 Coming in for the very first time you should know that we do this every Thursday night In fact, we call it Thursday nights at the museum because of that because we do it every Thursday night at 7 30 So every Thursday night we're this throughout the fall. We're offering a little chat We had a poetry reading a couple weeks back We've got a live talk show in two weeks on November 5th and next week We have a special conversation Co-presented with KG and KG and you community radio on the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage Moderated by Maeve Conron. You'll want to tune in for that. That's going to be a really terrific program I want to thank all those people who make this these programs possible at the Longmont Museum our media sponsor KG and you our museum members donors the friends of the Longmont Museum and the Scientific and cultural scientific and cultural facilities district without your support We simply can't do all that we do and we do a whole heck of a lot even during a pandemic Anyway, if you're interested in learning more about the museum about membership and how you can support the Longmont Museum Please visit our website at longmontmuseum.org Now for this evening's program As an apocalyptic plume of smoke from the nearby historic wildfires descends upon us here in Longmont It's almost impossible now at least for me to turn back the clock and recall how we started out this year 2020 I can remember in the lead-up to it thinking that perhaps this might be the year of clarity You know 2020 vision the year where we could collectively take a good long look at ourselves in the mirror and see clearly who we are As a society warts and all but it seems as if 2020 had other plans on top of historic political polarization Including an impeached president economic inequality Climate change and the tragic death of one of my basketball heroes Kobe Bryant We were met with a pandemic followed by mass employment even more Polarization rampant and baseless conspiracy theories the high profile and high profile and unjust police killings of George Floyd beyond a Taylor Elijah McClain and others followed by historic protests as Some violence the death of Ruth Ruth Bader Ginsburg a highly contentious Supreme Court nomination and Wildfires what's next plague? Oh, no that I'm counting that one twice. Yes. We've already we've got that don't we? Truth whatever that is certainly does seem at least right now to be stranger than fiction to help us manage This deluge of strange reality. We've assembled a trio of novelists to weigh in on just how strange things have actually become Erika Krause all the way down there on your left is the author of two books of fiction Her novel contenders was a finalist for the VCU Cabell first novelist award and has been translated into German her short story collection come up and see me sometime One the Patterson fiction award was a New York Times notable book of the year and it's translated into six languages Erika's fiction has been published in the New Yorker the Atlantic s square comm plowshares one story the Kenyan review Alaska quarterly review The Iowa review glimmer train story Boulevard crazy horse and Shannon Shenandoah her short stories have been shortlisted for best American short stories best American non-required reading in the push cart prize Eric has also published Poetry and essays and magazines such as grant a common reviewed for the New York Times book review Two new books are forthcoming with flat iron books Tell me everything memoir of a private eye and save me a collection of short stories Tell me everything was optioned by for television by playground entertainment Publication dates for both books are to be announced Erica went to middle school in high school in Japan and earned her BA from Grinnell College She earned her MA in English and English literature and creative writing right here at CU Boulder Where she's taught creative writing classes She teaches and mentors at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver and as a winner of the Lighthouse Beacon Award for teaching excellence She has taught at the Himalayan Writers Retreat in Uttarakhand, India and teaches yearly at the Grand Lake Retreat in Grand Lake, Colorado Glad you're not teaching there right this second She has won fellowships and scholarships to the Longleaf Writers Workshop, Bredloaf Writers Workshop, Sawani Writers Workshop and the inaugural Amtrak residency Erica lives in Boulder, which in case you didn't know It's just about 20 minutes down that way Erica T. Oh and Daniel Levine in the center there He is the author of Hyde a retelling of the strange case of Dr. Jekyll Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the villain's perspective Daniel studied English literature and creative writing at Brown and received his MFA in fiction in writing from the University of Florida he has taught composition and creative writing at high schools and universities including the University of Florida Montclair State University and Metropolitan State College of Denver originally from New Jersey. He also lives in Boulder Erica T. Worth's publications include two novels Crazy Horse's Girlfriend and You Who Enter Here Two collections of poetry and a collection of short stories Buckskin Cocaine a writer of fiction nonfiction and poetry She teaches creative writing at Western Illinois University and has been a guest writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including Boulevard the Writers Chronicle wax wing and the Kenyan review She is a Kenyan review Writers Workshop scholar Attended the Tin House summer workshop and has been chosen as a narrative artist for the Meow Wolf Denver Insulation she has a patchy Chickasaw Cherokee and was raised outside of Denver Please welcome our authors to the Longmont Museum ladies and gentlemen. Oh Yes, thank you very small socially distanced audience. Hello internet We're gonna have each of our authors this evening read a little bit from their work And we're gonna start off with Erica Krauss Otherwise known as Erica Kay this evening Erica number one you can get confusing with the two Erica's Thank you so much for having us Justin. Thank you for everybody Who's tuning in for spending time with us instead of Donald Trump tonight? so I'm gonna read from a short story that came out in a really great literary magazine called Glimmer Train That just close so this is their last issue, but I'm blind, so I'm gonna read from paper. So the short story is called North of Dodge My high school voted me most likely to leave Dunfield so a week after graduation I stole my uncle's station wagon and did just that It's not a felony so long as you stay in Nebraska I drove 300 miles to Omaha where I was supposed to begin college in the fall and parked the Leavenworth Street for Breakfast the car was stolen again by the time I left the diner, but I didn't care Moncle was a dick and all I needed was the ride out. Can I swear? Can I swear? I believe so Facebook. Is that okay? Yes, okay great Okay When you steal a car from a white supremacist the safest place to stay is in a black area of town I asked a gas station attendant wearing a Confederate flag t-shirt what parts of Omaha white girls should avoid and he said north of Dodge Street So that's where I went far away from the likes of him as I marched north my backpack chugged its own rhythm This is your chance. This is your chance It was a Sunday morning at that moment. My uncle would be preaching his new sermon. You better get right or get left North of Dodge. I felt conspicuous in my white skin guilty Torn corrugated metal siding drooped off storefronts Clammy hands scrawled flyers for lost dogs and children peeled from the sides of buildings The occasional breeze smell like cat sex and Exhaust Illumina foil covered the insides of the windows to deflect the Sun which was mostly suggestion of brightness and an otherwise gray day By afternoon I found a place to rent from a flyer staple