WEBVTT

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Vickie, that's awesome news.

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This makes me very
excited, almost as excited

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as the piñata.

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Close, but not quite.

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So for every writer
there is a moment

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of permission,
where she realizes

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that the kind of story
she wants to write

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isn't what she's writing yet.

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Maybe the leap is more obvious
for a fiction writer who's

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stuck in hand-me-down
literary realism,

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yet to make the leap into
magic or strangeness, what

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Kelly Link calls weird shit,
for lack of a term that doesn't

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auto classify a
story into genre,

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like fantasy or
sci-fi on account

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of the verisimilitude
of a story's conceit.

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I've always wanted to use the
word verisimilitude and kickass

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in an introduction.

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Now I've done it.

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Kick ass.

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Perhaps it's the sleeplessness
that gives some of us

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permission.

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The hypnagogic or
hypnopompic states

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that we slide into on
either edge of sleep

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tend to erode the
ways in which daylight

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and the usual
attention can limit us.

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Robert Owen Butler calls
this compositional place,

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the place from where you dream.

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There are lots of ways to get
there, including having a baby,

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after which a great
deal seems possible

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and also beyond possibility.

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Or perhaps some things just seem
acceptable that did not before,

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and others don't.

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The world flips.

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It's a little like
that time that gravity

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just stopped working.

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Or writing upon waking
is another option,

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as Erin tells the Kenyon
Review she did while commuting

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to work in New York City.

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Any insomniac could
tell you that you

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get into some strange
layers of consciousness

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going sleepless too.

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Sometimes that permission can
come in the form of advice

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from a trusted mentor.

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In Erin's case, Robin Black
handing down some real truth,

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asking her, why do you think
you need to write like this?

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"This" meaning
normal/realist stories.

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So a workshop followed that,
encouraging her to go weirder.

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Or sometimes
permission is granted

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by reading the right
story at the right time,

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as in William H.
Gass's In the Heart

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of the Heart of the
Country, a story

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that one of Erin's in
her book writes back at.

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Sex can do it too in how it
transports and transcends,

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at its rare best
anyway, and there's

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lots of sex in her
stories, some of which

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you'll probably hear tonight.

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But one of the cool
things about Erin's work

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is that it's not
just her stories that

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give us permission
to make it weird,

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but her editorial work too.

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With her husband Justin, she
founded and edits the journal

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Waxwing, which publishes
stories about nude modeling

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and telekinesis, though,
unfortunately, not

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yet in the same story.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Perhaps you'll take
that as a challenge.

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I would recommend that you do.

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Those are both from
the newest issue.

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It's a really good magazine.

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So clearly nude
modeling and telekinesis

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are your answer to getting
published in Waxwing.

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I don't know.

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I'm writing this
introduction after midnight

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knowing I'll be up
pretty early anyway,

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using the last bit of what
literary force remains

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to me in the day.

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This introduction isn't that
weird, though, yet, is it?

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But the fact that it's attached
to a piñata kind of like adds

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to that.

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Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

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I'm sure that Erin will show
us now how to do it right.

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Her first book And Yet It
Moves is just out from Indiana

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University Press.

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She has some degrees,
and is published well.

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She's a good writer and
an interesting person.

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She teaches at Northern
Arizona University.

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Please welcome Erin Stalcup.

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[APPLAUSE]

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