WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.370 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.370 --> 00:00:06.870 align:middle line:84% During the fall of 2012, Ander assigned a Nicole Walker essay, 00:00:06.870 --> 00:00:09.900 align:middle line:84% and it spread through the MFA program like peanut butter, 00:00:09.900 --> 00:00:15.240 align:middle line:84% like gossip, like top 40 songs, and the best disease. 00:00:15.240 --> 00:00:17.070 align:middle line:84% Have you read Where the Wild Things Are, 00:00:17.070 --> 00:00:21.240 align:middle line:84% poets and prose writers whispered outside glass doors. 00:00:21.240 --> 00:00:23.190 align:middle line:84% We liked the essay in part because it 00:00:23.190 --> 00:00:25.500 align:middle line:84% echoed themes of our lives in the way 00:00:25.500 --> 00:00:28.170 align:middle line:90% that good writing often does. 00:00:28.170 --> 00:00:30.960 align:middle line:84% No, we were not likely as Ms. Walker 00:00:30.960 --> 00:00:34.530 align:middle line:84% on the cusp of parenthood, but were, like her, 00:00:34.530 --> 00:00:38.040 align:middle line:84% researching, thinking, exploring the landscapes of our lives 00:00:38.040 --> 00:00:42.150 align:middle line:84% in order to make meaning from a small thing, from a big thing, 00:00:42.150 --> 00:00:44.430 align:middle line:90% from all things. 00:00:44.430 --> 00:00:46.440 align:middle line:84% A week later, one of my beginning nonfiction 00:00:46.440 --> 00:00:49.650 align:middle line:84% writing students posted a photograph to our class blog. 00:00:49.650 --> 00:00:52.470 align:middle line:84% She wrote, "I stumbled across this while walking 00:00:52.470 --> 00:00:53.620 align:middle line:90% to class today. 00:00:53.620 --> 00:00:55.710 align:middle line:84% It was so lovely I had to take a picture 00:00:55.710 --> 00:00:57.720 align:middle line:90% and share it with all of you." 00:00:57.720 --> 00:01:00.690 align:middle line:84% In the photograph, a poem displayed on two by fours 00:01:00.690 --> 00:01:05.129 align:middle line:84% and staggered across a rock wall as a student art installment. 00:01:05.129 --> 00:01:09.180 align:middle line:84% It read, "In Persian, there are 89 words for love. 00:01:09.180 --> 00:01:11.790 align:middle line:84% I would be happy just to remember one. 00:01:11.790 --> 00:01:15.690 align:middle line:84% Keeps me up at night memorizing your name." 00:01:15.690 --> 00:01:19.530 align:middle line:84% A poem by, of course, the many genred and multitalented Nicole 00:01:19.530 --> 00:01:23.550 align:middle line:84% Walker, whose name Tucson cannot seem to forget. 00:01:23.550 --> 00:01:26.010 align:middle line:90% Actually, no one can forget it. 00:01:26.010 --> 00:01:28.560 align:middle line:84% At the AWP Writing Conference in Boston this year, 00:01:28.560 --> 00:01:30.510 align:middle line:84% the Sonora Review table sat almost back 00:01:30.510 --> 00:01:33.630 align:middle line:84% to back with the folks at Zone 3 Press, who in June will 00:01:33.630 --> 00:01:36.690 align:middle line:84% probably publish Nicole Walker's first book of nonfiction, 00:01:36.690 --> 00:01:39.720 align:middle line:84% Quench Your Thirst With Salt, winner of the Zone 3 nonfiction 00:01:39.720 --> 00:01:41.520 align:middle line:90% prize. 00:01:41.520 --> 00:01:44.010 align:middle line:84% In an attempt to locate Ms. Walker, I approached them. 00:01:44.010 --> 00:01:44.910 align:middle line:90% Hello, I said. 00:01:44.910 --> 00:01:47.040 align:middle line:84% I did an interview for Essay Daily with Nicole. 00:01:47.040 --> 00:01:49.620 align:middle line:84% And before I could finish, the young man interrupted, 00:01:49.620 --> 00:01:50.530 align:middle line:90% have you met her yet? 00:01:50.530 --> 00:01:52.230 align:middle line:90% She is so nice. 00:01:52.230 --> 00:01:54.780 align:middle line:90% 00:01:54.780 --> 00:01:57.480 align:middle line:90% I'd suspected as much. 00:01:57.480 --> 00:02:00.570 align:middle line:84% Slowly I was piecing together a portrait of Nicole Walker that 00:02:00.570 --> 00:02:03.870 align:middle line:84% went beyond the misunderstanding I'd had with Wikipedia, which 00:02:03.870 --> 00:02:07.080 align:middle line:84% said that Nicole Walker was a fictional character on the NBC 00:02:07.080 --> 00:02:10.500 align:middle line:90% soap opera Days of Our Lives. 