gun to a telephone pole Department manager said I looked sweet and honest and that's what I am except honest I paid with a majority share of my uncle's cash a bonus I had found in his glove box under an unopened box of expired condoms My new apartment was one musty room at basement level off Ames Avenue next to a parking lot I later voted parking lot most likely to have one abandoned women's shoe on the ground First I found a white sandal then a royal blue pump with glitter. I Collected the shoes that they appeared wondering if they were evidence. I lined them in my window sills a reminder Not to leave the windows open while I slept The former tenant had left behind a mattress table lamp and a vinyl chair I slid around in at night greased by my own sweat No air conditioning or fan on the sticky table. I found a notebook and three pens I figured the notebook was a kind of gift. So I started writing in it every night before bed I mostly wrote about how scared I was I'd never lived by myself before or worked a job besides Cleaning my uncle's church and the annex we lived in I didn't feel safe outside my apartment unless so inside at night I couldn't find any job openings in my new neighborhood hardly any businesses even When I walked down the street men rolled down their windows to flap a wad of bills at me and ask how much I Wondered if it might come to that. I didn't know how I would survive on my own let alone go to college in the fall or ever Or get the chance to be someone to anyone Shortly after I moved in I was spreading my notebook when two voices giggled at my window My heart stuttered in fright, but they were just children two of them in the dim light reflected from my lamp One of them was chubby in the face his lips curling into the fat of his chin maybe ten years old His spectacular aphor reminded me of those disc-like halos and medieval art The white boy was skinny like an ermine with curly matted hair that might be blonde under the dirt He looked much younger than the big one who said we're gonna rape you Yeah, the smaller one said rape you they laughed. Can we come in? Hell no I said and don't talk to me like that I'm gonna break into your house and steal your TV then the big one said but he could see I didn't have one you got a man He's in the bathroom. No way. We've been watching you. You ain't got no man there I stood to shut the window and they scattered afraid of me So I left the sash open and returned to my notebook vowing to buy curtains catching whatever breeze they weren't blocking They had already crept back like squirrels made brave from hunger How old are you guys I asked what are your names they grinned flattered by my interest the little blonde one said six I'm Kyle. I'm six. He's ten. He said he's Jarvis Jarvis said I'm 12 Kyle said he's ten my dicks about from here to here You're six. I asked Jarvis told Kyle. Ah, you got a itty-bitty dick Kyle told Jarvis. Hey, that's your mom's shoe. That's your mom's shoe Jarvis said and they laughed high-pitched like jackals She hates me Kyle said I couldn't tell which mother Kyle was talking about Jarvis's or Kyle's own It seemed inconceivable that anyone could hate a six-year-old that there would be anything to hate yet Jarvis asked what are you writing? I'm writing down the things you're saying. I said why Kyle asked they're interesting We're interesting. They tried to high-five each other but missed and got embarrassed Jarvis's nose formed a sharp triangle when he laughed I wrote in my notebook most likely to do crime for someone else's crime Little Kyle said picking his nose. I went to jail for drugs. I busted out then I'm gonna bust in here when you're asleep I began to get unrealistically nervous again until Jarvis said no way not with these high windows You knock into everything it would be dark You wouldn't be able to find a lamp you bump into a heater and burn your feet Then he said to me send him home. He should go to jail Kyle told me I love you Jarvis said I'm sorry for him. You're pretty in the tits. Give me back my mama's shoe Please ma'am The ma'am shocked me even more than the rest of it Jarvis had to point twice at the blue pump before I popped open the screen to hand it to him through the crack He grasped it so gently all I felt was a lightness in my hand as the shoe and the children returned to the darkness of the streets No goes on, but I think I'll stop there. Thank you Thank You Erica. Daniel, would you like to share something with us? Yes, please So I've been working on a Novel just a big monstrous literary sci-fi thing and Recently I took a break to write some short stories that were kind of like pandemic stories so this is just a little bit from one of these pandemic stories that I wrote needs any more context The small hour It was their honeymoon or Supposed to be but with the virus this was the best they could do a big old colonial on the countryside on VRBO it had looked quaintly elegant But now in the dead of night stricken with dread beside her sleeping husband. She was fairly certain it was haunted Many windowed brick mints set back on an overgrown hill ringed by woods Had seemed to turn toward their to approach up the steep drive earlier that afternoon Slowly exposing the parked car and then the man Stepping from the side porch with a cardboard box in his arms Not wearing a mask Clearly he had been going in and out of the place with his naked face breathing into the rooms and Despite their Audi's protective seal her sternum had tensed in self-defense Her husband She still wasn't used to thinking the word was trying to do so whenever she could to endure herself Press the ignition button and the engine word off and for a second She imagined they had flown here and their noiseless craft from the future and Would remain safe so long as they kept out the toxic air of the present Wait, she nearly said as her husband looped his mask over his ears and reached for the handle She had caught his grimace like this was a mission to be completed before they could return home Then the door was open and the hot riotous afternoon swarmed in The owner that's who he was she recognized his face off the profile pic on the website in the moment before he donned his own mask Was gratuitously pretty for this rustic setting like their silver sedan a Svelte shave-headed man with an indeterminable accent Above the robin's egg blue his eyes were long lashed and lingering Trees crowded the stone shingled roof Crickets shrilled The window sills were flaking paint No one's rented this place in years. She thought with a slither of fear in spite of the dozen reviews fakes a trap VR BIOS says I got to use the spray he said as he led them into the porch entrance She looked at her husband to see if he would stop the owner from coming inside though It was obviously too late To keep the house's atmosphere sacrosanct. I Used it twice. So if it smells a little a little disinfectant tea, that's just the spray It was unlike Carl she thought now Lying next to him in the huge master bed in the dark not to say anything like We can take it from here. Thanks or we're trying to minimize contact or even more aggressively Did I just see you inside without a mask on? Her husband never had a problem establishing boundaries about the virus even from the beginning of the outbreak Excuse me. He would say sharply to people in the grocery store who stood too close behind them in line When the lawn crew started moving the patio furniture from their pool the way they always did Be if you dudes with beer guts and grass flecked arms who clearly thought this whole thing was being blown out of proportion He had gone out in his polo shirt with spare gloves and told the men to put them on Then tugged up his own mask to indicate they should wear theirs over their noses, please Even her parents at their makeshift backyard wedding. He was firm Halting the mid stride. Sorry guys. We're still not doing the hugging thing So it was a surprise to see him trail