 Thank you all for coming out and our playwriting. We've been working on this with some of the people in this room for many, many years now. So we're really delighted to be able to have you all here with us tonight. And I'm just going to just give some quick thanks. My name is Les Hunter. And we want to thank Mark Garcia at the Drama Bookshop. And we also really want to thank the Drama Tis Guild of America that recently published our introduction and what's really instrumental in helping us to promote the book. So thank you to the Drama Tis Guild. And thank you to Leanna Keys of Transcend Streaming, who's helping us to livestream this to HowlRound tonight. So yay. Thank you, HowlRound. And I want to also thank Christine Scarputo, who is the director of the Hunter MFA Playwriting Program. And to some of our contributors who are present, we have Chantel de Loto. Is Chantel here? Yes, Chantel. OK, there we go. Yes, we've never actually met in person. So Chantel wrote a really wonderful piece that we so love called Decentering Humans. And Chantel was also really instrumental at the very beginning when we were thinking about just why is playwriting the way it is. And she wrote an amazing piece that some of you might be familiar with several years ago called Why I'm Breaking Up with Aristotle. That was really good. Got us thinking. Thank you for that. Sarah Johnson. Sarah, yay, Sarah. Yay, Sarah. Thank you. Sarah's piece is Playwrights as Architects of Third Space, the Dramaturgy of Japanese traditional performing arts. And it's a really wonderful, it's a really wonderful, we put it first because it's just such a great piece that talks about what you're doing when you're entering into a space that is not necessarily your own and all of the complexity and complications that can be derived from that. So we're very grateful. Luce, Lorenzaga, Twig, Luce. Luce. We wrote a really wonderful piece that we so love connecting to the past, constructing the self, ethno-autobiography in the Filipinx diaspora as a model for decolonial theater practices. Thank you so much, Luce, we all love you. And then finally, Hank, Willen Brink. Is he Hank back there? Thank you, Hank. Who's piece, Write Where You Are, which is also just yet another one of our just really wonderful pieces. And then finally, I'd like to introduce Christine. Christine Scarfuto is a dramaturge, producer, and educator with over a decade of experience in new play development. She is the director of the MFA Playwriting Program at Hunter College and was previously the literary manager at Long Wharf Theater as a dramaturge. She has worked at theaters, including Second Stage, Signature Theater, Primary Stages, New Dramatists, Love, and the Playwrights' Realm. And we were so pleased that Christine was willing to moderate tonight. She was the person that we wanted more than anyone to moderate. And we were delighted that she was able to do it. So thank you. Yeah, thank you for that. First, I'm going to introduce these intrepid people sitting next to the Britain. Put together this amazing book. So first, we have Carolyn M. Dunn, MFA, and PhD. She is a playwright, dramaturge, actor, and director whose plays have been equity produced on stages in Los Angeles and New York. She is an associate professor of theater and dance and is the director of Playwriting and Dramaturgy at California State University Los Angeles. A faculty advisor for the Decolonial Arts Praxis Concentration for the MFA and Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College and is the artistic director of Oklahoma Indigenous Theater Company in Oklahoma City. Les Hunter is a playwright and theater scholar whose academic work focuses on early 20th century American theater and playwriting pedagogy. He is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for Playwriting and was the inaugural premier fellow at Cleveland Public Theater. Hunter is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Baldwin Wallace University. Finally, Eric Misha Holmes is an American dramatist whose work has been heard on audible rapture season from a glacier we watch the world burn. The BBC, Care Incorporated, and seen at the National Black Theater, Bondo Tragic, and Guild Hall, Falls for Jody. He is the faculty lead of Goddard College's MFA Creative Writing program and a teaching artist at the National Theater School of Canada. So I'm going to start off just reading a quick blurb about what this book is, and we'll tell you a little bit about it. And then I'm going to ask these folks a few questions, and then we're going to leave some time at the end for you all to ask any questions that you might have. So thank you for all the contributors for being here too. We're very excited to talk about your work. So Decentred Playwriting is an attempt to both reach back to underrepresented story creating techniques, as well as investigate new methods of writing works for this stage. This textbook for playwriting and dramaturgy students at intermediate and advanced levels for teachers of dramatic writing, and for established and emerging playwrights looking for new ways to explore and expand their craft. It offers practical advice, historical analysis, theoretical context, and writing exercises from an array of theatrical methods. Our contributors span five consonants curated from a diverse spectrum of artistic and academic perspectives, and unified by a craft forward approach. We offer Decentred Playwriting as a gentle primer to the infinite ways one can approach the craft of writing, plays, and teaching playwriting. It aims to amplify and diversify a conversation about what playwriting is by presenting