Murray likes about reading: No matter the size of the audience, the lack of clothing gives listeners fewer distractions.

“I find that people in the audience, after the initial ‘Oh my goodness, they’re naked,’ I think they hear the words better. Nothing stands between the reader and the book.”

If you go

‘Do you look fabulous naked?’ Who cares?

Mina Murray isn’t new to bearing it all onstage. Her history with burlesque dancing and sitting as a nude artist model gives her the confidence to read clearly and calmly on stage.

“Appearing before an audience with little to no clothing on is not new,” she says. “I really enjoy speaking out loud. What’s great is getting other people involved.”

It’s not all about how good one may look without any clothes on, either.

“We’re not so much interested in the ‘Do you look fabulous naked?’ but how good of a reader you are,” Murray says.

Naked Girls Reading ‘A Christmas Carol’
Saturday, 8 p.m.
Outpost 186
186½ Hampshire St.,
Cambridge
$20-$30,
www.nakedgirlsreading.com/boston

Doors open at 8:00 p.m. for a pre-reading reception, and the reading begins at 8:30 p.m. The reading is about two hours long and there will be two breaks.

There are only 35 tickets, so we recommend you get them in advance (and you’ll save some cash too!).

GETTING NAKED WITH BAR HAVOC
Posted on May 23, 2011 by BAR HAVOC

“So,” my friend said to me Friday over dinner, “are you nervous about tomorrow?” I looked miserably up from my half eaten burger and unfinished beer.

“Don’t talk about it,” I replied, my head in my hands. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

Tomorrow was of course, Naked Girls Reading at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, and this time instead of a captivated audience member, I was one of the naked girls. I have never been more terrified in my life. I wasn’t sure what I was more nervous about; I am not terribly in love with my body, but when it comes down to it I’m not that shy. Public speaking however, not my cup of tea. I stammer, shake, stumble over my words and typically come down with a bad case of what I like to call Elvis leg, the violent and constant shaking in my left leg that can’t be quieted. Add to that the naked part, and we have one scared Havoc.

What did I get myself into?

The day of the show I felt oddly calm. I spent the day walking around my apartment in nothing but boots carrying my book and reciting my chosen passage to the cat (the theme of the evening was “Fang Fiction”, so I had chosen a favorite of mine, Anne Rice’s “Interview with the Vampire”).

I was excited. Nervous, but I had made up my mind. I could do this.

Midnight on Saturday arrived even with the scheduled Rapture, (how could the world end on a day that anyone was supposed to be naked reading?) and with the ever appropriate voice of God announcing throughout the theatre, Scratch (the founder of the Boston Babydolls Burlesque Troupe) called us in. I waited in the wings, my heart pounding out of my chest, the theatre thankfully too cold to allow sweating.

The calmness of the other girls was reassuring. This was going to be fun.

One by one we got up to recite the opening reading, chosen selections from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”. When my turn came I felt myself rising from my seat, my back already aching from attempting perfect posture. My baby blue silk kimono untied effortlessly and silently fell to the red chair below me. I approached the microphone in nothing but a necklace, some bracelets, boots and a beaded belly chain. This was it, all eyes on me. Inside I was screaming. Onstage, I began to read.

The group opening reading was followed by the fiery Vikki Likkerish reading a passage from “Blood Kin”, a short story from the collection “Vampire Stories from the American South”. I returned to the stage to read a selection from “Interview with the Vampire”, a ten minute passage in which it was all I could do to not run in horror from the stage. “Slow down,” I kept thinking. “One word after another.”

You have no idea how long ten minutes really is until you’re naked onstage squinting in a spotlight trying not to sound like an idiot.

After a brief intermission in which I was happy to replace my robe and gratefully hug my friend Meg who had come for support, Jena Kitten read from “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”, and Miss Mina Murray closed the individual readings with a bit from Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla”. We finished off the evening with another group reading from Robert Bloch’s short story “The Cloak”.