the owner into the house without any reprimand But this honeymoon had been his idea and she could tell he didn't want to cast ripples in the Halcyon plan so soon As much for her sake as his own pride For she was squeamish about confrontation and was touched by his consideration Even as she wished for his usual assertiveness So she remained on the driveway torn in the trilling afternoon as he followed the owner inside The rooms were large and sparse and low-ceilinged the antique furniture decrepit and placed in odd of corners In the pictures online the effect had been country chic Emphasizing the sleek modern kitchen, but in person the hardwood was scuffed the Victorian sofas dented and stained as a former Dense had died of consumption upon them She watched Carl's eyes over the rim of his mask as he took it in In this new age they were living through she'd become expert at examining the upper portion of people's faces The startled snapshot between the bridge and brow that the rest of the face couldn't compensate for any longer Eyes to bulbous or narrow or sunken or dull were presented as on a microscope slide darting inescapable Carl's were a nice color cornflower blue They'd seem mischievously attractive when they first met at a potluck offset by his rye mouth But reduced by the mask she'd found these last restrictive months. They appeared Suspicious and severe the eyes of the efficiency expert, which indeed he was pruning everything down to essentials At Whole Foods or Target, she would see him scanning the space as if deciding which shoppers were superfluous Too fat too slow too and cautious too stupid a drain on the rest of the system What he would demand muffled when he found her staring at him with what must have been Misgiving in her own deer and headlight gaze and there was guiltiness in the accusing question annoyance at having been caught in his calculations in The zombie apocalypse or whatever mayhem this pandemic eventually turned into Carl would be the guy with the sniper rifle picking off heads one by one He would thrive Thank you Erica. I'm gonna read a very short piece from my collection buckskin cocaine Which is about the Native American Film world It's just different personalities. This is one of them Gary Hollywood the red grasses. That's what I remember Threading my little brown hands through them on the hills in Oklahoma My mother calling in Cherokee from the warm little cabin in the distance The smell of smoking meats It was so beautiful But the memory is even more beautiful Even then I knew I was born for blood When I drink I drink for the pain I drink because I can because there is so much blood filling my heart. It's spilling over I trip on the slick of it Years ago years before all of the lights filling my eyes over and over The images of me up there for everyone to see I went to war We all went to war then we went because we thought we had to Warrior warrior warrior the blood said when I left Byron behind in the jungle. I knew what I was It was then that I first thought about my dying There were times that I thought I could hide an anger an anger at this country The things that it had done the things that it was doing the people in charge on every reservation and urban Indian ghettos and Indian territories I was so angry. It was wonderful. It fed the blood. I Remember those days on the Oglala reservation We were powerful in those dark hills. We were everywhere like lights like fireflies Which I've heard are disappearing now like the bees People died there that fed the blood too On the screen I am terrifying I am so terrifying that it is utterly beautiful make no mistake and I feel like someone should be proud Look at me up there. My hair is so black my naked chest so brown my eyes filled with stones. I Look like a warrior. I dance. I sing I fight. I Am so beautiful in the dark The dark is where I live God, it's so cold When I was a child my mother would hold me in her long brown arms and rock me in the big wooden Rocking chair and sing me to sleep with songs and Cherokee by the little black stove Dad would come in from work on the ranch and he would smell like big wild animals and dust like red red dust I was half asleep and I could feel her chest rumble as she spoke Everything was so warm so beautiful Can't I go back? I'm always trying. I Want to say that I've done good things. I have done a lot of good things I have helped bring our language back. There are things in our words that are not anywhere else in this wide green world I know that There is so much I refuse to leave behind to lose. I have fought on those red hills I have fought in the badlands. I have lost things But there is so much that I lost before I was even born The good things sometimes justify the bad Sometimes Everything is a song a bird's wing song quiet so you can hear it I can't hear it anymore, but I used to when I was with her But she's something I lost to it hurts too much to think about it like there's a black hole I was born with pulling me in She had soft blonde hair so soft like the wing of a bird. I was a child again in her arms. I Hit I hit I hit her I hit her so hard and I hated myself I could never forgive myself. I left him in the fields. I drink I push it down There is no way back When I was in the jungle, I Pressed her picture to my heart my feet rotting in those boots in that deep black mud and I ran and shot I killed so many people. They were everywhere and they were everything. They filled up the sky Byron was ahead of me. He was always leading. He was Ojibwe and he was my best friend He looked behind to see if I'd fallen because I did once and that's when the explosions came They came out of the ground as if something great and wide had opened up to eat us all and I ran I Ran I ran and Byron died There is no way back On the screen. I feel like I redeem myself forget myself I am beautiful and the women who follow me because of it giving me beautiful pure white things to snort and sweet sparkling things to drink understand When I finally feel like I am underwater and floating and laughing they all look like her They never look like Byron or my mother. I couldn't live through that There is no way back Everything is a story a dream. Don't you think I do I Can see it all from here the great red planes of Oklahoma Calling me like a song like a bird's wing like my mother are calling me a Cherokee Byron is still alive. He lives in Minneapolis My mother and father are proud of me and they are still alive. She is still my lover I live a life inside this cocoon of white and sparkling things. I drive around in a shiny lovely thing I think that it's like a panther that the women who love me are writing. I just have to keep pushing it all down Until I crash There is no way back. Thank you Thank you, Erica and thank all of you for giving us a sample of your work this evening I think if people want to pick up your work Just ask their independent bookseller, right here in Longmont. That means barbed wire books If you're in Denver, that means the tattered cover. Yeah Yeah, and if you're in Boulder Boulder bookstore I suppose Erica my first question is for you and this this This came up in our kind of conversation before the program You made a point of reminding me that while our current reality may seem shocking to people like me It's been difficult if not miserably bizarre for black indigenous and people of color in the US for pretty much Since the get-go Do you think now is it seemed important to to recall that? Do you think now is some sort of? reckoning or Karmic comeuppance or it was this in never an inevitable kind of a facing of Reality in a way that's unparalleled or you know I I I There there is a writer who's a friend of mine and someone was saying she had written something that went against traditional values And this is why the coronavirus was rampant on someone's reservation, and I was so uncomfortable with that interpretation so I You know I'm uncomfortable with that