We are natural partners. Decides United States to other countries work closely with the vatican . Yes, peter. 179 countries have diplomatic relations and 30 of them are islamic countries. What kind of work today due . Well the islamic countries any of them are trying to work with the oecg promote interreligious dialogue and find solutions to radical islam. Many of the secular European Countries are historic monarchies and have had relationship with the holy c or centuries. The latin america, a strong number of catholics in america and the intense social issues in the church deeply involved in is a very strong relationship. In your view ambassador renny has the vatican ever overstepped its bounds as a religious organization into the political . Well, i probably shouldnt answer some of the issues that came up in the two bush campaigns in United States that were highly controversial about the intersection of the elegy in politics. My focus is the diplomat is to show how the oecg and interact with other nations and engage of the affairs of the states. What is your background and how do you get did you get in that position . I was i i was a political appointee by george bush. I have known george bush with long time. Hes a great man, a great friend and so i when i had the opportunity to serve as certainly want to do it. I had no idea he would pick me for this particular mission although i have done a lot of commissions and special missions at the state and federal level in my career. The global vatican is the name of the book and the author is ambassador francis rooney. This is booktv on cspan2. [applause] thank you. Thank you. Good evening everyone. You know, i love coming to cleveland for this annual event. I look forward to it. I enjoy every minute of it and it just grows and grows and thank you for your loyalty. Thank you for your support and thank you for all your enthusiasm. Give it up for yourselves for being such a great audience. [applause] you know every time i think about this prize i think how anomalous. A poet, a poet in the 1930s who happen to be a white woman in dallas one of the first certainly is not the first prizes in celebration of what today we would call excellence in diversity. Quite an extraordinary person whats wole soyinka anisfieldwolf would have been. It used to beatnik named the black Pulitzer Prize at least uptown. Langston hughes one, terenzio houston was on the cover of the the for winning it. Martin luther king himself to one it. 25 years ago under the leadership of Ashley Montagu who is a dear friend, it began to be transformed to focus on artistic excellence and what today we would call to use a buzzword cultural diversity. Ashley put me on the Selection Committee in the past and the foundation generously asked if i would be the chair. So we restructured it and i asked my friends Joyce Carol Oates pinker and my fellow friend a man i met simon shah most has remained a good friend. That is in so many years ago that i cant even remember and we have a good time arguing about these 400 bucks, i will tell you that. Its a miracle you guys that any of you one. [laughter] you know it takes actual people on the ground. You could theorize what a prize should the and how splendid and rewarding an event should unfold but it takes people on the ground to particular eyes that vision, to manifest it. I think that it is befitting if we all join in celebrating honoring, and thanking the person who for so many years epitomized the spirit of edith anisfieldwolf. She retired from his position last year because her husband was ill but she and i over the years have become very very good friends and those of you in the know as we say, know that there wouldnt be this marvelous event without mary louise hart. Please give it up for mary louise. Standup mary louise. [applause] you know so many people are so pernicious that it would have to be the flood, right . They said if i have to retire i want you to miss me by realizing how important i was because your event falls apart. You all know what im talking about. [laughter] not mary louise. Mary louise handpicked our successor who was the literary journalist karen long and we worked with her for a year. Please stand up. [applause] so now it is show time as they say. As many of you know i have something of an interest in genealogy. The art and science of mapping ones origins whether using the latest dna testing and technology or oldfashioned archive digging, the searches not only for ones origins but for understanding them as a key to the present compelling, its addictive and in the best of circumstances generative. If this last quality that is evident on every page of Eugene Glorias third collection of poems called my favorite warlord the winner of this years anisfieldwolf book award for poetry. The poems in this book generated geography of the poets life and they map out his exploration of home, place and displacement, departure and arrival and ultimately of return. They are touchstones excuse me there are touchdowns throughout. The war load, his father and his mother recur throughout the book plotting points along the rightist path. We find that one name, one place or even one gear can resonate multiply and provide the reader different points in the poets