suppressed and novel tools for all teachers. The approach of this text does not focus on what play should do, but on what they can do. This attention to various forms encourages intercultural and inter-methodological application, inviting playwrights to assess, redefine, and generate their own projects. To invoke Audra Hoard, we're not using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. We're sharing different kinds of tools to build different kinds of houses. And that's from the introduction of the book. And I wanted to read you a couple of really amazing blurbs about the book, because I think they're great. One is from the great Paula Vogel. And she says, one of the great challenges for 21st century writers is how one forges one's own poetics to resist the realistic, well-made play and the strictures of Aristotle and Stanislavski. How can we write for our communities and embrace the rich legacies of non-Earth-Dotelian practice, what extraordinary conversations are gathered here in New Pages? That's a quote from Paula Vogel. We also have a quote from the wonderful Eryssa Fastworth. This is the kind of playwriting education I wish that I would have had. It makes me excited for the next generation of theater makers who will emerge from studying this book. And finally, a quote from Lisa Crone. There's no theater maker or theater educator in this country not wrestling in some way with these issues right now. This book offers a revelatory and practical vision of the way forward. And just to add to that, this is a truly extraordinary book. It looks at a variety of different approaches to playwriting and storytelling and explores the thinking behind these approaches and provides really very doable, accessible writing exercises and thinking exercises to experiment with in your own writing. I found from my years teaching at Hunter and other places that there are literally thousands of books on Aristotelian storytelling and story structure, written for theater, written for film, written for TV. I mean, pretty much every screenwriting book is just like the Poetics Redux. So like, shoot, how do you, Aristotel, got you? But like, you know, if you're a student and you're writing outside of that system, I think especially if you're kind of new to playwriting, you're in danger of feeling like your work is somehow less legitimate if you're doing something different. And for an early career writer, I think that can be really damaging. And so I think this book is actually like really healing in a way. I think it changes that by legitimizing these non-Aristotelian approaches to writing and theater making, which can help students feel represented and seen, which early in your playwriting career is so hugely important. It really makes them feel like they're part of a bigger conversation and ancestry, which is hugely helpful. So I think this is really an essential text for students of playwriting, but also for playwrights, you know, established playwrights as well. And really for playwriting teachers to introduce to their students help with that issue. So without further ado, I have some questions. All of you, buckle up. So first question, and any of you can respond. Who, oh, sorry, how did this book come to be? Talk about the generation of the idea and the process for how you assemble the material. That's you too, because I came later to the project. Well, I think it started with the birth of Les' child. He sent out a birth announcement. And I replied with, oh my God, congratulations Les. And he replied with, we need to talk about a book. He's like, I have an idea. And yeah, we called and we talked for a very long time about this idea about a book that assembles in one volume. A diversity of different practical craft or word tools that playwrights can use that have exercises in them. Because I think the issue that we're coming up with as pedagogues is in teachers. I could just say teachers without saying pedagogues. But this is a, We're a literary. Yeah, exactly, I used to say teachers. They're exweighing as smart cats. Yeah. I want to start by myself as a pedagogue. Pedagogues, it sounds like it should be a crime. Yeah. Yeah. Is that, yes, you can go to the library and look up Japanese theater making, Mexican theater making, any country, any culture you want. You could find a volume of books that gives you the history of that. But books that were instruction that helps playwrights, creative people, inform our own creative practices, rooted in those techniques is something that we didn't really see much of. Do you, is there something you want to add to that? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, I think, you know, I mean, we were talking a lot about what Christina and I loved your thoughtful kind of response to reading the book. Yeah, we were, you know, we just thought that there were so many books rooted in the Aristotelian tradition about playwriting. It does, you know, hundreds, you know, and so many of them just say there's kind of the same thing over and over again in different words. I mean, that doesn't mean they're not great books. I mean, we use these books, you know. There's wonderful things to learn from them, but it just seemed like it was very limited. What was out there? And we wanted something that spoke, you know, there's dozens of books on what the word catharsis means. Probably more than dozens of books on what the word catharsis means, you know. And we wanted something that was offering a different, a different mantra to playwriting. Right, yeah, and like, I'll also add that because we consider Aristotelian practices European, which I can quibble about, but