interpretation in general However, I do think a lot about how obviously, you know when you're talking about America We're everywhere, but we're kind of like nowhere in people's consciousnesses, you know and That's really because of genocide, and that's really because of disease and the way in which People would like spread smallpox very purposefully once they realize like all these people don't get how bad this is so when I think about you know Things like this that is the first place my mind goes to I And so I do think about how like this is a country based on slavery and genocide But I don't I can't really think of it as a reckoning Reckoning, but I will say that there's no way around it if you continue like even if The country's project was super positive in certain ways and starts to get better in little tiny ways and bits and pieces if you largely have a country that continues to perpetuate violence even against its own most You know average citizens How are you not going to end up with something like this because you have for example a President that was elected because people were afraid of the brown people I mean that's really it and this is a president Who's willing to sacrifice citizens? You know for every capitalistic reason that that he has he doesn't care and so that lack of empathy I guess is part of our our lineage as a country if I'm to put it that way But it's there is a reaction to this extreme lack of empathy that you're talking about It's almost it's almost providing this kind of contrast for people to That that's kind of activating people in a way that they haven't been or opening people's eyes in a way That they haven't been opened before it seems like to me. I Hope so I think the problem is like when we say people oftentimes the default is white people, right? And that's part of the whole sure, you know, but I think white folks I Do I did read for example that like if it was something like five years ago? They survey surveyed White folks whoever participated whatever the survey was and they said do you think police violence is worse towards people of color? And the percentages were like fairly low in other words like largely. No. No, it's not now It's something like over 60% are like. Yeah, obviously. So there is that You know, it's occurred to me that this incredible disruption of our daily lives It's been brought on by COVID and the lockdown It's almost acted as this this massive disruption or crack in our sort of collective consciousness Allowing for a sort of upwelling of aspects of our society. We've collectively repressed or something and This kind of reminds me a little bit of a certain Mr. Hyde Which you care to reflect that reflect on that a little bit Daniel's written a fabulous book. That's all about the hide of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Yeah, that's an interesting question You know in the context of Jekyll and Hyde in this Victorian setting Hyde was the You know embodiment of all of this Moralistic repression that was embodied by that that culture which was kind of deeply hypocritical and repressive and suppressive and and yet Depraved, you know outside of the the respectable spotlight So, you know, what is what is that correlation now? Like what is what is the hide of our society? I Mean, it's interesting, you know going off your Comment in particular the idea of this reckoning, you know that What is happening to us is Somehow deserved on a karmic level And when you say us When I say yeah, when it's a good point, um, I think I probably mean Like Western globalized commercialized Capitalistic culture that is like destroying the planet and has produced. I think kind of the most monstrous Version of that kind of value and that success in our present So, you know, I guess the interesting question is like do we meaning Meaning that culture do we deserve this in some sense? Have we asked for this have we or have we called it forth in the way that jackal kind of calls forth hide? and I definitely find myself thinking that You know this the the topic of the stranger than fiction the the sequence of events that keeps happening is just so Unrelenting it reminds one of the way that Fiction should be constructed, which is that it you need to keep upping the ante you need to keep raising the stakes and You start a book and then and you actually turned me on to this book. You mentioned the The leave the world behind which is a national book award nominee Which I read a since you recommended it because it caught my attention. So a book starts with a Comfortable Elitist or at least kind of entitled Self-absorbed family and a car going to holiday and at a rented place in the Hamptons Like this isn't gonna go well for this family like fiction demands that this family Get there come up and since sometimes if only for being Comfortable and happy Or not even appreciating their happiness or what they have their entitlement in the beginning of the story All right, so if like the beginning of the story is just everything that's been leading up to now, which you know In the context of this metaphor like I don't know Does this this sequence of terrible things happening to us is this in a fanciful way? kind of the universe's version of of a fictional comeuppance of Of what we as this kind of destructive culture deserve Great question. Can I speak a little bit because I think that's like our bread and butter as writers, right? Like, you know, you reap what you sow and there, you know stories came from cautionary tales and fairy tales and all those Ideas, so I think it's really in us In a literary way to feel that whatever happens is a result of something we've laid down either on purpose or inadvertently and And as writers, it's it's our tendency to to feel like what what did I do and how to what were all the events leading up to this That nothing happens in isolation at Erica. You're you're saying no, no, no I was just thinking about I I didn't want to cut you off though with my like It was his charming Yeah, I was teaching a class like over zoom and it happened to have like Some native students in it and we were talking about for whatever reason the portrait of You know environmentalism that's generally Western and the one that's Native American and it's not as simplistic as I think people think People like well Indians love nature We did do bad things to you know, I mean we were human But I will say this that a lot of times I hear you know this repeated is on social media And it's a general idea really if you think about it's very old European idea that like Human beings are on top and and even though I think They'll say oh no, I don't believe in that they'll still say well human beings are a virus to this earth That would be like an insane way of thinking that would be like Unthinkable I think for a lot of different native traditions the idea is more like the relationship has suffered and it's out of balance and so the relationship between nature and Human beings first of all isn't separable, but we've we've we've put it out of harmony It has to be rebalanced and that's why a lot of native people will talk about this thing And so I think in a way to what I was thinking about was that like What What the problem with being like middle-class even and I certainly am like comfortable in certain ways is not just that you deserve What you get or there's some reckoning or or reestablishment of balance, but just you can't recognize what's natural I mean pandemic the way we could have done lots of things to stop suffering Obviously, and maybe that's our inheritance as a country, but death is natural and I was teaching Richard Lange's Essay called of human carnage and every year and I have to admit it's the same with me and this this essay in my comp class The students react the same way which is so powerfully to this essay which finally Lange has to say I saw this incredibly violent Thing happen in front of me. It screwed me up for a long time But the only thing that