journey. Lets take one example. The year 1967 for instance. Thats the name of the poem in which famed photographer diane argus, looking for images of freaks while quote all of the state could in our small but really and constellation managing to escape unscathed from the cameras long gaze. It is also the gear he writes curiously enough, in which a nigerian named wole soyinka with whom he will share the stage, is being hauled to jail on trumped up charges in the poem allegory of the laundromat. That very year 1967 was so important for the arts of politics as these poems the tests, its also markedly important in his personal life. In the poem detroit its the year he thinks up when his motherinlaw and a quote this woman who hands me a bean cake comes to his mind also as quote the woman she was in 1967, giving birth to my wife. What i find so resonant in all of these poems ladies and gentlemen is the idea of multiplicity, that we possess many identity stemming from the many diverse forces that have shaped us. And glory as case from a filipino background to education among the nuns in the Catholic School to comingofage in the same neighborhood in which and i quote janis joplin shored up supplies from our corner chinese grocer. A line from his delightful poem, new zealand. The books second poem here on earth in which the poet and his wife ordered their favorites in a Chinese Restaurant sets the tone of the volume for me and i quote. The booths are lit by bright faces, vietnamese, chinese. Tai and filipino. Hundreds of years on their faces. Schoolteachers, witnesses of terror, readers of check off, Office Clerks with inner lives. In the same moment and at the same place we can all be and indeed we all are so many Different Things at the very same time. My favorite warlord is his first book of poetry. The former United States poet Robert Pinsky said and i quote it demonstrates the essential quality of poetry, depth of language. The power to get past the First Services of words and things were to put it differently he continues the power to hear harmonies beyond the obvious ones, finding new undertones, new undertones of meaning. I like that very at glorious honors include fulbright scholar grant, the Poetry Society of America George bogen memorial award, the National Poetry series selection, and asianamerican literary board the San FranciscoArt Commission grant. He has had fellowships and residencies and mcdowell colony the Resident Artist Program and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts among many others. This past spring he was Bowling GreenState University college of arts and Sciences Distinguished writer. Born in manila in the philippines of course in 1957 he grew up in San Francisco and earned his bachelors degree at San Francisco state. His masters degree at Miami University and an mfa at the university of oregon. He is currently professor of english at Depaul University in indiana. It is with good reason that my favorite warlord was the first selection for discussion in a Brown Bag Book Club at the ohio center for the book at the Cleveland Public Library which will feature each of the books being honored tonight through the month of october. Ladies and gentlemen, for his deep expiration of origins and identities and for his lyrical embrace of difference and diversity, Eugene Gloria is the recipient of the 2013 anisfieldwolf book award for poetry. [applause] [applause] i thought we were going to share that glass. Its a communal thing. [laughter] thank you all very very much for being here tonight to help us celebrate this wonderful award. And thank thank you professor gates for that wonderful introduction. I am deeply touched and i just hope i dont fall apart here. I will do my best. I will begin with a poem about indianapolis. Its a poem that dr. Gates mentioned earlier and i will read about three poems and i will start with that. Here on earth, imagine the pleasure inside this dorm the rush from rain gutters. And imagine yourself inside of the restaurant on an island street. Say it is a bad neighborhood even after the rain. Taking the face of our waiter who is the proprietor and saying peter its been weeks. You have come to eat. We have been hankering for your we know what we want. The same meal we always order. Me the number one appetizer. My wife, the number three. For our entreentre es number 38 in the number 30. The boots here are lit by bright faces, vietnamese, thai chinese and filipino, hundreds of years on their faces. Schoolteachers, witnesses of terror, readers of check off Office Clerks with inner lives. Then the bottle blonde in a dress shirt with silver cufflinks mosey soon sin to pick up his takeout order. He is tall and pockmarked. He could almost be my father except for the died blond hair. Over the number one and the number three appetizers we are speculating, my wife and i, where this man comes from. Manila or saigon . Oh but here comes peter with our orders of steaming bowls, our faces shining like lights. Inside this booth my mood faces a lantern in the mainstream lengthening, lengthening. Here on earth, we are curtained by rain, a subset in the far corners floating toward the center. We are an island in landlocked america. We are thai, filipino and vietnamese feared