WEBVTT

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Let me begin with a
beginning, the opening

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to Karen Brennan's
essay Headiness.

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Imagine a squarish
container inside of which

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a little creature resides.

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And here is the creature
creeping toward the lid,

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and here's the creature
pushing the lid open

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and sniffing the air.

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Other creatures better behaved
remain inside their boxes,

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lids fastened.

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They do their thing.

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They never tire of their thing.

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This creature, however, our
little creature or creation--

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I think of it as a tiny
multi-headed serpent

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with her curious nose--
slithers out of her enclosure,

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and what does she encounter.

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More enclosures, boxes
inside boxes, or does

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she encounter the sky as limit.

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Most of us are
accustomed to containers

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to tightly labeled aisles in
the library or the bookstore

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to readings, and
classes, and writers

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assigned to one
category or another.

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To checklists that
ask us to pick.

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Fiction, poetry, or nonfiction.

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In short, we are
accustomed to living

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under the tyranny of genre.

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And to no surprise,
it feels familiar.

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It feels safe.

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And if we don't
look up too often,

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we might never notice
the heavy lidded sky.

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But how do we get out of here?

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To quote Brennan again.

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How do we get at the depths
beyond the slide clutches

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of words and boxes of words
assembled in orderly categories

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we call genre?

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How to avoid being
caught and stunned

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in another doomed category?

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How to give shape
to the wildness

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and still keep moving, changing?

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Karen Brennan has been
blurring the boundaries

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of genre enabling the tiny
hydras of hybrid writing

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to roam free since the
beginning of her career.

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And her latest aptly
titled collection monsters

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epitomizes this quest.

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Her story swerve and
pivot and surprise.

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They move and they move us.

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They ask again and
again that we learn

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to revel in the friction
that occurs when

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our expectations regarding
writing, regarding

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genre, regarding
everyday reality

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confront new shapes, new forms,
new ambitions, new, but no less

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real realities.

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What to do, for instance,
when we encounter

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a headless man riding the bus?

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Or what should we make of a
choir of opera singing mice?

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Or how do we reconcile the needs
and desires of one human being

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with those of another?

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One who is just
built differently

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on different premises.

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And how is it that a highway?

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A plain old highway
is just that.

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Just a road with cows
grazing alongside and shops

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at either end and
billboards dotting the way.

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And also, the place
where some college kids

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flipped a car, where
a girl was date

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raped, where a child
was abused by a man who

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broke into his daycare center.

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And also, a blank.

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A blank as blank
as any blank they

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ask you to fill on
a test that will

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determine if you will be
going forward or staying where

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you are.

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A highway so full
and yet so blank.

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Who knows where
you will wind up?

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I am delighted to
announce I don't

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know we're at the end of
this evening we will wind up.

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I cannot make you any promises,
except that we will get there

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in good hands.

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It is my pleasure to introduce
Karen Brennan, the author

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of Monsters and six other books
of varying hydra headed genres,

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as well as Professor
Emeritus of English

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at the University of Utah, a
faculty member at the Warren

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Wilson MFA program for writers,
and an alumna of the University

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of Arizona, where
she received her PhD.

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She's also the recipient of a
National Endowment of the Arts

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Award.

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And her essays,
stories, and poems

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have appeared in anthologies
from Graywolf, Norton, Penguin,

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Spuyten Duyvil, Michigan,
and Georgia, among others.

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Please join me in giving
Karen Brennan a warm welcome.

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