WEBVTT

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Hi, everyone.

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Can you hear me all right?

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All right, thank you so much,
Hieu Minh, that was wonderful.

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Thank you, everyone, for
spending your summer evening

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here at the Poetry Center.

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It's a magical place.

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So in preparation for
introducing Matt Bell,

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my mind kept reaching
for Googleable facts

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that you might already know.

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Did you know that he went to
Bowling Green State University

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in Ohio, or that he
currently teaches at ASU?

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Maybe you know
already that his work

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has appeared in such
warm and familiar names

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as Tin House, The New York
Times, and Conjunctions.

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I could tell you
that he has published

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three books of fiction,
Cataclysm Baby,

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How They Were Found and,
most recently, In The House

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Upon the Dirt Between
the Lake and the Woods.

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It might be interesting
to know that,

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last month, his first
non-fiction book

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was published, entitled
Baldur's Gate II,

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after a PC role
playing game from 2000.

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It explores the games and
narratives that make us human

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and, most importantly, how
fiction, whatever its form,

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has the power to
inspire empathy.

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What you should know is that
Matt's latest novel, Scrapper,

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a much shorter title, comes out
on September 15 of this year.

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It takes us into the copper
lined heart of a fallen city.

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And if his previous works
give us any indication,

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we will be both joyous and
haunted at what we find there.

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But what I really
want to tell you

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is how it feels to
read Matt Bell's work.

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In an interview with Matt
by Tin House, Andrew Ervin--

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I hope I'm saying that right--

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Ervin says that, in In
the House Upon the Dirt

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Between the Lake and
the Woods, quote,

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"Matt has invented an entirely
new rhetoric of fiction," end

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quote.

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It's this mastery of
language, rhythm, and syntax--

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Matt's understanding of
the power and timelessness

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of fairy tale--

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that takes us down
the rabbit hole,

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if you'll allow
that, under the house

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and into the
labyrinth of memory.

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If there is a writer
who can capture

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the complexity of
human relationships,

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particularly those between
a husband and wife, a parent

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and child, it is Matt Bell.

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We can open up the door
or step into the cave

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and find ourselves
transported into a world

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all beauty and all terror.

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In the aforementioned
Tin House interview,

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when Matt Bell is asked
if he's heavily medicated,

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he responds with this.

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"Reading is one of the only
things that's ever consistently

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seemed to work to
make me better,"

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and that is what we
see in Matt's work--

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a living and breathing thing
that plucks at our hearts

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and makes them sing
down the stars,

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even on the darkest of nights.

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