We’re thrilled to report that Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen—who will be appearing in the Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series on Monday, November 13, 7:30 pm, at Rice University’s Stude Concert Hall–-was named one of this year’s 24 recipients of MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowships.

We are happy for him and for all of you, who will have the privilege of hearing him speak on his first appearance in the Series. Don’t miss it—he will be in conversation with Houston native William Broyles, founding editor of Texas Monthly, Academy-Award nominated screenwriter, and author of Brothers in Arms, an account of his return to Vietnam to meet the men and women he fought against during the war. Inprint will join with Houston Public Media to live-stream this reading.

Another of the 2017 MacArthur “genius” fellowship recipients is novelist Jesmyn Ward, who appeared in the Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series in March 2013. You can watch a video here of her reading from her National Book Award-winning novel Salvage the Bones and her conversation with fellow novelists Amber Dermont and Robert Boswell, on the Inprint website in our Archive of Readings.

We were also delighted to learn last week that Man Booker Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. He appeared in the Series in March 2015 on book tour for his new novel The Buried Giant–-and you can watch the video of his reading and conversation with novelist Robert Cremins here, also in the Inprint Archive of Readings.

There’s more. Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith, who in June was named the 22^nd Poet Laureate of the United States, joined us for the Series in February 2016, reading selections from her memoir Ordinary Light and her award-winning poetry collection Life on Mars, and conversing with poet Paul Otremba. You can watch her video in the Inprint Archive of Readings here.

In April 2015, novelist Marlon James gave a powerful reading from his new book A Brief History of Seven Killings–-and then a few months later, the book was awarded the 2015 Man Booker Prize. If you weren’t one of the lucky folks in the theater that night, you can watch his reading and conversation with novelists Cristina Henriquez and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni–-here in (you guessed it) the Inprint Archive of Readings.

That is what we love about the Inprint readings. These writers, who we work hard to bring to Houston, are not only the literary stars of today, but they are also the literary stars of tomorrow. That’s why we hope you’ll join us for the readings this season, which in addition to Nguyen, include Jennifer Egan & Claire Messud on November 6, Jhumpa Lahiri on January 29, Paul Auster on February 12, Aminatta Forna & Samanta Schweblin on March 26, and Rigoberto González & Kevin Prufer on April 23. After all, there’s something indelible about the writer’s presence, and the immediacy of the reading and interview. And if for some reason you can’t be there, or the reading is sold out, in many cases (if the writer will permit it), these great nights of literary performance and conversation are available for you to watch and listen to anytime in our online Inprint Archive of Readings.

One way or another, we hope to be your companion in literary adventure. See you at the readings, or online, in the Archive!

The post Meet today’s literary stars, and tomorrow’s first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.

It was a rare treat to be in Christ Church Cathedral, with its calming gardens, majestic stained glass, well-worn, worshipped-upon wooden pews, aroma of aged books, and the idea of “ministering” in mind. Through her memoirs Lit, The Liar’s Club, and Cherry, as well as poetry collections Abacus, The Devil’s Tour, Sinners Welcome, and Viper Rum, Karr has concocted spiritual balms for readers, who appreciate her signature wit and honesty.

The event was doubly jubilant, serving as a homecoming of sorts for the Texas-born author and as a launch for Inprint’s new season.

As a Southern storytelling worth her salt, Karr began by drolly reflecting on her genesis as a reader, writer, and social person. “I was a biter,” she joked, of her youth, and “my career goal in high school was to stay out of the penitentiary.” Later, she expounded on her struggle to find her voice: “I wanted to be fancier and go to school at the Sorbonne…not a red-neck from Port Arthur. TX.”

Later, she expounded on her struggle to find her voice: “I wanted to be fancier and go to school at the Sorbonne…not a red-neck from Port Arthur. TX.”

But, as she articulated, “the vernacular of Southeast Texas is hardwired in my body.” As a child, she recalled that the “truth in memoirs tugged at me.” After devouring the autobiography of Helen Keller and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she thought of memoirs, this “outsider art,” with relief and promise, proving that literature did not necessarily mean “men who used summer as a verb and slept with each other’s wives.”

On the meteoric rise of the memoir genre, Karr posited that fiction is moving in a more “dystopian” direction, and so “readers are hungry for the real.” An examined life, she noted, “starts with events and manufactures meaning from them,” rather than the other way around, as she believes other prose writers might.

An examined life, she noted, “starts with events and manufactures meaning from them,” rather than the other way around, as she believes other prose writers might.

She also championed the revision process, in the “radical overhaul” style of Yeats or Pound—revealing herself as a poet’s poet. She likened herself to “a dog with a bone” when she’s revising, admitting that she’s thrown out over 1,200 finished pages and once even broke her delete key. She then read a snippet from the end of The Art of Memoir, on the work of the late writer-mathematician G.H. Hardy, which warrants its own read.

Ultimately, Mary Karr is a keen recorder of the observable world, and I’d be remiss if I neglected to present some the truth-bombs she delivered ex tempore in characteristically snappy one-liners:

• —Writing a memoir feels like knocking yourself out with your own fist.
• —Only about 15% of The Art of Memoir is about writing. The rest hopes to make better readers of your own mind and the memories streaming through them.
• —Each of you is a singular event.
• —One way we tendril towards each other is through books.
• —As often as I am bored by someone, I am shocked by how interesting they can be.

The event moved on to a fruitful and productive question-and-answer period with Mimi Swartz, an executive editor at Texas Monthly and former staff writer at the New Yorker. When asked how she switched from autobiographical narratives to a craft book, Karr quipped that, “I’m an old maid school teacher, plus I can be bought” with an agent’s generous offer.

When asked how she switched from autobiographical narratives to a craft book, Karr quipped that, “I’m an old maid school teacher, plus I can be bought” with an agent’s generous offer.

The audience got a kick out of her candor in this reply and others. When asked if everyone has a memoir, Karr assented, first clarifying that not everybody could write a memoir, though “everyone has a rich tapestry of love and hate, joy and disappointment…that Shakespeare filled books with.”

The event then opened up to audience questions, which Karr tackled with grace and aplomb, on topics ranging from her opinion on the Catholic church to her son’s filmmaking practices to interpreting a homeless man rebuffing her offer of a vegan wrap as a “moment of G-d.”

Karr translated specific concerns, for instance, on acting as amanuensis for elderly family members, to more universal literary truths. In defining her style of memoir, she explained that she “tries not to attribute or speculate about other people’s motives,” focusing instead on how she reacted to particular events. Similarly, she delineated how “a journalist would look up an arrest record,” but a memoirist must “trust the pain of your own experience as real.” And, subsequently, trust the reader to assume that the memories of seven-year old may not be entirely accurate.

In the spirit of the church setting, Karr concluded by expanding on her “different methods of prayer,” citing the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius as especially helpful—all in her irreverent, unabashed way. These centering devices seem to help generate memoirs, helping writers “interrogate the memory.”

Mary Karr’s visit to Houston, no doubt, will be a memory that readers and writers will cherish for a long time.

The post Mary Karr discusses The Art of Memoir first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.