Last Wednesday, my friend Ellen Litman was at the Happy Ending Lounge to read from her new book, The Last Chicken in America: A Novel in Stories.

The event was part of a twice-monthly reading series hosted by Amanda Stern, whose crackling, sometimes raunchy humor made the whole thing a lot more fun than any reading I've ever been to. Besides Ellen, there were two other readers and a singer-cellist (who was a lot more entertaining than you might guess).

One of of the rules of the series is that every performer must take one risk in front of the audience, aside from whatever they're there to perform. The risk Ellen took was to tell a joke — something I'd never, ever seen her do. She's usually the one giggling at jokes, not the one regaling the audience. I confess I was a little relieved that she built the story up beautifully and the audience apparently found the punchline as surprising and funny as I did. In fact, although I'm more of a clown than Ellen is (and will be repeating her joke to a couple of Russian friends), her joke-telling that night was better than mine has ever been.

I've known Ellen since the mid-90's, when we were both working in Baltimore. In those days, she was a software engineer. None of us — and this may include Ellen herself — none of us knew what talent she had as a fiction writer. None of us could have predicted how radically her life would change when that talent was discovered.

Before there was a book, there was a short story, "The Last Chicken in America." When I first read it, I was affected by the beauty of the story itself — the humor, the poignancy, and the clean, vivid language. Beyond that, I found myself with a little extra softness in my heart for my own parents, despite that fact that they are very different from the parents in the story, and I am very different from the teenage girl who is its protagonist.

I've been working my way through the book, and I'm continuing to find that Ellen's compassion for her characters is infectious. I hope you will check the book out and find the same is true for you.