we are all of us post exotics. [applause] this next poem is about San Francisco. It features my sister and in a very difficult light and i apologize to her already in advance for the bad experience. This is called allegory of the laundromat. Another emily loring romance, her third in one month. How could she hope that this love would remain steadfast when he learned her shameful secret . It was 1967 in the fun nominal world on the brink of laundry baskets had record snowfall in chicago. Astronauts burning and their space capsule showing for wole soyinka being hauled to jail on trumped up charges, 82 or rest and a police raid precipitating a riot. Here comes the night is what my sister heard the band for her sing on the rooftop of three backyards away. The hippie drummer waved his drum sticks. My sister wishing for a van morrison song. This was the year jay was ambushed, the summer fidel would seek refuge in spanish harlem and pluck chickens on the neighbors porch. The year my sister was almost raped at a laundromat. It was saturday in San Francisco. My sister negotiated between delegates and permit press, between dark and semidark socks with danger and romance. There was no escaping that task of laundry, loads upon new ones loads. She was indentured not to nuns who took in troubled teens from good families but to a mother at work on the weekend. When a man loves a woman played on the scratched 45 over and over from the tomboys bedroom before our flat. There was no escaping the man in the brown derby jacket and net near antilaundromat that afternoon. He came from behind and put his left hand across her mouth and his other on her just when she was about to leave. Emily loring describes the waywardness of the heart to the rhythm of the rinse cycle. Here comes the night was not playing in her head but the drummer walked in on them and spooked her attacker. The hippie drummer with his dopey labrador was on his way to the park. Vietnam, the sixday war, black with riots in newark and detroit all have a gloom and rage and it was hotter then in july. Who gives a hoot about the flood of runaways from nebraska . Who gives a whit about the indelicate balance of [applause] and i will close with this poem. This is a love poem, a love poem for my wife but a love poem for the city of detroit traded detroit. Hands me a bean cake. We are driving through bella ill. We come here for holidays and family. In the hub of the wheel that is the city hangs a the boxers hands. Joe lewiss giant fist. Nobody seems to like this thing. Why i cant say for sure. Does it honor a man who behaved well, observed all of the cartner rules of jim crow. Malcolm x cassius clay in 1962 at a luncheon where the boxer extended his arm to shake the ministers hand. Maybe you saw a photo of them in bold in blackandwhite. Joe lewis a. K. A. The slugger of the 10 tornado didnt pay no mind to Young Cassius clay even later after ali looped sunday houston. Nobody likes a misbehaving black man even when he is right. Ali would come around again. And theyll ill trees testified to urban blight and im trying to locate the history of my fear. The chairs of our dining set are made from trees, chairs handcrafted in italy bequeathed to us by my motherinlaw who bought the set from hudsons. Tree branches foliage, roots and fines. Everything is spreading across america. Let me onto this woman who hands me a bean cake and the woman she was in 1967 giving birth to my wife. Let me bless this card containing our picnic through bella ill across the Detroit River and the long drive back to where the path and scene unfolded like an animal asleep on the soft shoulder of the road. [applause] thank you. See wonderful. Thank you very much. I was fascinated to learn from an interview that laird hunt went to indiana university. That the seeds of his novel kind one was not a reading he did on slavery and United States states are in his studies of william faulkner. Moving from freedom in indiana across the ohio river, slavery in kentucky. The novel has often been called faulknerian with its multiple narrators and its physical and metaphysical shifts, shifts of time and place. But in fact hunt pinpoints the start of this thinking for this novel and a course he took on the history of the caribbean slave. And the haitian revolution. Two worlds set in the caribbean in which slavery was even more brutal and in which human beings were seen as much more disposable than here in the United States. And that of the haitian revolution in which african slaves and their descendents successfully overthrew their tyrannical masters. The first time in Human History. The first time in Human History that slaves overthrew their masters and set up an independent in their case republic. These two worlds were translated by hounds rich imagination and to what the Atlanta Journal constitution calls and i quote, a haunting meditation on the crushing legacy of slavery in the american south. It was for this profound act of translation and reimagination that laird hunt is the recipient of this years anisfieldwolf award for fiction. Like the films jangle in chains chains jangle unchained and Steve Mcqueen stunning haunting sound about to be released in october, 12 years a slave, kind explores unflinchingly with