made me realize in the end like I'm gonna be okay is death is natural And this is this and so I think that some of the problems that all of us are kind of a little Insulated from the idea of what's natural, you know, is your work is there's something about your work that's That is is part of your work about rebalancing things. Do you think no? No, I Mean, I think that's a thing like I I'm much more interested in I Mean because like we're talking about like that's how fictions built and so I'm much more interested in characters like this guy who It's not possible. And you know, it's it's arguable that perhaps he's assimilated or he's colonized. That's probably true And I don't want to argue for some like wonderful Edenistic native America that like that we can never get back to because that that doesn't leave native people It's just a human place to stand But if if I am arguing for balance, it's only because like I'm showing how out of balance people are maybe I don't know Right, right And it's that demonstration of the imbalance that might lead to some rebalancing perhaps who knows anyway How would you say that All of these calamities upon calamities have been affecting your own your own practice now as writers, I mean I Yeah, are you just home like in bed watching Netflix all day No, I think it's put a lot of I you know not to get too personal, but I think it's put a lot of Financial and time constraints on writers You know, I I get a little impatient when I see people baking things on Facebook because I'm like, what's that? And like, you know, I'm sitting like eating cereal Trying to You know make extra money so we can You know stay in our home. So it's it's been hard. It's been I think hard, but it's also felt It's both felt like what am I even doing this for and it's also felt more necessary in a weird way for me Anyway, it's proven to me like no, I'm in this, you know Because every now and then I don't know if you guys ever do this but like I'll flirt with like Maybe I should just work in a gas station, you know, that sounds like a nice life, you know, just you know By you know, just bring up people's cigarettes and things but um But I think when you're tested in this kind of way, you realize like no, I Have to do this For all it's good and ill So it is it is a like trial-by-fire for me anyway. I don't know What do you guys think? I definitely don't understand why I quit smoking Now I was fantasizing about smoking yesterday. Yeah, I haven't smoked in like eight years Yeah, I know it would be would be awful No, it's great. It'll kill you but we might die anyway. That's my whole thing anyway You know, I said I was working on a sci-fi book and It's about you know, it's about climate change and about the rise of AI and sort of the inevitable human Extinction and savior by this kind of Figure who puts people in domes and then kind of genetically engineers the ideal sort of human qualities that might lead to a Genuinely like progressive human race that could coexist with the planet and live in the future so I've been writing this thing and I Think in the beginning of the pandemic, I was like man, I'm doing great Like all these writers are like I feel like I've been talking to people and they're struggling and like I feel so I have so much time and I have and then And then I took a break from it. I got married. I went back to New Jersey. I went home I stayed in a creepy Airbnb with my wife that led to the story and I Wrote another story because it was kind of like this it was sort of biographical and very like contemporary and Suddenly like the world of my sci-fi book started to seem very remote and theoretical and sort of like these were these were ideas that didn't even seem relevant like they had seemed relevant to the world that we were living in but then now it's like what Like I'm writing about Even writing about AI and You know, I had some like speculative elements So I've been trying to find my way back to the novel, but I think what's interesting is that I'm one finding that my Focus in terms of perspective is Narrowing on the characters and I'm trying to Rather than like accessing these grand themes that I think I was after him in The draft leading up to this I'm trying to access my own outrage and anger and fear and feeling like we're at war and Giving that to the characters and so I'm finding the approach as much more Individualistic and sort of immediately a motive for what I'm going through rather than Trying to write this thing that was kind of this Idea of what would be Hot right now or what would be topical? You know, this is stuff. I think a lot about my mom was a Dancer she went a little dance studio on my dad and she got out of like a lot of poverty my dad I Gave me a copy of to kill a mockingbird to tell you this ridiculous anecdote and I was like where are the dragons What is the point of this book, you know, and then I got to college and I took literature courses and my parents were happy about it and I did it anyway and I Really fell in love with what I like to call realism realism instead of literary right because I in a way those those things can be applied like Things I think like depth of characterization depth of theme You know they can be applied to cops and spaceships too, but I think I'm somebody who's moved further and further away from it. Like I started writing poetry that's gone and so on and Then I started writing very realistic novels. The last one was about native gangs and no one wanted to read that and Now I'm kind of moving further and further towards speculative But I think the one thing that I can say is that that's not a bad process Right because we kind of need both like in order to imagine ourselves Out of this and like literally a lot of what NASA uses was one speculative literature. They were reading Heimlich they were Heinlein they were reading all of these people and their brains started to go on fire And they started to come up with solutions to things We also need that human element. We need like that character we can connect with in the dome, you know So I that's I mean to me. It's just sounds like you're kind of going through the fire and making it better, you know So do you think you guys can help can you guys can kind of write us out of this Okay Well, what I mean, let's talk about the kind of future you might imagine Hopefully not domes I will say that scares me living in domes. Yeah, I think another Problem with trying to write during this time is that it's it is beyond imagination after Trump's election. I was like My my antagonist is weak, you know, because this guy on TV is far greater than anything I could ever imagine as far as Malice and then and it's really hard to write, you know, to honestly It's really hard to write to the level of what we're doing right now as far as you know You need your strong antagonist and And it's such you know, what we've got For leadership is such a caricature that it just sets you up like, okay, do I want to write satire? I don't write satire, you know, I don't I don't personally want to write such or such or script But like, you know, how would I meet what's happening now? You know, even imaginatively and I can't I can't think of a way You know, it's sort of like the depth of subtlety and subtlety is something that I think fiction writers Really rely on being able to use so as for whether or not I could I could write my way out of this situation I come up with any solution the answer is absolutely not. It's actually You know, it is stranger than fiction and it calls into question like what fiction can It makes me wonder what the future is after this point for fiction. I don't and I don't know the answer You know, it's interesting one of my former students She has a two book deal and it became like this completely different Book that she wrote but the book that I had worked on with her with her thesis It's never stopped giving me the chills and now even more than ever because it was called ever