This is the premiere installment of the ALWAYS CRASHING READING & PERFORMANCE SERIES, which features live readings from contributors to the ALWAYS CRASHING magazine alongside music and visual performances.

ALWAYS CRASHING is a magazine of fiction, poetry, and nameless things around and in-between. We publish one print issue per year and feature online content year-round. We are headquartered in Chicago and Durham, NC. Work from ALWAYS CRASHING has been selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction 2019 and The Best Small Fictions 2019.

This premiere event will feature readings from Nat Baldwin, Josh Watkins, Lillie E. Franks, and Cajetan Sorich alongside live musical performances from Barry Paul Clark and Casts.

Nat Baldwin is a double bassist, composer, and writer from Maine currently living in Western Massachusetts. He’s released several solo and collaborative works across genres and runs the experimental music label Tripticks Tapes. His books include a collection of short fiction, The Red Barn (Calamari Archive, 2017), and a work of hybrid nonfiction, Antithesis (Bridge Books, 2025).

Josh Watkins reads and writes in Chicago.

Lillie E. Franks is a transgender author and teacher who lives in Chicago, Illinois, but is normal about it. You can read her work at places like Flash Frog, Hex, and HAD. She loves anything that is not the way it should be. 

Cajetan Sorich is a writer and performance artist who grew up beside a soybean field in Illinois. Her work has appeared in Scapi Magazine, MAKE Literary Magazine, Queen City Writers, and Open Heart Chicago: An Anthology of Chicago Writing.

Barry Paul Clark is a bassist, improviser, and multimedia artist living in southeastern Wisconsin. Cathedral Becomes Tomb is his solo a/v experimental performance project. 

Casts is music from Joshua Bohnsack, written for psychedelic therapy, but you can listen to it other times, too.