Buenas tardes.
Is this working?
Is this on?
No.
Hannah?
[TALKING IN BACKGROUND]
[TAPPING MIC]
Buenas tardes.
Can you hear me now?
Yes?
There we go.
Good evening, everyone.
I'm Manuel Muñoz.
I'm an associate professor in the English Department,
Creative Writing Program, Fiction.
And I want to thank you for coming tonight.
And as people are getting situated,
I hope that I can take time to remind everyone to silence
or turn off your phone before we begin our reading tonight.
Since 2001, the UA Prose Series has
invited both fiction and nonfiction writers
of distinction to campus to both complement the rich offerings
of our beloved Poetry Center and to highlight the work being
considered, studied, and debated in all three concentrations
in our MFA program.
Whether coming together to listen
to a national icon like Marilynne Robinson a few years
ago or to hear about the innovating
and innovative and challenging discourses of younger
writers like Lucy Corin who came here last year,
the Prose Series has time and again made
itself known to be a very important way
to bring the UA and the greater Tucson community together.
Earlier this year when I agreed to co-direct the 2014, 15 Prose
Series, I was a little dismayed to learn that our budget was
exactly zero dollars.
So some fundraising was in order and some creative thinking
too about how best to approach other departments and units
on campus to assist us in keeping
this valuable series alive.
And more important to send a subtle signal up
to those in charge of purse strings
to know that through our collective effort,
we can show that this is very vital programming.
And I'll get to why I invited our guest tonight in just
a moment because the Humanities week theme is "Trailblazers
and Hell Raisers," and that had a lot to do with Ben.
[LAUGHING]
But let me share with you now that our spring semester
guest and our plan for him along those community lines.
He's the Oregon writer and musician Willy Vlautin,
who will be reading from his 2014 novel, The Free.
And what we've got in the works is a seminar
in tandem with the medical school about Iraq war veterans
facing PTSD and other medical traumas.
So this is once again the thrilling and engaging and
important fulfillment of community outreach
that underlines all of our University efforts.
And I urge you to keep an eye out for that January event.
I believe it's January 29th.
But onto our guest tonight.
I thought of Benjamin Alire Saenz
almost immediately for the Prose Series invitation
because he's been riding quite a wave of national recognition
that has, after many years, finally come his way.
In 2013 his collection of linked stories,
Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club,
won the Pen Faulkner Award in fiction.
In doing so, he became the first Chicano winner
in the 35 year history of this prize.
The only other nominee had been Dagoberto Gilb
for The Magic of Blood in 1994.
I mention this and I stress this because, quite frankly, prizes
mean quite a lot to a writer of color.
They exist, to a degree, as a great bullhorn
against the silence of book media
and indifference, general indifference,
of the publishing world to the contributions of writers
of color.
Roxane Gay, who wrote in The Rumpus in 2012 about this,
noted that of the 742 books reviewed in The New York Times
across all genres and areas of interest that year,
just nine were by Latino writers.
And only one was by a woman.
But that's another hurdle to race.
[LAUGHING]
Hence why we celebrated Ben's Pen Faulkner
win; the doors that had been opened by curious audiences who
had, up to this point, been largely unaware of the work
that Ben had been doing for over 20 years, with 20 books.
From novels like Names on a Map and Carry
Me Like Water; to poetry books like Dreaming the End of War
and Dark and Perfect Angels; the wonderful books for children,
A Gift for Bob by Diego, and The Dog who Loved Tortillas.
Because who doesn't?
And to the delight of librarians everywhere, the young adult
books.
From Last Night I Sang to the Monster
and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.
A writer of poetry, of books for young adults,
and books for children, Ben's work
takes into serious consideration the power of literacy;
the power of access; the power of a reader
being able to see him or herself on the page;
and the important ignition that can provide
in flaring and imagination.
It was particularly fitting that his Pen Faulkner
win for Kentucky Club found this book already
in deep conversation with what it means
to grapple with the conundrum of the border, his beloved cities
of El Paso and Juarez.
And what I mean by already in conversation
is that Ben has long considered, like many Chicano writers,
what it means to be of two places,
and how arriving at one set of conclusions, a resolution,
is a risky and foolish sense of safety at best.
If the national spotlight had finally
been turning to the violence drowning the region,
Ben and his characters had been living
with its pain for years, broken by its sudden rushes
of disruption, and yet also constantly reaffirming
that, those seeking solace in the shadows.
My Advanced Fiction Workshop, which
has been studying A Kentucky Club closely
in the past few weeks, has been both shattered and moved
by these stories.
And in their questions, too, they've
come to realize that setting is not just place, it's character.
And when it changes, you might change too.
As one of my students, Daniel Phelps,
so beautifully commented about the effect of these border
cities on the character's sense of the familiar,
sometimes you can know what a word says, but not
know what it really means.
And so I hope you will hear tonight the beautiful conundrum
of Ben's writing.
Whether he pitches to high tragedy,
to comedy, to the comfort and emotional release of melodrama,
it's in the service of reaching as many listeners as possible,
to leaving no one in the room lonely to hear
their own experience.
I know we selected the right person
to visit us this fall because I went
around shaking that empty tin cup and the response
was enormous.
And this is where the list of thanks comes.
The Jewish Community Relations Council,
of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, who
welcomed Ben to campus this week, in tandem
with the World of Words Library, which
is in the Education Building, fourth floor,
free and open to the public.
Scholarships A-Z. Their motto is, "You have the dream,
we have the resources."
They're a local advocacy group for undocumented students
who recognized in Ben's invitation
a writer who cares deeply about children and youth.
Major support from the Dean's Office
of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences
in the Department of English.
Gracias.
The Department of Gender and Women's Studies
and the Department of Mexican-American Studies.
Gracias.
The Center for Latin American Studies;
the Institute for LGBT Studies.
Thank you.
I had hoped to get support to highlight
Ben's work as a professor in the only bilingual MFA
program in the country at University of Texas at El Paso,
and it finally came.
And it came in the form of a gift
from Antonio and Esmeralda Morales.
They happen to be my mom and dad.
[LAUGHING]
And I want to wish a happy 60th birthday to my mamita.
And finally, to the Poetry Center itself
for once again letting us know that the Prose Series has
a home, and for doing so much of the work
to get Ben into three of Tucson schools
this week to share his books with our local youth.
I mean, is that community or what.
I give my thanks to all of them, all of you,
and I hope that you in turn will give that thanks right
back to Benjamin Alire Saenz.
[APPLAUSE]