cotton and it was about how after the election slavery was reinstituted and Black folks all of their um, they were Everything of theirs was, you know absorbed by the government and redistributed to white folks and everybody who was white became Wealthy and then on top of it There was a cotton that was genetically engineered to just like it could like the minute you picked it It would be it would regenerate and I honestly am like, please please Juliana You know come back to that manuscript because now that to me does seem relevant and that's speculative, right? But it's It's so close to reality and it's so like it I I think that I think it is I think speculative in ways has become more Because everyone like I think a lot of writers of color are talking about this like If bad things have happened to you you kind of wait for the worst thing And so a lot of us are like I knew it, you know somehow even with trump being elected. I knew it I woke up three nights in a row when he was nominated. I just knew it So I was living in the rural Midwest. I knew it So I think like now it almost feels like yeah, this is this is where thought was gonna happen And then I'm like, oh god, oh no, but I have the luxury of feeling that way only because my job has been fairly stable too So I don't know I I think fiction um Has I think stories, you know have always been and they will as long as we survive they will survive But yeah, they're gonna have to morph around us and we're gonna change, you know So I mean, I think there's this I don't know if it's an illusion or just a desire that Fiction can be cautionary enough that it will Change behavior or make people better I I don't I don't I don't think that's the case and I I think It provides an escape and the people who read books who are Interested and curious and intelligent Are probably already on our side. Anyway, you know, those are necessarily the People who need to be changed. I mean in terms of well, that's not true at all. Everyone needs to change We all need to change But I mean as to your question I was um I was just playing out a scenario with my friend when I was writing these short stories I was like I want to write Like a civil war story like a second like what what happened? What would it take to actually get us into a civil war scenario and how would that break down and what would that look like and we kind of like Going off what I said earlier in the sense that like, okay, you like let's keep playing out these these steps from a from a writer's perspective And you know, you can play it out like the election is inconclusive and trump sticks around and then he starts rallying the the troops and Then I don't know ice is militarized and like what would it take until we until and then there is attacks on liberal areas like boulder and then There's militia rolling through town and your Registration, you know, your voter registration is known and are you a democrat or are you a republican? Like that can get scary very quickly Um And I'm scared. I there's definitely this desire to believe that If biden wins everything is going to be fine uh I'm not so convinced about that scenario either There seems like there's a large percentage of people who feel the other way too, right? Yeah, trump gets reelected will all be fun. Yeah, it's crazy days. It seems like Also, I did read that As to literature changing people write that, you know, it's always is hairy, but They did do like a neurological experiments and they would put on You know, what do they call the little paths on people's heads? Clearly I have ways to go for my speculative chops, right? I think they're called brainy hats Brainy hats, brainy hats Thank you. And um, when they it when they're experiencing something and when they're reading experiencing the same thing It registers the same way and over time fiction specifically does help people to develop empathy So But not nonfiction screw that What are you guys reading right now? What are you what are you hungering for what kind of narratives are you drawn to? Reading things in translation on I think I I need um any distance, you know, so I'm reading Uh Works that are translated into English from japanese or russian I think there is something to be said for that reading for escape idea You know, I think that I think a lot of us do that, especially in hard times and Somehow like even removing myself from my country my language is helping me How about you guys? I've been I get in these really finicky moods from like I want something that's just like this And often it's or recently it's been like I want literary fiction as in it's It's well written and there's a great deal of attention paid to craft But it's still it has a genre orientation. It's it's a it's a propelling story There's maybe either a thriller or Maybe a sci-fi or a speculative element, um, which is why I went and read that Leave the world behind when you mentioned it. Um that uh ramon alum Uh, which was I thought a pretty wonderful book. I wasn't a perfect book, but Pretty damn good book. Um, and then I don't know. I found my like I was uh the fires forced me out of my house recently And so we were I was up at my sister's sister-in-law's house in the mountains and I'd like finish that book and I was just like I need something and then I pulled the magicians off the off the shelf And I listened to it on audio years ago and loved it But it's very different to listen to something and read it and I started reading it immediately. I was like, oh This is what I want Love is a friend of mine and let me tell you something. He is really what Flipped me like he the magicians did it like that's what it was because it was probably already happening Anyway, that and rewatching like starting to watch doctor who again I'd pretty much been like just realism Um literary because I wanted to be you know as you know this Mixed young kid. Um, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be taken seriously And if I were honestly myself, I wanted to be in the new or anthology of british literature when I realized That would not happen. Um, that that started the processes up. Um, but One of my friends had said you need to read this book and now I know part of why loves has this literary quality Because as much as he's Still angry at them for various reasons his parents were like scholars and poets and his dad Um, was a poet who won many awards And he tried to kind of like not disappoint them and then he was like, I love nardia You know, and so, you know, he wrote the magicians that whole series and I just adore that to pieces Mexican gothic if ramon alum is like the speculative edge, but on the super literary side and not very propulsive from what I understand Mexican gothic is like right on the other side smart But like if this one's literary and this one's commercial This but they're kind of like two halves of the same because they both have like depth of theme And great characterization, but this one's really propulsive and it's smart in a super covert way I love mexican gothic and my friend, uh, rebecca ronhorris. I'm reading her black son Which is this fantasy world based on mind mythology And it's really as usual like the world she creates is so alternative and so different and so brilliant and intricate and um So those are two fabulous books that are technically escapist, but Really pretty brilliant in their way and what they're saying is really brilliant in the end Even if it's like smartly commercial in the way it's they're both paced and worlded, you know And who's mexican gothic by? Um, her name is silvia morano garcia. Yeah You know, I was drawn to uh putting this program together because I was trying to figure out Who would who could have possibly written this this time that we're in? And I you know, I thought oh, is it is it vonnegut now, um, is it Is it sort of some joseph heller? Is it is it gore of it all or you know What who do you who do you think could write the next chapter of this? I