And then it was over. The robes came back on, and we walked offstage and I returned to my backpack of clothing.

I have never been so happy to slide into a pair of jeans and sneakers in my entire life.

My heart was still racing, a smile permanently stuck on my face. I might not have been the most powerful reader, or the most sexy. But I did it, I got up and read a story to a theatre of strangers, stark naked, Elvis leg and all. Take that, Rapture.

I won’t be taking my clothes off again anytime soon, but Miss Mina and the fabulous Boston Babydolls will be! Want more? Check out “Madam Burlesque”, an evening of tributes to the great ladies of burlesque July 8th-16th at the Cambridge YMCA Theatre, 820 Mass Ave, Cambridge. For more information and to buy tickets head to www.BostonBabyDolls.net.

The choice for our opening shared reading was obvious, Dracula by Bram Stoker. Not the first vampire story, but certainly the most influential.

Vikki Likkerish then read the short story “Blood Kin” from the collection Vampire Stories from the American South. Very creepy and very Southern.

Continuing with the theme that vampires like to live below the Mason-Dixon Line, new Naked Girl Lizzie Havoc read a selection from Anne Rice’s modern classic Interview with the Vampire.

After a brief intermission Jena Kitten read from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. In this passage, the future president learned of the existence of vampires and chose a path that would change history!

Miss Mina closed out the individual reading with a selection from Carmilla. This short novel predates Dracula and the vampire and victim are both female. It gets rather steamy, in a mid-Victorian sort of way.

The Naked Girls finished the night with a shared reading of Robert Bloch’s short story “The Cloak”. (It’s been collected in many anthologies, but we found it in Weird Vampire Tales: 30 Blood-Chilling Stories from the Weird Fiction Pulps.)

We almost closed with a selection from Twilight, but decided to spare you that.

We’ll be scheduling our next salon soon. Check back here and we’ll let you know what we’ll be reading… naked!

It’s Midnight. The witching hour. Now the veil between life and death is thinnest. Now is when the children of the night rise and restless spirits roam the streets, thirsting for blood and preying on innocents.

Scary, huh? But kind of sexy too… Boston’s own Creatures of the Naked Night will walk (or sit) among the living on May 21st as Naked Girls Reading presents “Fang Fiction” – a naughty little celebration of vampires, ghoulies, ghosties, long-legged beasties, and things that go bump-n-grind in the night. Advanced tickets are strongly recommended.

Readers will include your hostess Miss Mina, the cuddly Jena Kitten, the delicious Vikki Likkerish, and new Naked Girl Bar Havoc!

Tickets: $10 advance, $15 day of show.

The Coolidge Corner Theatre
290 Harvard St
Brookline MA 02446

We began with a shared reading of “The Infernal Bouillabaisse” from Best of Beaumont by Charles Beaumont. He wrote many episodes for The Twilight Zone, so you can imagine the tone of this little tale.

Scarlett Letter from Los Angeles is an experienced bartender and she thought it fitting to add the beverage to our midnight snack. She read a chapter about Dutch Genever (it’s like gin, but more so) from Boozehound by Jason Wilson.

At this point I jumped in with a recipe for Holland Watermelon from The Eating in Bed Cookbook by Barbara Ninde Byfield. It involves a whole watermelon, a bottle of Genever, and the caution that you should eat it in the bathtub.

Next up we had Mimi Misschief from Sarah Lawrence College reading as a Naked Girl for the very first time. She chose a selection from Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia about the challenges of cooking Oeufs a la Bourguignonne (Eggs Poached in Red Wine).

St. Stella from Toronto read from Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate. It was a delicious passage about rose petals, passion, and nakedness.

I finished the evening with a passage from the great food writer M.F.K. Fisher, originally published in Serve It Forth, collected in The Art of Eating. I never knew that eating a tangerine could be such a sensual, all day affair.

Thank you to those who joined us and we hope to see you on May 21 back at the Coolidge Corner Theatre for Fang Fiction!