[APPLAUSE]
Thanks, Tyler.
That was really nice.
Can you hear me?
Yeah?
You made the basketball joke, so I don't need to.
Which is good because I'm not a very funny person.
But thank you all for coming tonight.
I'm not surprised to see such a big crowd here.
This is our final prose series event of the year.
Thanks for coming out to all the events this year.
And thanks especially to the Poetry
Center for being so generous, and hosting some prose.
Not too grudgingly, we're allowed some here.
I also want to give gratitude to Professor Muñoz who raised
funds for the series this year.
And to Alison Deming who is coordinating next year's prose
series, and has already arranged to bring
Phillip Lopate and Erik Reece.
So that'll be in the fall.
Both of them?
Yeah.
So we look forward to that.
Tonight is such a special night.
A reading by Elizabeth Evans, whose newest novel
As Good as Dead, published by Bloomsbury,
is hot off the press.
Her five previous books include The Blue Hour,
Suicide's Girlfriend, and Carter Clay.
Her awards include the Iowa Author Award for 2010,
a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship,
the James Michener fellowship, a Lila Wallace award,
and the Four Corners award.
And she's been a fellow at many foundations including
Hawthornden International Writer's Retreat, Yaddo,
and McDowell.
A longtime professor in the program of creative writing
here at the University of Arizona, featured in the novel
In Choice Bits, Elizabeth Evans makes her home in Tucson.
And we're really lucky to have her in Tucson.
Recently in a cool feature that a literary journal runs
in which authors interview themselves,
Elizabeth Evans recently asked Elizabeth Evans.
"You--" This is Elizabeth Evans speaking.
"You struck the supposedly galvanizing Wonder
Woman pose for at least the requisite two minutes.
You're writing with your favorite fountain pen.
Also you're making up the questions here.
What's with the racing heart?"
And Elizabeth Evans answered herself,
"I'm so much more comfortable with writing fiction,
than writing about my fiction."
It's so humble, and so typically you, to say that.
Even an interview with yourself, you would say not me, no.
Other writers, luckily, are very comfortable writing
about Elizabeth Evans' fiction, and it's no wonder.
Jean Thompson has said of the new novel we hear from tonight,
"As Good as Dead is a portrait of the artist as a young woman,
with all her passionate hopes and attachments.
And the reckoning she must make with that self in later years.
Elizabeth Evans is a graceful and intelligent writer,
who never makes a false step.
As well as a first rate Explorer of secrets, and secret lives."
The writer Bharati Mukherjee notes
that "Elizabeth Evans is a masterful storyteller,
and As Good as Dead, simultaneously funny, menacing,
and wise, is her finest novel to date.
Charlotte, the fearless and lovable flawed narrator,
will find a permanent place in American literature."
Ann Cummins calls As Good as Dead
"addictive," adding that it offers "a clear eyed guide
into the world of tunnel visioned writers and scholars."
We don't know anything about that in this room, of course.
I think As Good as Dead is as funny as it is sad,
and it gets to the heart of what reading is for.
Why we're all here tonight.
To change us and make us try harder.
Elizabeth Evans is a true storyteller
with a gorgeous and startling gift.
And she really is a kind of Wonder Woman,
the very image of an elegant warrior in service of books.
Please join me in welcoming an important American author
tonight, Elizabeth Evans.
[APPLAUSE]