PARASOL PUBLICATIONS

How To Read Your Work Out Loud in Public

Reading for performances, book events, and audio recordings

Photo by Product School on Unsplash

Picture yourself all alone in front of a live audience. Is this image enough to make your temperature rise with anxiety? Now, add into the mix a personal essay or a passage from a book that you’re expected to read from.

For some people, reading aloud to others is torture. It can be problematic if you’re promoting a book, participating in a personal essay show, reading from a script, or recording an audio version of your book.

Not to brag, but reading aloud is one of my talents, and I’ve been doing it for decades. In high school, not only did I do the plays and musicals, but I was also on the speech team. No, I didn’t debate, I did oral interpretation, which was reading from written material.

In college, I studied Theatre and often read scripts in front of a crowd. After I graduated with a Theatre Arts degree, I briefly pursued acting as a career and performed sketch comedy, stand-up, and improv.

But it was when I discovered personal essays shows that I felt like I had found my thing.

Personal essays differ from storytelling shows in that the performer reads their story or essay. Essay shows…