00:02:10.500 --> 00:02:12.660 align:middle line:90% This is another Nicole Walker. 00:02:12.660 --> 00:02:13.515 align:middle line:90% So close. 00:02:13.515 --> 00:02:16.170 align:middle line:90% 00:02:16.170 --> 00:02:18.480 align:middle line:84% Instead, and quite preferably, Ms. Walker 00:02:18.480 --> 00:02:21.930 align:middle line:84% is the co-editor of Bending Genre: Essays on Nonfiction. 00:02:21.930 --> 00:02:24.180 align:middle line:84% She's the nonfiction editor for Diagram, 00:02:24.180 --> 00:02:26.400 align:middle line:84% and the editor of an artist and writer collaborative 00:02:26.400 --> 00:02:29.820 align:middle line:84% project, Seven Rings, on the Huffington Post. 00:02:29.820 --> 00:02:32.490 align:middle line:84% She teaches poetry and nonfiction at Northern Arizona 00:02:32.490 --> 00:02:35.550 align:middle line:84% University, and is the author of a book of poetry, The Noisy 00:02:35.550 --> 00:02:39.360 align:middle line:84% Egg, and a book of nonfiction, Quench Your Thirst With Salt. 00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:41.550 align:middle line:84% Of the book, she writes, "Are bodies 00:02:41.550 --> 00:02:45.780 align:middle line:84% the corrosive power of water, the stalwart force of granites? 00:02:45.780 --> 00:02:47.490 align:middle line:84% I love it when metaphors break down, 00:02:47.490 --> 00:02:49.050 align:middle line:90% when they break down like water. 00:02:49.050 --> 00:02:52.380 align:middle line:84% The water is so bossy, the granite is so bossy, 00:02:52.380 --> 00:02:53.910 align:middle line:90% the church is so bossy. 00:02:53.910 --> 00:02:55.320 align:middle line:90% We don't like authority. 00:02:55.320 --> 00:02:57.900 align:middle line:90% We take it out on our bodies. 00:02:57.900 --> 00:03:00.060 align:middle line:84% Growing up in a place where subduing the landscape 00:03:00.060 --> 00:03:01.860 align:middle line:84% is as practiced as subduing the people who 00:03:01.860 --> 00:03:03.540 align:middle line:90% live there is a hard thing. 00:03:03.540 --> 00:03:05.610 align:middle line:84% A person is shaped by that hardness. 00:03:05.610 --> 00:03:07.740 align:middle line:84% Is a person as malleable as a mountain? 00:03:07.740 --> 00:03:11.490 align:middle line:84% Is she is well defined as cracks in the granite? 00:03:11.490 --> 00:03:14.550 align:middle line:84% Is she as useful as a valley of water pipes? 00:03:14.550 --> 00:03:16.890 align:middle line:84% Shaped by the dominant culture of my parents fighting 00:03:16.890 --> 00:03:20.580 align:middle line:84% against that subculture, taking the subculture to an extreme, 00:03:20.580 --> 00:03:21.840 align:middle line:90% escaping the whole thing. 00:03:21.840 --> 00:03:24.540 align:middle line:84% This is a book about how I try to stand 00:03:24.540 --> 00:03:27.120 align:middle line:84% some ground in a shaky family situation 00:03:27.120 --> 00:03:30.750 align:middle line:84% on the dry edge of the [INAUDIBLE] Fault." 00:03:30.750 --> 00:03:32.910 align:middle line:84% In Quench Your Thirst With Salt, Nicole Walker 00:03:32.910 --> 00:03:35.700 align:middle line:84% is contrasting the hard and soft, 00:03:35.700 --> 00:03:39.210 align:middle line:84% the masculine the feminine, the landscape of Earth 00:03:39.210 --> 00:03:41.670 align:middle line:90% and the landscape of family. 00:03:41.670 --> 00:03:43.375 align:middle line:84% She's using her training as a poet 00:03:43.375 --> 00:03:46.240 align:middle line:84% to create prose that is lyric and thoughtful, 00:03:46.240 --> 00:03:49.980 align:middle line:90% reflective, lovely, striking. 00:03:49.980 --> 00:03:53.310 align:middle line:84% I respond to her work because I'm a lover of words too. 00:03:53.310 --> 00:03:57.060 align:middle line:84% I suspect it is why we're all responding in this whispery 00:03:57.060 --> 00:04:00.030 align:middle line:90% wildfire way to her prose. 00:04:00.030 --> 00:04:01.980 align:middle line:84% Ladies and gentlemen, please join me 00:04:01.980 --> 00:04:03.630 align:middle line:90% in welcoming Nicole Walker. 00:04:03.630 --> 00:04:05.780 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE]