[CHEERING]
It is such an honor for me to be here introducing Ander Monson
and his newest book Predator.
If you don't know, Monson's Predator,
which, fittingly, anagrams to nontrad poems,
pays a personal and critical homage
to the action movie of the same name.
At the time he wrote this book, Ander
had watched Predator a total of 146 times,
a feat which, back-to-back, would take nearly 11 full days
without sleeping.
[LAUGHTER]
And by the way, in the same amount of time,
one could also listen to another of Ander's favorites
"Spice Up Your Life" by the Spice Girls 9,704 times,
which I hope is the premise of his next book.
[LAUGHTER]
Oftentimes, our desire to rewatch or reread
a piece of art is driven by our desire
to recreate the sense of joy or discovery
in that initial experience, to feel transported back
in time to the magic we found and felt belonged to us
and us to it from first encounter.
The first time I encountered Ander's work,
I was a college sophomore in Eula Biss's intro
to creative nonfiction class, and I was so far convinced
that nonfiction was just fiction's boring ugly sibling.
[LAUGHTER]
It wasn't until Eula handed us Ander's infamous Harvard
outline essay that I understood the secret and beautiful
underworld concealed within that non
that a truly great essayist has the capacity
to break apart seemingly solid structures
and make a mind of the self.
Every subsequent project of Ander's
that I've read since Predator much included
has felt to me like a perfect sequel,
loyal to this endeavor's original mission,
yet always reinventing itself.
But it was that first encounter which
changed forever the person who I am as a reader and writer.
Just as for Ander, Predator served
as a paradigm of a certain genre of '80s action movies.
Ander's writing for me became the epitome and pinnacle
of a genre that I grew to love.
In a literary way, Ander was my Schwarzenegger.
[LAUGHTER]
While I'm up here today to honor Ander's writing,
I'd be remiss not to also mention and celebrate
what Ander himself means to the MFA program,
to the Tucson writing community, to the Assessment Matters,
or Ass Matters, Institute--
[LAUGHTER]
And to so many of us who are gathered here.
He is a writer, mentor, and teacher of the highest caliber.
Last year I was lucky to have Ander advise my MFA
thesis, which was about the ending of one of my best
friendships.
I would have killed over and died, very literally,
if someone had told me in undergrad
that the author of the Harvard outline essay
would one day be sliding bunches of Jimmy John's napkins
across the table to me on a day when
I was weeping in our meeting.
[CHUCKLING]
And in almost identical fashion, reading
Predator feels like a sacred offering of friendship,
or at least feels to me like the gift
of watching a movie alongside a close friend of yours,
who has seen the movie a thousand times,
and whose deep knowledge, generous praise,
and occasionally brutal and thoughtful criticism
actually outshines the movie itself.
Ander is the author of nine books,
including most recently The Gnome Stories,
I Will Take The Answer, and Letter to a Future Lover,
all out from Graywolf in addition to Predator.
He also edits Diagram, Essay Daily, New Michigan Press,
and March Xness.
Please help me welcome to the mic, Ander Monson.
[APPLAUSE]