mean Who is this crazy novelist who's written this story for us? Totally game of thrones, dude. It's game of thrones. Yeah, because the other guys aren't violent enough You know game of thrones dude is just killing people left and right So I think it's him. I would maybe say like margaret atwood. Oh margaret atwood. Yeah, that's good I'll get a second margaret atwood. Okay. I would like to see her do that I wonder what she's doing right now. Actually. Yeah, like margaret I'm sure she's like long and throw away this manuscript because you know Margaret if you happen upon this on facebook, please leave something in the comments Well, I'd like to turn to q&a, but you know, I think that President trump and vice president biden are stealing our thunder this evening not a lot of action on facebook Um And our socially distanced audience is rather slim this evening If anyone is inspired to ask a question from our little audience or even of each other here on the stage I can ask a question. I'm just wondering how you guys like How covet has changed your um your writing routine and how you compensate Like what you do on a daily basis that's different from what you did before It it doesn't it hasn't changed so much. I was teaching online Before this hit anywhere. I was I've been teaching at cu online and And well, I mean, you know, I was teaching at lighthouse too. So that was a transition So now we're doing zoom classes, but um It hasn't you know, the the routine is just get up in the morning right for a few hours um I mean a great day, you know, I'll get up right for a few hours have a little launch right for a few more hours Then turn my attention to like schoolwork and everything else. Um I don't think it's changed the routine. It's it's I have more days where Those terrible days when you Go and look what you've written and you're like, this is garbage This is like, I don't know how to do this clearly like this is and then just you know the breakdown by 9 30 a.m Like getting back in bed and like I can't do this. I'm never gonna finish this and then Needing a little like buck up and then you're like, all right. All right. I'll get back to it. So I have more days like that I wouldn't say it's changed the the routine, but certainly like the emotional consistency is A little more all over the place, maybe that makes sense. Yeah, and and like Daniel, I'm I uh I fought for I meant as my as you know, to my bio. Um, I've a um Job at Western Illinois University. I'll even though I'm from here and I fought for an online schedule And I've you know for the foreseeable future. I have it and I really have it now because everyone has it and so um In some ways and and this is a real hell semester too because I have five classes I took an extra on and we we were at a three three But then they were like long story short but before kovat We had budget issues because we had a crazy tea party governor and so We'd fire all of our lecturers because we're unionized. We don't have adjuncts. We have lecturers and they're almost all gone And so we had to take on extra classes and I took on another one So chair was freaking out and then I teach to next semester. So anyway, and I just had other various projects Just projects projects projects like all kinds of things like I was losing my mind And I still am and I and I burned down my current novel again for the fourth time and rewrote it You know how I mean burned it down to maybe 10 percent of what it was for the fourth time Because I'm horrible at structure and I'm trying to get better at that. That's really my problem. Um But I do I feel like the terror of the Pandemic has subsided to some degree or another but every once in a while I realized like Oh, no, I could still die and people I know have died and more could and my mom is 80 You know and so and then trump didn't die. Sorry And so, you know or and trump might win And so those those things start to come back and and they probably I probably have that Same kind of like if I'm honest with myself More consistent freak out or because of that. Yeah I'm trying to find a facebook question. I have a question. We have a real question. Yes, we do have a question Hello authors I move back from the mic a little bit. Um, thank you all for a stimulating discussion tonight Here's my question for you in the time we have left Do you think so I'm david haska womley-widen and I've been promoting a book Winter Counts for the last two months and I've done many many zoom events Now erica, you have a book coming out erica k. Do you think that The book industry will we go back to having book tours and in-person events? How do you think that's going to change because all I've ever known is zoom events and such Do you think we'll ever go back or is it forever changed and that's for everyone up there? I yeah, it's anyone's guess of it I think um, you know, I actually talked to my agent about it because I was like, I don't want it You know, I don't want this to come out during the pandemic and Luckily, everyone's backed up so much. It's gonna be it's gonna be like end of 2022 for me or early 2023 Because they're just all backed up from covet So I was saying, you know, please please not during covet and she's like and she said I you think things are gonna go back to normal. They're not we're we're just gonna learn a new way of doing things And she said look at how people buy books now. They don't go to bookstores Like they used to they go online and they find the cheapest price and they get it, you know Ship to their door. So she said it's she believed that We're just going to have to find a new normal Which will be more virtual And I know some authors have already done that like they you know, they'll do the like virtual book clubs and they'll visit, you know Via, um, they used to be skype now at zoom, right? So I think that's been happening for a while. Um That said there were those Have been those big, you know, celebrity author events Where they get paid like 20 grand and they show up somewhere and they you know They kind of like, you know, it's a big auditorium and we've seen those and done those with with lighthouse So that's the one thing I kind of wonder like is that dad, you know, um I I don't know It's gonna be a while before people want to breathe around each other, you know in some places They don't care, but I that's one thing I I do. I don't know. What do you guys think? Well, I think we're gonna be starved for that, you know in-person experience and then, you know, hopefully people will be, you know Perhaps we'll come out of this with people going to their local bookstore to buy books more than buying them off amazon I don't know That is uh, my my handsome boyfriend asked that question and his novel winter counts is brilliant I know i'm biased, but so the literary crime novel is fabulous. Um set on the rosebud res I Dave and I were talking about this the other day and I at western we run a writing series and we have like a large grant and you know I I have said many times that Look, you know me being able to teach online. I think that academics need to be less in the current Even the post-pandemic current economic situation we have I I spent, you know over a decade my entire thirties stuck in a tiny town Um really in hell hoping to god one of the agents I would acquire Would oh maybe this one will sell up to the big press and I'll get out of here and it never happened And that was painful. It took things from me even though I'm of course. I'm grateful to have a job Which people remind me we should be grateful to have a job And I'm like I am but I also lost things and um So a part of me wants to be like hey, you know what let let people teach on zoom so they can be with their partners Stop making it such a fight But yeah, I hope that some things I'd like to see a new norm in which We have a more chosen face-to-face culture like I do it for for a A mid-list native american writer I do okay And so I do I I used to travel quite