WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.100 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:02.100 --> 00:00:03.730 align:middle line:90% Good evening, everyone. 00:00:03.730 --> 00:00:09.510 align:middle line:84% I'm Lucy, as Manuel has kindly primed you. 00:00:09.510 --> 00:00:12.990 align:middle line:84% In my anxious flurry of trying to figure out how 00:00:12.990 --> 00:00:16.980 align:middle line:84% to introduction, I was grateful that the Poetry Center 00:00:16.980 --> 00:00:21.280 align:middle line:84% records all of their readings and puts them online. 00:00:21.280 --> 00:00:23.190 align:middle line:84% The second one I watched was one done 00:00:23.190 --> 00:00:27.210 align:middle line:84% by the director of the MFA program, Ander Monson, 00:00:27.210 --> 00:00:30.330 align:middle line:90% for a wonderful poet in 2013. 00:00:30.330 --> 00:00:32.640 align:middle line:84% I should have stopped watching when he said, 00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:35.670 align:middle line:84% I'm using this as a lesson in hybridity, 00:00:35.670 --> 00:00:39.360 align:middle line:84% and that's what genre is often to the hybrid heart-- 00:00:39.360 --> 00:00:42.960 align:middle line:84% a guide of what not to feel obliged to do. 00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:44.820 align:middle line:84% After watching it through, I closed 00:00:44.820 --> 00:00:48.480 align:middle line:84% my browser, confused and a little distressed, 00:00:48.480 --> 00:00:51.900 align:middle line:84% hoping that the same quality would not be expected from me. 00:00:51.900 --> 00:00:56.710 align:middle line:84% Trust Ander to make it new, a lesson, and a work of art. 00:00:56.710 --> 00:00:59.940 align:middle line:84% I'm not surprised that Nicole Walker, our esteemed guest 00:00:59.940 --> 00:01:02.820 align:middle line:84% and reader this evening, is a dear friend of Ander's 00:01:02.820 --> 00:01:04.379 align:middle line:90% and of many in the program. 00:01:04.379 --> 00:01:08.070 align:middle line:84% She exercises the strength of mind and artful craft 00:01:08.070 --> 00:01:10.260 align:middle line:84% in nonfiction writing that earns her 00:01:10.260 --> 00:01:15.120 align:middle line:84% a great deal of respect in this community and in many others. 00:01:15.120 --> 00:01:17.940 align:middle line:84% Nicole has an impressive list of accolades, 00:01:17.940 --> 00:01:20.580 align:middle line:84% and I'm sure she would hate for me to list them. 00:01:20.580 --> 00:01:23.460 align:middle line:84% Her previous works of nonfiction include, 00:01:23.460 --> 00:01:26.910 align:middle line:84% Where the Tiny Things Are, Egg, and Quench 00:01:26.910 --> 00:01:30.600 align:middle line:84% Your Thirst with Salt, which is for sale. 00:01:30.600 --> 00:01:33.960 align:middle line:84% She has edited for Bloomsbury the essay collections 00:01:33.960 --> 00:01:37.290 align:middle line:84% Science of Story with Sean Prentiss and Margot Singer, 00:01:37.290 --> 00:01:39.510 align:middle line:90% and also Bending Genre-- 00:01:39.510 --> 00:01:42.930 align:middle line:84% Essays on Creative Nonfiction, again with Margot Singer. 00:01:42.930 --> 00:01:46.200 align:middle line:84% And she has a book coming out later this year in June, 00:01:46.200 --> 00:01:48.990 align:middle line:84% I'm told, called The After-Normal-- 00:01:48.990 --> 00:01:53.250 align:middle line:84% 26 Brief Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet 00:01:53.250 --> 00:01:55.920 align:middle line:90% from Rose Metal Press. 00:01:55.920 --> 00:01:58.620 align:middle line:84% Tonight Nicole will be reading from her latest book, which 00:01:58.620 --> 00:02:02.010 align:middle line:84% came out at the end of last year, called Sustainability-- 00:02:02.010 --> 00:02:06.360 align:middle line:84% A Love Story by Ohio State University Press. 