the Cleveland Plain Dealer calls souls of the american heart. Jimmy lancasters 14 years old when she is taken against the new wife of her second cousin Linus Lancaster from her home in indiana to his farm in kentucky. The lush promises of this new world it separate immediately in the face of its violence dehumanizing reality when linus is mitigated by his regular rape and torture of his two young black female slaves. Jenny herself inflicts beatings on these two girls. Jennie is a grotesque copy of linus perversely salvaging her only shred of power by violating and further dehumanizing them. After linus is killed they rise up against jenny and put shackles on her. Underlining this story is the sad sense that there might have been sisterhood possibly there. Jenny is nearly the same age as the girls after all and linus had beaten her and burned her books, cutting her off from language and culture in a free womans culture of enslavement. But hans never lets us forget the slavery, the ownership of one human being by another human being can never be anything but a riddle and transmogrifying. The Kirkus Review calls kind one and original and deeply moving book. The author calls it skin tingling, gorgeous, terrifying. I returned to the idea of translation in thinking about this book. Think about it. Translation is an act of carrying over language ideas and beliefs from one place as it were to another place. Slavery forces translation to a new place. At the same time if you think about it, it seeks to make it impossible by killing language, by killing culture, by attempting to kill any vestige of the past. These vestiges always remained and the elements that get us our humanity are not so easily done away with. Kind one was a finalist for the 201310 faulkner award for fiction, his fifth novel that was published in france japan his fifth novel will be published by little brannen United States. It comes as no surprise that hunt is a translator as well. The translator of english into french and the french work into english. He is the author of numerous stories reviews and translations that appeared in publications such as nick sweeney, plowshares, book forum in the wall street journal among other places. He has had residencies at the mattel in france in the land foundation. He teaches at the university of denver in their Creative Writing Program where he edits the well respected journal denver quarterly. Hunt move to rural indiana after his High School Years after a childhood spent in singapore where he was born and in San Francisco to the hague. He earned his bachelors degree at indiana university. Kind one seems to me to be an attempt to penetrate the misunderstandings, the corruptions and the mistranslations that savory has brought on this country. The story takes us back to full centuries and puts us firmly in the presence with its question of the limits and the unrelenting need for empathy and morality. For his profound assertion, these things matter. We are truly to learn to live together with all of our differences. Kind one by laird hunt is the recipient of the 2013 anisfieldwolf book award for fiction. [applause] thank you dr. Gates. This is such an honor to be here tonight. And to receive this award and such amazing company. All of you my fellow recipients and my family. My father and my sister are here tonight. My wife is here tonight and my daughter who is keeping my seat warm in the front row is here tonight. And a dear friend and longtime editor of coffeehouse press, chris fish raucous here as well tonight. I want to say thanks to all those people in particular. Im going to read from the center of this book and give voice to the storyteller of the novel. He is held in bondage on this farm in kentucky and he is one of the characters closest to my heart who speaks story into some very dark places. I hope this excerpt will glitter a little as well and shine some light to the dark heart of this book. This is the story of the onion. Onion he said, he held up the onion. Then he went to the counter in the corner and took out the big knife sitting there and cut off the skin. When the onion was skin and he lifted up and gave it a good sniff. There was some flour and bacon fat and cornpone and chopped apple in stewed oyster at the ready. He took a little of each of these and set them in a line on the counter and then he picked up the onion again and turned to us. The onion slept with a cord attached to its ankle in the cool seller. He slept with a cord attached to its ankle in the yard. In the cold cellar the cole spoke to him and in the yard it was the trees. One night the master came home with his face painted for the stage. The master lay about him until everything he struck had fallen. One did not rise and never would again and when the master awoke from his rage he wept and before he had finished weeping the onion was gone. The oyster shell yet cut his cord with he kept along with a piece of bacon pocketful of power he ran through the streets. His onion legs grew tired so he took a bite of hone and made them strong. His onion arms and chest grew tired so he took the oyster shell and cut the air in front of him and continued on. The city stretched before him. He ran toward the rising sun. A woman fetching