that's for the bar after this, creative people feel like they can use it because that word use is loaded when you're trying to approach practices that are not European or not Western or indigenous, right? Because with that word use comes some baggage, some politics, and this is where you really, you coming into the process was really helpful in us navigating, so maybe you can take that. I was gonna jump in right after you were done, but I was waiting for you to come in. Yeah, please. Because he's such a good talker. That's what, you know, all of our report cards that we were a little, such a good talker. And this is the dynamic of all of our Zoom meetings for the last couple of years. You're getting a taste right now. Such a good talker. Less is like, stay on topic, please. And then Eric and I are all in the same place. So for me coming in as a playwright and as a teacher of playwriting, I was an English professor before I was a theater professor. So me being hired as a playwright and an artist completely changed my pedagogy. But in terms of coming to this project, I remember writing my MFA play and being told why are you repeating these stories over and over again? And because I come out of indigenous traditions, that storytelling is very important. And the repetition of storytelling is also part of the ceremonial process, right? So for me, the story was like a traditional story and a play being a retelling of that with that story as some text there, again, was very important to me. And I wasn't reading a lot of plays and folks were not really understanding the dramaturgy of my work. And then coming in as a professor and coming in as, okay, I'm gonna, I can teach the heck out of poetry. I can teach the heck out of creative nonfiction. But now suddenly I'm being sought after as a playwriting teacher. And what texts am I gonna use? And I kept thinking, I wish there was something that was out there that really kind of got away from the Aristotelian process and was much more of an organic cultural process. And so I saw the call for contributions and I said, oh my God, this is like exactly what I've been looking for. And then when Les and Eric came back after more discussions with the proposal and they said, maybe you should have a woman's perspective here and maybe you should have a woman of color. And I said, hey guys. Yeah. I'm a woman, I'm a woman of color. I'm an indigenous person. I can, you know, I'd love to help you navigate this and bring in some folks that can really contribute to this conversation from that perspective. So that's how I ended up up here with these two and having lots of fun Zoom calls in which Eric and I go way off topic about everything and Les is just, okay guys. All right, come on, let's get it together. You wanna get to the next question right now talking to Les. I wanna honor Les's. Les is looking at us like. No, no, it's good, it's good. We touched on this a little bit but I would love if each of you could expand on it a little bit. Who is this book for and what is this book for? I have to say that I feel like, so the student, we're like an Hispanic serving institution at my university. And we are pretty much, I would say about, you know, 90% students of color, first generation students. So a lot of students that have had experience with theater practice and theater practice at their schools that in which maybe they're engaged with work that doesn't really speak to them. And so I feel like this, and I have to say, I just taught, Chantal, I just taught your chapter, they loved it, I have to say, for the upper division playwriting that I'm teaching. Hank, they're working on yours right now. So, you know, and I'm very purposeful, lose your necks. Sarah, you're up there too. So, I mean, so it's very, you know, they are seeing themselves in story structure that's not necessarily a liturgical model of storytelling. Let's see what I did there. Yeah, and I'd also add just any writer like looking for new tools and new approaches, right? Because I think if anybody, those of you in here who've ever written something new, you come to a point where you're like, I'm stuck, right? I'm trying to write that scene and it's not coming, right? And the library gives you lots of European white men who tell you, here, try this. And what we just wanted was, thank you, yes, that does help me sometimes, but other times I'm looking for something else. So, the book is sort of just, it's there to kind of expand your toolkit so that when you are stuck, you can glean something from another kind of practice and another kind of historic history and tradition and let that inform your problem solving. Like, that's what I'm hoping it does for anybody, whether you're a student or you're seasoned, you know, professional. Yeah, no, that was great. Yeah, no, I think that, you know, we have a wide variety of chapters that really, you know, certainly speak to kind of historical and cultural playwriting practices, but they also speak to kind of some of the, we have a chapter that kind of looks at certain non-hierarchical device techniques as well that generally come out of what we conceive of as the European tradition, but attempt to eliminate hierarchies in production. We also have, you know, pieces from that. Ecological standpoint and pieces from, you know, a placing yourself as yourself in that place and reflecting on that. And so there really is a wide kind of variety of, we've wanted to really have a lot of different kinds of perspectives, some of which are kind of more cultural or historical in practice, and some of which are more kind of, I would say, kind of structural or, you know, just