WEBVTT

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It's always good to present
a writer from Tucson

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and one from the creative
writing faculty here.

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Last year, when Aurelie Sheehan
applied among a strong field

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for the position, she
was interviewed intensely

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and showed a literary
background and teaching

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skills that were, by any
standards, impressive.

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And then at the end
of a very long day,

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she read from her new
work, from the novel

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called "The Blind Girl."

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And when she was
done, it was clear,

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at least to me, that
what we needed to do

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was to convince her
to come here and be

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part of the literary
community in Tucson.

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We did, and luckily
for us now, she is.

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It's a delight to
read Aurelie's work.

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Her prose is a wake-up
call, graceful and strong,

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without ever being overwrought,
and often, by the way, funny.

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Her characters are surprising,
sharply drawn, usually hugely

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and comically different
from one another,

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and run-ins between
these diverse characters

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are a Sheehan
specialty, the engines

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for many of the stories.

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Aurelie was raised
in Connecticut,

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attended Hampshire College and
the City College of New York.

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Among other honors, she's won a
Pushcart Prize and a fellowship

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at the Camargo
Foundation in Cassis,

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France, also, the Jack
Kerouac Literary Prize

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for the title story in
her book of short fiction

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called Jack Kerouac is Pregnant.

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Kerouac, she writes
in that story,

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would hear the
wind of possibility

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in his head like a
cyclone and be blown over

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by the immensity of
the present tense.

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The Kerouac folks
must have liked that.

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As an arts administrator,
she's run the residency program

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at the Ucross Foundation
in the wilds of Wyoming

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and just recently, has
been the poetry coordinator

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at the Folger
Shakespeare Library

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in the wilds of Washington DC.

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At the Poetry Center, we're
lucky to have enlisted her

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on our literary advisory
committee, which helps us

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plan our future reading series.

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All in all, we're quite glad
that Aurelie Sheehan is here

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in Tucson, and I'm sure, after
you meet her and hear her work,

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that you will be, too.

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Will you welcome
please, Aurelie Sheehan.

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[APPLAUSE]

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