water asked him why he was running so he took a bite of one apple and turned her into an apple tree. Her child started to cry so he took another bite and turned it into a buzzing bee. The onion ran and ran near the outskirts of group of men set against him so he broke off bits of the bacon and turned them into pigs. The pigs fed into chasing after him so they turned and cut at them with his shell. When they were killed he set a pot to boil and hung them over and scrape them one by one. In the which of them and said some of them on skewers and caught their fat and cut. You could hear working so he took off the fat and carved it into a woman. When he took a bite the woman blinked her eyes open and off together they ran. They ran that she was falling behind so he turned her into a twig and put her in his pocket. The dogs came running after them so he took some of the flour and flung it into the air and air began to burn. The dogs ran through the fire and men came after them. They came and they came so he flung more flour into the air in the air filled with water and the dogs drowned. When the dogs had drowned he took the twig out of his pocket and turned it back into his life. They lay together. They scratch their backs against the bar. They floated above the leaves. They barely finished when his wife said here comes the men. The men carried torches. The onion took a bite of his other apple and split asunder. The heavens raged in this powder kegs were were at an aquaticism ensued. There is turned the water to earth. I smashed the trees and time burned. There was a howl in the throat of the wins. Still the men came. He turned his wife into a stone and threw her back in his pocket. He turned himself in the ball and went rolling and bouncing through the wood. It was dark but the ending could see his way by the light of the torches behind him. Ever closer and ever brighter the trees around him grew taller. They spoke to him. The door opened and one of them and he went into it. Inside the tree the sun was warm and there were soft grasses in the stream trickled by. There were sheep in the field and flowers blooming and bees buzzing between them. I hope man sat astride a mule and smiled an opinion. You may stay here for 10 years but must never ask for more. He said said that and then rhodes a way. The onion change and sat back and an onion and pulled the stunt out of his pocket and made it into his wife again. We can live here for 10 years. Yes, she said. They built a small house and planted a garden. They sat quietly together in the evenings. They lay down on soft like its woven from cotton the real her wild in the hills. Once he tried to kill one of the sheep but is scampered away laughing. So they 1800that which they grew. By and by his wife and children one after the other. The children poked sticks in the stream and played in the fields and canned the sheep. When the 10 years from most of the onion climbed onto one of the sheep and rode off in search of the man who had told them they could stay. He wrote for weeks. Once he thought he saw and called out to him to let his family stayed. Immediately the onion became confused and could not find his way back to the house by the stream. His wife and children by the stream. Beneath him the sheep bad and died and disappeared. The coming darkness crept up. The onion heard his masters laugh. It was hot in the hollow of the tree where the onion was hiding in fat ran from his pocket. His apples were gone. His bacon was gone. He had no oyster shell. His flour was soaked with fat. That night the onion slept in the cold cellar with iron on his ankle and his eyes shut from bruising. The next week the onion and his fellows rode out of louisville in a procession. The onion were a joke to pull his masters wagon. He wore chains and was given nothing to eat. Thank you very much. [applause] beautiful, thank you so very much. Each of the books being honored tonight teaches us about the ways in which families and communities survive. They do not always thrive and there are any number of damning pressures such as violence, dislocation, elm is, radical differences identity and war. Some of these families are formed by bonds of blood while others have joined together at random. These random families are no less bound together and those bound by blood types. Its such a random coming together of people, that kevin powers explore so brilliantly and effectively through the yellow birds one of the recipients for anisfieldwolf fiction. The yellow birds quote might be the first literary masterpiece produced by the iran war. If we could take the scene of this complex looks into a few sentences the yellow birds you might say is the story of two soldiers. One private john bartel who survived the war and the other private Daniel Murphy who doesnt. Private wartell assures private murphys brother that he will make sure the younger soldier comes home out of the war alive. This is the promise of course that he cannot and unfortunately he does not keep. The story of what would might call family has told with the immediate experience and the whole thing imperfect memory. The New York Times or roads the nonlinear power of the novel is it beautiful example of style matching content. Powers writes the war