00:02:06.360 --> 00:02:09.060 align:middle line:84% Sustainability is an essay collection 00:02:09.060 --> 00:02:12.360 align:middle line:84% that gathers the ephemera of dailiness and layers 00:02:12.360 --> 00:02:14.490 align:middle line:84% them with the durable, and by doing 00:02:14.490 --> 00:02:19.080 align:middle line:84% so challenges us to rethink what these categories actually mean. 00:02:19.080 --> 00:02:23.580 align:middle line:84% You'll find in her essays bats, beef from Sam's Club, 00:02:23.580 --> 00:02:25.410 align:middle line:90% and bullets. 00:02:25.410 --> 00:02:29.070 align:middle line:84% You'll find fire, rain, and carbon emissions. 00:02:29.070 --> 00:02:31.950 align:middle line:84% You'll find bath time with her children, wine, 00:02:31.950 --> 00:02:34.140 align:middle line:90% and the trees in Flagstaff. 00:02:34.140 --> 00:02:39.900 align:middle line:84% You'll find death, but you will also find mountains and life. 00:02:39.900 --> 00:02:43.380 align:middle line:84% On the cover of Nicole's book, which we have here for sale, 00:02:43.380 --> 00:02:46.590 align:middle line:84% it says that the book is for the burnt-out environmentalist, 00:02:46.590 --> 00:02:51.000 align:middle line:84% the lazy environmentalist, the would-be environmentalist. 00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:55.620 align:middle line:84% I mean, who could identify with any of those categories? 00:02:55.620 --> 00:02:58.980 align:middle line:84% Her essays gently remind us that things are bad 00:02:58.980 --> 00:03:01.320 align:middle line:90% and exactly how they are bad. 00:03:01.320 --> 00:03:03.870 align:middle line:84% But with Nicole's characteristic playfulness, 00:03:03.870 --> 00:03:08.070 align:middle line:84% they also remind us how hard it is to be hard all the time 00:03:08.070 --> 00:03:10.470 align:middle line:90% on yourself and on others. 00:03:10.470 --> 00:03:12.810 align:middle line:84% She writes, "being one with the forest 00:03:12.810 --> 00:03:16.070 align:middle line:84% seems easier than being one with the humans." 00:03:16.070 --> 00:03:20.370 align:middle line:84% Amitav Ghosh recently wrote that the climate crisis is also 00:03:20.370 --> 00:03:24.900 align:middle line:84% a crisis of culture and thus of the imagination. 00:03:24.900 --> 00:03:30.630 align:middle line:84% Writing about climate change is hard, and what Nicole is doing 00:03:30.630 --> 00:03:32.910 align:middle line:84% is not writing a scientific treatise. 00:03:32.910 --> 00:03:35.460 align:middle line:84% There are plenty of those out there. 00:03:35.460 --> 00:03:39.000 align:middle line:84% What this book does is that it creates space within culture 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:42.990 align:middle line:84% to make moves of scale, bringing large environmental concerns 00:03:42.990 --> 00:03:46.350 align:middle line:84% into the dailiness of living and oftentimes letting 00:03:46.350 --> 00:03:50.380 align:middle line:84% things coexist, even as they grind against each other. 00:03:50.380 --> 00:03:53.460 align:middle line:84% And this is what Nicole's book is about, to me-- 00:03:53.460 --> 00:03:55.890 align:middle line:84% not forcing an answer or a solution 00:03:55.890 --> 00:03:59.460 align:middle line:84% but finding life in the spaces between despair and guilt 00:03:59.460 --> 00:04:02.160 align:middle line:90% and finding a way to go on. 00:04:02.160 --> 00:04:03.660 align:middle line:90% Please welcome Nicole, everyone. 00:04:03.660 --> 00:04:07.610 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:04:07.610 --> 00:04:14.000 align:middle line:90%