orientation by theatrical orientation in practice. Yeah, yeah. Eric, you used the word just now when you were answering the question. What did I say? Which was Hedge-a-Turgy. So what is Hedge-a-Turgy? And what are some examples of that? And this is a question any of you can answer. It's over, they invented for this book. Well, yeah, we're looking for a catch-all term that summarized everything that we consider hegemonic, right? And by hegemonic, I mean when you go to Juilliard or NYU or Yale or Iowa or SDSC, right? And, or you're a lit manager or you're a producer, there's a certain quality to the writing that we consider to be good, right? And what we're- Polished. Polished. It's an aesthetic doing. Something that like has commercial appeal. So I think what we say in the book is that it's a suite of pedagogical standards that have been centered in the way we think about a writing instruction in the West. That's the long anecdote. And that are also producible and closed in hierarchical and production. Yes. So that's what we kind of mean by hegemonic. I often feel that Aristotle, well, I love, by the way, I think sometimes he gets blamed for everything. Right, but it's not just Aristotle. So I think the trinity of hegemonic to me is Aristotle's at the top, Braytech Stanislavski. That's the trial. The holy trilogy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, and I think the trinity, they also have apostles. Right, and you have scribe, Sardu, Ibsen, Strinberg, Chekhov. And the Stanislavski has his own, I'm sorry, Stanislavski has his own apostles. Yeah, Strasberg, Meisner, Stela Adler, right, so there's these, there are these benchmarks of Western artists that we typically refer to that have shaped our consciousness and they've defined for us what is good in appealing and entertaining. Yeah. And I'm honestly, some of them have survived, honestly, because they work. And they are good, right? It's just one way of doing it. And we just want to look at other ways. Right, because some of us come from other traditions that are formed outside of those traditions. And so the way that we do art and the way that we tell stories is not, doesn't always fit into some of those neat little, and I say cult, I'm a cheat, but just some of those aesthetics and some of that dramaturgical thought, right? And so to be, to come into it from, excuse me, that different tradition, what is it about stories from a different tradition that are now starting to be told that, and then how do you teach that way of, how do you teach that structure if there's nothing for the students to look at and engage with, except me for an hour and 15 minutes, do you know? There's other things to, you know. But again, so this book for me comes out of that where it is sort of anti-editorgical in the sense that it examines again other traditions outside of what we know of as playwriting in the Western world. Sure, yeah. And I mean, I think like even, and I'm sure I'll be curious to hear your experience, but like I teach a lot of black theater history and black theater practices. And what I'm teaching to students who are not black, there's this look in their face like, wow, that's really interesting and cool. But I don't want, like it's not for, I don't want to use it. Yeah. Because black folks just like indigenous people are some of the most appropriated, copied and exploited people in America. So obviously there is this sort of sensitivity around having a creative practice informed by a culture that you don't inhabit. Like I understand that. And part of this book is an effort to kind of, not to make the readers or practitioners experts, but to just be like, here's a little piece of what we do and we're gonna gift it. And it's kind of up to you to employ it responsibly, weighted by your own moral compass and your own aesthetics. And by the way, there's no one size fits all solution to the problem of appropriation because every tradition is informed by its own politics, its own history of exploitation and every chapter has a different analysis of the problem. Right, so it's not like, well, like if you want to be inspired to use Sarah Johnson's example from no theater, that doesn't mean like you could then just, well, that gives me permission to go do these other things with everybody else, right? So every chapter has a different solution to it and it's up to you to kind of like navigate that on your own. Like we don't really solve that for anybody. We're just sort of like, I don't know. You figure it out. Yeah, yeah, no, I think we, yeah, we're very, you know, clear. This is kind of the field of discussion, right? And here's a lot of different perspectives on this very thorny issue. And, you know, good luck. Because that's where we're all kind of in it, you know? We're all kind of in it. We're all dealing with these questions in our own ways, you know? This is my last question for all of you. I'll open it up for you all to ask some questions. Tell us about some of your favorite chapters. I will say my favorite line in the book comes from Luz's chapter, which is that she says, for me, forgive me if I'm just quoting you, so please correct me. The book is right there. I don't know what page it's on. I promise. It's gonna take a while. I'll pretend, how about this? I'm gonna, this is theater. I'll just pretend like I'm reading it. No, it's, for me, playwriting is to scream in the language of my colonizers. Love that line. So, shout out to Luz on that one. What about you? It doesn't have to be your favorite or anything you want to acknowledge. Give a shout out, too. I really love Haleopouas, that's chapter where she talks about Kanako