Good evening, everyone.
My name is Manuel Muñoz.
I am directing the Prose Series for this academic year.
I want to welcome you and thank you for coming.
Tyler Meier couldn't be here.
Normally he comes up in front of the audience
to not only welcome us, the Prose Series, into the space,
but to let you know what this space is all about.
And so I'm glad that up there you
saw some of the programming that's going
to be taking place this fall.
A lot of things, actually, that weren't even on that calendar.
I hear that Colson Whitehead will be coming
to campus for humanities week.
Lots of things going on.
I want to inform you about just the work it takes to put
this Prose Series together.
I mean, I have to thank the Poetry Center
for helping the Prose Series.
That includes Diana and Patri.
Tyler, of course.
But everyone in the staff.
But also, the amount of fundraising and tin
cup shaking we have to do over the course of the year
to get co-sponsors.
And so I want to thank the Department
of English, of course, on our program of creative writing.
Gets us started.
But we already have just, very early this year,
commitments from the Institute for LGBT Studies.
From the Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice.
The Department of Mexican American Studies
will be co-sponsoring us this year.
As well as, and this is--
I'm very excited about it.
The Adalberto and Ana Guerrero Student Center
is going to be contributing.
And I'm really excited that they want to be a part of that.
And we're anticipating contributions
as well from Department of Gender and Women's Studies,
and Poets and Writers, who have been traditionally really
supportive of Prose Series in the past.
And I think that's going to be the case this year as well.
Coming this year in November, James Allen Hall,
a queer poet and now essayist, will
be coming to present work from I Liked You Better
Before I Knew You So Well.
From Ohio State University Press.
Cleveland.
No, Cleveland State.
That's right.
It's Nicole who is Ohio State.
Nicole Walker, who is a friend of ours up at Northern Arizona,
will be reading from Sustainability in January.
And then in April is a big--
we're going to go out with a bang.
We are inviting Cherríe Moraga to come to campus.
And I just want to let you know what that reading is about
and why we're so excited about it.
Cherríe Moraga has traditionally been published by small
presses, feminist presses, but the economic pressures by big
behemoths like Amazon have forced a lot of them to close
their doors.
She's, for the first time in her career,
is going to be put out in the world
by a major New York press.
And it's Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
This is big.
In April when her memoir, Native Country of the Heart comes out,
it will--
I think for a lot of us who have known how important she is,
and how foundational to she is to some of our literatures,
they're now going to be--
they are going to bear the responsibility of putting her
out in the world and making sure everybody else knows too.
We're excited about it.
So she'll be here in April.
But in anticipation of all those guests,
we celebrate tonight's guest, Venita Blackburn.
Whose first book-- it's a short story collection
called Black Jesus and Other Superheroes.
It brings together characters who are caught up
in the mythmaking--
their own mythmaking as a way to understand the world
around them.
Adolescent girls and young women are often
at the center of these stories, and very much
at the intersections of being either very vocal speakers
against the circumstances that confuse and confound them,
or turbulent with the burden of keeping it all in.
When, by page two of this collection,
we witness a young protagonist re-inscribe
the pages of her nana's Bible to get the Ten Commandments
to adhere to her vision of the world,
we are privileged to see the motives of this collection
start to take shape.
This is page two.
And as a Catholic and Jehovah's Witness,
I was clutching the pearls already.
I was like, oh my gosh.
But what it tells us is, how do we bring the world down to size
in order to understand it?
And one of Venita's great gifts in this collection
is her expert turns at characterization.
She understands that you need to do them swiftly
in a short story, and that they often have to do double work.
She understands that first characterizations often exist
to be counteracted or redefined if we
take the time to look real close at the people we're
asked to hear about.
And from one of her longer stories--
it's "Run Away Screaming"--
it says there are two protagonists named
Arlene and Regina.
This is some of the writing.
"They looked like wholesome southern girls,
which they were.
They both knew how to cook, crochet doilies, keep
their legs crossed at the ankle, and speak
with the polite intonations that their accents demanded.
And just like most wholesome southern girls,
they could swear like hurricanes, shoot guns, hunt
fish, and had the nerve to kill a man if he
made it necessary to do so."
This collection abounds with figurative leaps.
Superhero bounds, if I may.
To keep reminding us of her command
of a wide range of tones.
Not just comic, but sardonic and bitter,
rueful, and rageful when need be.
And even futility gives her a chance
to use a simile for mordant effect.
This is one of my favorite lines in this book.
"Talking to Sylvia was like trying
to strike a match in the wind.
Usually worth it, but no guarantee."
I hope you can hear in that voice and that sentence what
has garnered Venita so many accolades.
She just began a tenure track post
at Fresno State's MFA program this fall.
This year she was a finalist for the PEN/Robert Bingham prize,
which is a $25,000 prize that honors an exceptionally
talented fiction writer whose first book represents
distinguished literary achievement,
and suggests great promise of a second book.
On top of that came a nomination for the New York Public
Libary's Young Lions prize.
And it was also a nominee for this prize a few years ago,
a $10,000 prize, which recognizes and champions
emerging writers, and encourages innovation and excellence
in contemporary fiction.
Now, to be seen and recognized is
one of the motivations of any writer.
It's true.
But to be also heard for the uniqueness of your voice
and what you've got to say is a prize beyond all telling,
and we're really thrilled and honored
to welcome Venita Blackburn to join us tonight.