a bit for readings and now I mainly do it over zoom And I still admit I love to travel and I love to do it But there were people who expected me to do it for 200 dollars And what I have learned is like y'all if you don't have the money, that's totally okay But I am I can do zoom for 200 dollars. You know what I mean? So Thanks for being here Erica But you I can drive. Yeah, you can drive. Yeah, you know, I'm not like flying across the country. That's right We can put you up tonight though if you need it. Thanks. Yeah, we'll find a place I You know, I used to Produce a literary series in LA for a long time and I know that And it was really dependent upon Book tours right authors on book tours and I know that they've been cutting back on that for quite a while And you know publishers are always trying to Save money and and then so many people so many authors are tied to speaker bureaus and it's Or the big ones are at least and you know where used to be able to get someone for free They were starting to charge folks and I unfortunately I think that when we come out of this The whole book tour thing is probably going to take a pretty Big hit I would think Unfortunately, I don't think that's a bad thing. I always thought it was kind of I don't know a little bit BS for an author to charge so much money so they could promote their own work Just show up. You know just show up and do it and because it's all for you, you know, but um And I I do understand that like people don't have time to do You know their time is worth a lot, but um, but yeah I I think that would be okay with me. Honestly if people just If the big ticket um book tour thing went away and writers just decided to make themselves more available For what's in their own best interest. I just don't know if publishers are going to be sending people out like they used to That's the thing. Oh, they already stopped doing. Yeah Yeah That's all like privately done. You know what I mean like the speakers And I just wondered too how much longer we're going to keep making physical books Which is kind of devastating I love my books. I like real real things And That that has a shelf life for sure like and so probably this increasing movement toward virtualization which humanity seems kind of Progressing into anyway is certainly going to extend to that There's a lot. I mean there's a lot of grief in the loss of this like the sexiness of the vision of being a writer all of that like the The All of this that we're talking about the big book tour is the The idea that you're going to get there one day that you're going to be one of those Those big people and but there's a lot of ego in that too. You know, so I mean if there's part of this process is like What can I pair away and just get down to being at the desk and like enjoying it? Which is hard some days But that's all there is like everything else is well, you know, it's it's Unguaranteed and it's fleeting and it's It's not necessarily even going to satisfy you if like the daily work doesn't I think though that for me. I just wanted to be in a like a town where there was a Thai restaurant I mean, I never wanted to be Tommy orange. That sounds honestly kind of terrible You know and Alexi was obviously a monster. That's he was a bit of one and then he became one And there's a super tier like I because I've been doing because we have a good Foundation ground at Western. I know exactly what people cost now Like I know exactly what they cost and so you're right. There's this kind of creepy tiered class system to it But I think there are ways to have better new normals like I don't I think the book as a fetish object Will will come into being like beautiful hardback beautiful books and then like Spotify We have you know, you mean like our ebooks are Spotify and then when we love something We'll get a beautiful fetish object and put that on the shelf I think you know books if you look at a book it's like ecologically so sound It's they never go away. We don't we don't read them and throw them away No one throws away books So they go from us to our little libraries and our good wills and they go somewhere else And you know, so it's like and it gets passed from person to person So and I have books that are you know easily 100 years old on my shelf Not because I collect them. I mean they're falling apart, but they're Just they just got passed down that way. So if you if you I think just given our Are bent toward You know the objects that we do keep I think books I don't know. I have to believe that paper books will be will be there They've they've stuck around this far Yeah, I agree. They smell good We do have a question from Carl on Facebook He said he's asking what is the proper distance of dystopian fiction from the world? It shouldn't be too on the nose Right What do you think? Yeah, that seems more like Daniel's question, but I will say now I've thought a lot about this because I got really tired of dystopia fiction like dystopic fiction I was like, you know Instead of imagining the world as a destruction like over and over again So as I was writing this big science fiction novel about another world that was sort of Mayan inspired actually where these these gigantic red people That's this idea that like if the Mayans had never been interrupted by the environment and then colonization would they be far advanced? um and then this communication with a girl who worked at seddie, but You know the problem with dystopia is that why people like it so much is because obviously it's it's becoming realer and realer so really it seems like I mean the speculative reality is absolutely coming to me our reality reality and people want to read more about it like dystopia is More popular than ever wouldn't you say as a oh, yeah um I mean, it's an interesting question of like how does it need to be distorted? I don't know. I mean I ran into that when I was writing these short stories And I was in the middle of one that was again very like kind of autobiographical and eventually I was just like this is too Like real this is too Like I'm trying to write My this aspect of my life into a story. Um, and then maybe I there's a relief of going back to the abstraction of the other world, but um Yeah, I mean there's it's an interesting question like Do you need to skew it somehow? Is there an inherent satisfaction in reading something that's like, okay, this is a dystopia. It's not our world world But as it goes along There's a sense of oh, okay. These like the either there's a thematic echo or there's just this kind of This sense that this is an alternate version of what might have been I I don't think anything can not or I don't think anything can not work Like anything can work. Right, right. Gotcha. Gotcha well It's getting to be about that time Let me just check. This is the great thing about doing qs q&a on facebook is that I can just call up facebook here on my phone and uh Someone says they like the filming Yeah, the authors The filming is good the content No, you guys have been great and thanks for being good sports with my my I felt like my my topic this evening was a little Was a little silly to begin with but I I feel like we turned it into a good Good meditation Thank you. Justin and thanks to the longmont museum and thanks for having us here. These are some of my favorite people So You're some of our new Most favorite people here in longmont and you guys are welcome back here any old time Again and again, we have a Thai restaurant. Oh boy. So you may want to just stay here I might yeah For free. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of free Free housing here. Not actually that's not true Anyway on behalf of the longmont museum and the city of longmont and the people of longmont Thank you for joining us this evening And uh, we'll see you next week for our 100 100th anniversary of women's suffrage panel Led by the may great may of conran of kgnu Um signing off See you next week. Thank you. Thank you