Amali or Native Hawaiian storytelling practices and how to engage with the story. That really is very, you know, she gives clear instructions to non-Kanako Amali people. But I really like, again, how she, and then she historicizes it and she really talks a lot about it. Luz does also, excuse me, talk about the connection of people to landscape, to language, to sacred history. So it's more of a peoplehood approach to playwriting. And of course, Diane's. I think we all love, because Diane is, Diane Glancy is such a wonderful poet and was a poet before she was a playwright and she is a very poetic playwright. And Les was one of her students. And I've known Diane for many years, just as a colleague and a friend. And I like to say an elder, because people keep saying, well, never mind, I'm not gonna talk about that. About me being an elder and I feel like, I don't know who you all are talking about. But for me, like an older sibling, maybe. I kind of looked at Diane. I mean, they're all really so wonderful and they all have a really unique orientation. I have to say that the forward by David Henry Wong is fabulous and he was our first choice to give the forward. And he just really, I mean, he hit it out of the park with what? A very personal, very moving. He just kind of said, sure, I'll do it. And then we didn't hear from him for several months. And we're like, what is happening? Are we gonna get anything? And then we just get this just beautiful piece of his own, his own first professionally produced play and his experience of realizing that his experience was not totally and mutually accepted by the producing entity and is the shock of finding that out. And Jane, it's a personal piece, but it's also got a lot of theater history and it's got a lot of, and it talks about what, as a playwright, how do I figure out, as a young playwright, how do I figure out my way into this world? And it's just, it's a great, great piece. We're so thrilled to have it. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, good. All right, I'd love to open it up to all of you. Do you have any questions or comments or things you wanna hear more about? First off, I loved hearing all of you talk, it's fantastic. I teach fiction as well and so it's just on my, which is popping in my head in wonderful ways. I teach prose fiction and I'm a prose writer and so I was just really wondering if there are certain things that as you're putting this book together, you learned that felt very specific to the craft of playwriting over, say, poetry and prose and if there are things that felt like larger, overarching storytelling ideas and fine in a larger realm. So I, we both teach at Goddard, right, which is an MFA program, so there's poets. Miss Holly is one of them. Oh, that's right, oh, that's right, yeah, yeah, oh, cool. I am not ashamed. Miss Holly, who teaches at Alvin Ailey? I'm sorry, I just, because you're so amazing. I'm not ashamed to foreground my bias, but I think fiction writers have a lot more to learn from playwrights than playwrights have from fiction writers. But I say, I'm comfortable. I'll talk at the bar later. I will say that there's three sections of our book. The first one is called Decentred Playwriting. So Decentred is the adjective. And that I think is the most applicable to fiction writers who are interested in learning something because we're actually talking about writing techniques and forms. The second one, the second chapter, the second section is Decentering Playwriting, which are theatrical performance practices that, in which the text itself is de-centered. And while I think there's some amazing things that I think fiction writers can learn, fiction writers can most can learn from it, it does investigate a lot in performance, right? And then the third one I think also fiction writers can get a lot out of, which is just models and testimonies. So these are writers, playwrights whose work we think embody a de-centered practice. And they blend, a lot of them blend memoir, poetry, their own work, right? So traditions. Physical exercises, they try this. Yeah, yeah, and you know, not to bring it back to him, but you know, like the earliest storytelling theories were about performance storytelling. It's humanity's oldest narrative art. I don't know, all the poets in the back are like, actually, wait. But I would argue we were performing stories before we wrote them. Absolutely. You know what I mean? It's a ceremony. Yeah, it's a ceremony, yeah. But yeah, so those are the things that I would offer to a fiction writer. You've written plays, though. Yeah. Yeah, you're a classic theater person. And then I moved into playwrights. Exactly, you're one of them. I started as a poet and I moved into playwrights. There you go, you know what I'm saying? We can all be friends. Yeah. What was the question? That was it we answered. That was it we answered. Yeah, we answered it. Eric, I think you were alluding to some of the risks with the word use. And I know that you said you guys didn't solve those problems, but you're all pedagogues. I'm curious, did you guys bulletproof these with your students before you published them? Like, did you test them on students to sort of like see how they were put into action and do you have any best practices out of that? Like, three tips to make sure I'm not accidentally appropriating somebody using your book? That was a great question. Yeah, that was a great question. I mean, I do think that every chapter is different in the way that it approaches that question. And some of the chapters, I think, are going to be, you know, some of the chapters are, you know, from Carolyn, you