Thank you.
So nice to see you all.
This is the first of our Prose Series events
to be exclusively alum driven.
These are all alums.
I see a lot of alums in the audience tonight.
Let this be a spur to you and your work, to get the book out
and let us know because we'd like to bring in more alums
back to the program to read.
So first, I'd like to welcome you all to our second Prose
Series event of the semester.
I'm Ander Monson, as Hannah mentioned,
I'm director of the Prose Series,
and tonight we host three fiction writers, one of whom
has gone astray.
So let me first invite you to one more event.
We are having-- the MFA program is hosting a little homecoming
event for the EXO Roasting Company next Friday, which
is 403 North Sixth Avenue.
It's at their workspace that's attached to it.
So Friday night at 19:00.
We didn't know it was homecoming, but like, oh,
it's homecoming.
So we should do something.
So those of you who are MFA alums please come by,
and say hello.
Have a snack and have a drink, and come see Tucson and Ela
Harrison and MFA alums Paco Cantú and Kati Standefer,
who all have essays in this year's edition of the Best
American Essays edited by Jonathan Franzen.
So we'll have books for sale there thanks to Antigone,
and we'd like to invite all of our alums
and anyone else, which is you guys, who
are interested to come check in with us
and hear three best American essayists read from three best
American essays.
So our readers tonight, in order,
are Lawrence Lenhart, introduced by some chump, Ben Rybeck,
introduced by the excellent Buzz Poverman,
and Natasha Stagg introduced by the fabulous Aurelie Sheehan.
So as Hannah mentioned, we're going
to skip Q and A. The only answer you need is the books,
but if you need more answers you can buy the book
and harass the writers.
That's fine too.