So thank you all for coming out tonight.
I just have a couple--
there's a number of layers of introductions,
so I'm layer two in your introduction.
First, thanks to New Michigan Press
for the broadsides tonight, which you may see
are an A side, B side affair.
So you can take two if you really-- if there are any left,
and if you really want both of them for display,
or whatever nefarious purposes you might want to put them to.
You can also ask Jenny and Lydia to sign afterwards.
We're saying we're going to skip the Q and A after the reading
tonight, but we invite questions one on one
with our writers, who are happy to sign books
and broadsides afterwards.
And they're happy to A if you are happy to Q.
[LAUGHTER]
Second thing-- yeah, a second shout out,
the next couple of readings are really great.
I'm really looking forward to Ocean,
and I'm really excited over Elena Passarello and David
Shields, here in two weeks for the Prose Series.
Thanks to the English department,
College of Social and Behavioral Sciences,
and a grant from Poets & Writers for helping
us to put these things on.
We're also really excited to have Lydia and Jenny here
tonight to read from their work, which we liked a great deal.
So last announcement is you should go to the website
marchfadness.com tonight.
It's the international championship
of March Fadness, which is a yearly literary music
tournament.
And tonight is the championship game,
featuring Natalie Imbruglia's song "Torn," versus OMC's "How
Bizarre."
They've defeated 69 or 68 other songs to get to this point,
and what they need is your vote by 9:00 AM tomorrow morning.
So go to marchfadness.com.
It's a tournament this year of essays
about one-hit wonders from the '90s, hence "fadness."
Next year will be probably "shredness,"
being the heavy metal bracket.
And we have some more puns in line for that.
So please go vote, preferably for OMC.
They really need your votes.
Natalie is kicking their ass, sadly.
So the plan for tonight is I'll first
introduce Patrick Cline, who's going to come up and introduce
Jenny Offill.
And then after that, Michelle Repke
is going to give an introduction to Lydia Millet.
And without further ado-- oh, I should also say,
you should really support the Poetry Center if you can.
This is a great place.
We're really happy to have a relationship with them.
And you should help put your money where your butt is.
[LAUGHTER]
Which means in their pockets.
All right, I'm just going to get off the stage.