know, correct me that wrong, but like sometimes like sacred practices, you know, that, you know, it becomes a very, very difficult question. So we've asked each of the writers to address this question in their chapter somehow. And it's often in the exercises. Like I'm thinking of Luc's chapter, which, you know, has some of the exercises are like, hey, here's exercises that no matter where you're coming from in your practice, no matter what your background is, here's an exercise that is juggling these ideas that I brought forth in my thinking about this that everyone can do, right? So you read the chapter, you understand kind of the historical context and the journey, right, that this playwright has gone on. And then they say, here are some tools for you, right? Regardless of where you are. So we think we've really tried to kind of give everybody, you know, we've encouraged all the writers to think about this question. I don't know, is that fair? Yeah, and I want to point to two chapters in particular that I'd really recommend starting with, if this is really on the forefront of your mind, which is Sarah Johnsons, the first one, who really lays out the sort of scholarly, critical controversy around appropriation and the metaphors that we use to talk about it and the debate, right? It's not like this is right and this is wrong, but she really does a great job of foregrabbing the debate around it and also loses which, in which she, it's even in the title where she uses the Philippine experience as a model, right? And for example, so I'm biracial, right? I've got a black father and I've got a white mother. So for the sake of this exercise, I'm gonna talk about the white side of my family. And if you are white, I encourage you to think about this too. There is a time, if you go back far enough, there is an ancestor who if you said you are white, he or she would have no idea what you're talking about, right? So part of what loses chapter does is it gives us tools to kind of excavate the mythology of our identity to find its source in which there's opportunity there that racial constructs have like buried and hidden from us, right? So that's just one example of the many ways I think, like, right, so when you're reading Luz's chapter, it's not about, oh, how can I write about Philippinex people, characters better? It's about, no, how do I use their colonial and indigenous history to excavate my colonial indigenous history and find my original voice in that, right? So that's one example of how, that's what I try to tell my students, right? You kind of start with those chapters and then that creates a building block for the other one. And some of the chapters are, you know, exploring things that don't really have to do at all with specific cultural, I mean, they're all culture, of course, but specifically kind of, you know, what we would call like racialized cultural backgrounds, right, I mean, there are, again, we have chapters kind of an ecological catastrophe, which we all has befallen us all. And so that, you know, chapters on writing from the perspective of where you are. So there are a variety kind of, we really wanted to, I mean, there's so many, you know, that's the thing. When we started this project, there's already libraries on a very specific set of dramaturgical standards that are taught over and over and over again. And we see them over and over again. You know, those of us who read a lot of plays, write a lot of plays, see a lot of plays, we know what's coming often because we've seen them over and over and over again. But there's not that much in the way of teaching a hundred thousand other ways to write a play, you know, we're not the only book that's ever done this, certainly. There are other books out there, but there's not that much that are in the library. I went and looked, you know, I spent several months looking for other books, you know, and there's really just a, you know, not much out there. So this is an Eric's term for it as a gentle primer, right? It's a gentle primer. But we did have very, the three of us had very long conversations about not wanting to encourage cultural appropriations and spending a lot of time talking about that. And I think that the wonderful practices that, like I said, Luz, for example, Haileapua talk about our practices that are very, and I remember Luz and I had an email exchange about this too, I don't know if you remember that. But how do we, you know, how do we put forth indigenous storytelling traditions that doesn't encourage people to write, you know, from a Philippian ex or a Kanaka Mali or a Native American perspective when they don't come from those particular parts of the world? And it really was about, here are pieces, excuse me, of our ancestral traditions. What are your ancestral traditions as students? And if you don't know about it, you don't encourage you to find out about it. Encourage you to know who you are and what is that part of your identity that you know very well? And how can you write to that piece of your identity and so I think that the essays are written and the activities are written in a way that really encourages internal investigation. Here is a model of how we've been doing it. Now, you know, students, how can you take this model and recreate it for your own experience? On that note, I'm afraid that's going up a ton more, but these wonderful books will be around to sign books and I think there's wine and cheese. Cookies. Cookies in the back, in the front, I mean. So you can get some wine and continue the conversation and get your book signed. But thank you three and thank you all for coming. Thank you.