[APPLAUSE]
There it is.
Thank you, sir.
[CONTINUED APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Tyler, and thank you to Tyler and Paola
for all your work and for making this space available.
And I'd like to thank also Bojan Louis
for his curation of the distinguished visitors series
and to all of you for coming out.
It's delightful to see you here.
I'll warn you in advance, I might have gone a little hard
with these introductions.
So we'll just get to them here in a minute.
But I think of all the readings I have the pleasure
to introduce, this is my absolute favorite reading,
a reading in which we celebrate first books by four
amazing writers who are also alums of the MFA program
at U of A.
I've had the pleasure of working with each of these students
and have, after a great deal of observation,
come to the following conclusions
about their true natures.
So I will be introducing our beautiful readers tonight
by their Dungeons and Dragons classes, Fifth Edition
specifically for the real ones out there with a few liberties
taken because--
screw it-- because we all need companions for our adventures
and because these writers are bad ass.
And I cannot imagine any companions better out there
in the darkness than these four whom I also call friends.