Saying ‘yes” to the world: Anthony Doerr reads for H-town

January 29, 2016, by

RM3_8019It felt electric when I walked down to my seat on Monday night for the highly anticipated, sold-out Inprint reading by Anthony Doerr.  Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for All the Light We Cannot See, Doerr’s novel about war-ravaged France has been on the New York Times bestseller list for the better part of two years.

There was so much interest in his visit to H-town that, for the first time, Inprint, in collaboration with Houston Public Media, live-streamed the reading.  In fact, tickets for Doerr’s event, part of the 2015-2016 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series, sold out in 90 minutes. According to St. John Flynn, Arts and Culture Director at Houston Public Media, more than a thousand people saw the reading online, and that number will rise, as it will soon be available on the Inprint website for those who still wish to partake.

Impressive.

As Rich Levy introduced Doerr, he surprised me by saying Doerr would be reading from a short story—his 2011 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award Winner.  Doerr, who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, has described himself as coming from a place where if you described yourself as a “writer,” you would be called “precocious or pretentious.”  Doerr, who is likeable and easy-going, certainly is not pretentious.  But he sure can write.  Continue reading