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[APPLAUSE]

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Well, hi, everyone.

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It's my pleasure tonight
to be introducing

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Manuel Muñoz, professor,
mentor, and dear friend to me.

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Manuel Muñoz is the
author of a novel, What

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You See In the Dark,
and the short story

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collections The Consequences,
Graywolf 2022, Zigzagger,

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and The Faith Healer
of Olive Avenue, which

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was shortlisted for the Frank
O'Connor International Short

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Story Award.

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Stories from his collection
The Consequences have appeared

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in Glimmer Train, American
Short Fiction, Zyzzyva,

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and Freeman's.

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He's been recognized
with the Whiting Writers

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Award and National Endowment for
the Arts Fellowship, three O.

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Henry awards, and an appearance
in Best American Short Stories.

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I've been trying for
the past couple of weeks

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to think of a simple
way to describe what I

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feel reading his short stories.

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I think I have an
answer, or many.

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His short stories give me
that "you are there" effect.

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I visualize his settings,
feel the heat and cold

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with his characters, feel
the serenity of a Sunday,

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a peach orchard become
quieter and quieter,

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as if I were the
one sitting in it.

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Or maybe as if I had been
the one sitting in it.

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His stories make me feel like
I've lived more lives than I

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have, like I've somehow known
and lived in a deep kind of way

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with these characters'
perceptiveness, their regrets

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and wants, their
secret knowledge.

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Many of his characters
haven't been to college,

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but are smarter and savvier
in a way, I believe fully,

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than many college graduates.

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They understand people.

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They understand
themselves, what it

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is to live with little,
what it is to feel trapped,

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what it is to be desperate, what
it is to care for someone else.

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These stories make
me forget where I am,

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a bad day's stresses,
and I feel reading them

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like I'm exactly where
I'm supposed to be.

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Usually, the two words I most
want to say to another writer

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are simple, keep going.

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Tonight I would like to choose
those same words, and just

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a few others, keep
going, please.

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Congratulations on this new
collection, and thank you.

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Thanks, Manuel, for working
an improbable miracle,

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breathing life into
these characters

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and making me feel on every
page like I've known them,

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been them, seen
them, and felt them.

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