[APPLAUSE]
Thanks, Hannah.
And thank you all for coming out tonight to the first Prose
Series event of the semester.
We have another Prose Series event coming up on March 26
at 7:00 PM.
Our own Elizabeth Evans, reading from her amazing new novel
from Bloomsbury, As Good As Dead.
And I've gotten to read an advance copy,
and it's so heartbreaking.
March 26, so set that down on your calendars.
We're so lucky tonight to have a special Prose Series
event with Willy Vlautin.
He comes to Tucson from Scappoose, Oregon.
He flew in yesterday with his amazing girlfriend, Lee Posey.
It's not easy for them to travel,
because they have to leave behind their very large family
of three horses, Hugo, Dash, and Jasper,
and their dog, Georgia, and the cat, whose name I can never
remember, who's a lovely cat.
But we're really lucky that they took the time
and made the effort to come here,
because that's a lot of animals to leave behind.
Willy's going to read to us tonight
from his critically acclaimed novel, The Free.
Of The Free, he says, "I wanted to write about nursing,
and the long-term effects of taking care of soldiers
with brain injuries.
It took me a few years to do it," he said,
and this is an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
I think it actually probably took
a lifetime to write this novel.
Because to write a novel like this,
you have to really have lived, and really have felt,
really have experienced something profound
to write a novel that has as much heart as The Free.
I really can't imagine how hard it must
have been to write this novel.
And every time I read it, I'm just floored
and a little bit shattered.
But it's also a novel with hope, with characters
who need hope more than almost anybody else.
And if you've been to a donut shop lately,
a Safeway, a paint store, or a hospital,
maybe you've walked down 4th Avenue,
as you guys did today, and walked by some teen runaways,
you've walked among the characters in The Free,
or in any Willy Vlautin novel.
Or maybe you have a cousin or a sister
who came back recently from fighting a war, not quite
themselves.
My students and me were discussing in the last week
how strongly we all identify with the characters
in The Free.
We just see ourselves in them, and in the novel's
political and ethical roots.
It just has great compassion, Willy Vlautin's art form.
He was born and raised in Reno, Nevada.
Now you get the data, right?
So we had to provide that.
He started playing guitar and writing songs
as a teenager, which I wish I had done,
and quickly became immersed in music.
And it was a Paul Kelly song based
on Raymond Carver's short story, which some of you might know,
So Much Water So Close To Home, that inspired
him to begin writing fiction.
He's published four novels to date, The Motel Life,
Northline, Lean On Pete, and The Free.
And his books have been translated
into French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Korean,
German, and Swedish, among other languages.
And among his awards are the Silver Pen Award,
in Nevada, the Ken Kesey Award.
In Oregon, Lean On Pete was shortlisted
for the prestigious Impact Award in Scotland.
And The Free is a current shortlisted finalist
for the really wonderful and prestigious Oregon Book Award--
a great list, and really competitive,
and just a really great prize in a state
that values readers and books because it rains so much.
What else are you going to do but brush your horses
and read your books, right?
[LAUGHTER]
Willy Vlautin's also in a great band called Richmond Fontaine.
I think there are nine records so far,
with another one in production right now,
and then a new band called The Delines
which is just wonderful, absolutely amazing, been
widely reviewed.
You should check them out.
And that band features the vocalist Amy Boone
from The Damnations, really cool band also.
This event is proudly co-sponsored by the Program
in Creative Writing, the Department of English,
the Convergences Series in the Department of English,
the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences,
the Medical Humanities, Poets and Writers Magazine,
and Fairy Tale Review.
And if that sounds like a strange group of bedfellows,
I don't think it will seem as strange when you hear excerpts
from The Free tonight.
The College of Social and Behavioral Sciences
is also called, I think, this is new to me,
the College of the People?
Is that right?
The People College?
Well, the College of the People works, too, right?
And I think you could think of Willy Vlautin
as the novelist of the people.
The people novelist doesn't quite
have a good ring of the bell to it.
But his people really are us.
I mean, this seems like a really glorified and privileged
setting we're in right now, but we each have our struggles.
We each bring to this room all kinds of needs
and all kinds of favors.
And, I think that right now we're
really so lucky to have the favor of hearing Willy
Vlautin read from The Free.
So please join me, people, in welcoming Willy Vlautin
to town.
[APPLAUSE]