WEBVTT

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How's that for sound?

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Is that good?

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Thanks for that lovely
introduction, Chris.

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It's such a gift to get to
work with you as my editor,

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not because you
understand or say

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you understand and
appreciate my work, but--

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and that it gets to be made
into books-- but because we have

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so many conversations about
books and about the stories

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that we love.

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And you're constantly
recommending reading to me,

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and we're talking about
books that we love.

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And I think that that's the
real gift of working with Coffee

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House Press and with you.

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It's about reading and about
readers and authors as readers.

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And I just so admire your
work as an editor, Katie,

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and it's always maddening to
read after someone like Ander.

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Not really fair,
let's put it that way.

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But fairy tales are never
fair, so it makes sense.

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I'm a big fan of
Space Invaders though,

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so I got to get that
Martin Amis book.

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I'm a big fan of Money, too--

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the book Money, I should say.

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So I'm really interested,
and I love that project.

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It's an honor to read
with you, and thank you

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all for coming out.

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It's really nice to
see so many faces--

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authors, students, colleagues,
so many people here tonight.

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It's really nice to be here.

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I'm just going to
read you two stories.

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They're really short.

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And I'm going to
begin, though, and it

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makes sense because of
Ander's library project,

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to begin with this, in a way.

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I'm going to begin with a fairy
tale from the Brothers Grimm

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because I write
fairy tales because I

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fell in love, of course,
with reading them first.

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And writing them, I
suppose, was a way

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to keep reading them even
more, over and over again.

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And these are just stories
that really provided me

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with great consolation
even though they're not

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very happy stories.

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Even the Disney versions, if
you bother to watch closely,

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are pretty gruesome.

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But I fell in love with reading
through fairy tale books.

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So I thought I would start, just
to pay homage to the Brothers

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Grimm who perfected
the art form, though it

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exists around the world
and has for a thousand--

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well, nobody knows how long.

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Somebody in class yesterday
said these stories have existed

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forever, I think, was the term.

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And that's probably
true in a certain way.

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But just to get you in
the mood of the tale,

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I'm going to read a story called
"The Hare's Bride" to you.

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And the Brothers Grimm--

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one was a poet,
one was a scholar.

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And they really perfected the
grammar of this kind of story,

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so.

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"There was once a
woman and her daughter

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who had a beautiful
garden with cabbages.

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A hare got into it,
and during the winter

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he ate all the cabbages.

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So the mother said
to the daughter,

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'Go to the garden and
chase the hare away.'

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The girl said to the
hare, 'Shoo, shoo, hare!

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You're eating all our cabbages.'

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The hare said, 'Come,
girl, sit on my tail,

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and come with me to my hut.'

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The girl would not do that.

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The next day, the hare came
again and ate cabbages,

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so the woman said
to her daughter,

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'Go to the garden and
chase the hare away.'

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The girl said to the
hare, 'Shoo, shoo, hare!

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You're eating all our cabbages.'

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The hare said, 'Come,
girl, sit on my tail,

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and come with me to my hut.'

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The girl would not do that.

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On the third day, the hare
came again and ate cabbages,

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so the woman said
to her daughter,

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'Go to the garden and
chase the hare away.'

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The girl said,
'Shoo, shoo, hare!

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You're eating all our cabbages.'

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The hare said, 'Come,
girl, sit on my tail,

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and come with me to my hut.'

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So the girl sat on
the hare's tail,

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and the hare took her far
away to his little hut

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and then said, 'Now cook some
green cabbage and millet.

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I'm going out to invite
guests to our wedding.'

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Then all the wedding
guests arrived.

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Who were the wedding guests?

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I can tell you because
someone else told me.

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They were all hares.

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And the crow was there
as parson to marry

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the bride and the bridegroom,
and the fox served as sexton,

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and their altar was
under the rainbow.

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But the girl was sad,
for she was all alone.

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The hare came up to her
and said, 'Open the door!

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Open the door!

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The wedding guests
are making merry.'

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The bride cried
and said nothing.

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The hare went away.

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Then the hare came back
and said, 'Open the door!

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Open the door!

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The wedding guests are hungry.'

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The bride continued to
cry and said nothing.

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The hare went away.

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Then he came back and
said, 'Open the door!

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Open the door!

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The wedding guests are waiting.'

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The bride said nothing,
and the hare went away.

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Then she dressed a straw
doll in her clothes,

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gave it a stirring
spoon, and stood

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it next to the millet pot.

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Then she went back
to her mother.

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The hare came once more
and said, 'Open the door!

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Open the door!'

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Then he opened the door himself
and struck the doll in the head

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so that its cap fell off.

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Then the hare saw that
this was not his bride,

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and he sadly went away."

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Happy ending, right?

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[LAUGHTER]

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In some translations, it's not
that the cap gets knocked off,

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but the head--

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that he knocks the
head off of the bride.

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And then the hare is sad.

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So they're not really
princess-gets-married stories,

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in a certain way, right?

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I mean not at all.

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And Elizabeth Evans,
a wonderful writer

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who's here who's reading later
on in our reading series,

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assigned this book
to me as a student

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in a writing workshop-- this
story, "The Hare's Bride."

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And the illustration
that accompanies

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the story in a lot of
collections of the Grimm's

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tales is actually-- even though
the story is called "The Hare's

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Bride" and the bride
is a human girl,

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the picture is of a little
rabbit with a bridal veil on.

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So it's really nonsense
from start to finish,

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which you find in a
lot of old fairy tales.

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And I think that's part of why
I love them and imitate them.

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