out of seemingly divergent experiences. First when he served in 2004 in 2005 with the u. S. Army and mosul and caliph are in iraq and the second an mfa student at poetry at the university of texas at austin in the year 2012. How can we understand world war i without the poetry of the soldiers Robert Graves in other words ladies and gentlemen, we need poets to tell us the human cost of war. Leave the statistics to politicians and social scientist whose numbers become unfathomable after it point. To quote allen shoes of npr how to tell a true war story if you are more a poet and novelist . Tell it is a poet would. Tell what is kevin powers does. Tell it in a poem. More than one reviewer has compared powers debut novel tim obrien the thing they carried. In my opinion dan maxed up titian of the tragedies of american involvement in vietnam and of course the devastating costs. As in a book powers explores wars endless contradictions, wars unifying, wars splintering, wars edifying and wars meaningless, war builds character, war destroys character but ultimately inevitably war destroys men, women and children. We are not the only group to recognize the importance of this novel the yellow birds. It also won a hemingway award the guardian First Book Award the coffman price for first fiction the American Academy of arts and letters and the free literary award for novel in translation. He was also a finalist of the National Book award in fiction. Dave eggers called the the yellow birds said in an important way. The sadness and it comes directly out of what the author learned in iraq. He told the guardian and i quote one of the reasons i wrote this book was the idea that people kept saying what was it like over there . There was a lot of information around but what people really wanted to know was what it felt like physically, emotionally and psychologically . Of that is why i wrote the novel. Kevin powers tells us more than we can bear to know at times. This book is a reminder of the cost of ignorance is too often war and death. For this powerful chronicle the anisfieldwolf book award for fiction goes to kevin powers for the yellow birds. [applause] [applause] thank you also much for taking the evening to come to this fantastic event. Im so honored to be here and to be recognized by an organization that believes as i do in the written word can have great meaning and a great impact on our lives. So to be here is really extraordinary. My wife couldnt be here but i think she is watching on the internet. Before i start i want to say kelly i love you. [laughter] thank you. [applause] the passage that im going to read tonight takes place as the narrator john bartel is recalling the unit in which their translator was killed in the translator was killed in the middle of a story about an old womans garden. The larger purpose of this reflection really is what john bartel is trying to do is sift through the wreckage of his innocence and try to find a place where he can look it his own responsibility. I believe and i think he believes that in doing that it can begin. Thank you very much and im going to start with that brief introduction. It doesnt count does it he asked . No, i dont think so. What are we at . 968, 970. We will have to check the paper when we get back. I was not surprised by the cruelty of my ambivalence then. Nothing seemed more natural than someone getting killed and now as i reflect on how i felt and behaved as a boy of 21 in my position of safety and a warm cabin above the clear stream in the blue ridge i can only tell myself that it was necessary. I needed to continue and to continue i had to see the world through clear eyes and focus on the essential. We only Pay Attention to rare things and death was not rare. Rare was the bullet with your name on it, the ied very just for you. Those are the things we watched for. I didnt think about it much after that. He was an incidental figure who only seemed to exist in his relation to my continuing life. I couldnt have articulated it then but i have been trained to think that war was a great unifier that brought people closer together than any other act to the owner. War is the great maker of how are you going to save my life today . Dying would be one way. If you die it becomes more likely that i will not. Do nothing, thats a secret. A uniform in a sea of numbers, and number in a sea of dust. We somehow thought those numbers are a sign of our own insignificance. We thought that if we remained ordinary we would not die. We confuse correlation with cause and special significance in the vultures of the dead arranged neatly next to the number corresponding with their place on the growing list of casualties we read in the newspapers as indications of an ordered war. We have a sense we only felt in a brief flash that these names had been on the list long before the dead had come to iraq. The names were there as soon as those fortunes have been taken and the number given, the place designed. When we saw the names Ezekiel Vasco was 21 laredo texas number 748 killed by a smallarms fire in iraq, we were sure that he walked as a ghost for years. We thought he was already dead on the flight over and if he was scared when the c141 bring him to iraq had pitched in yad in the skies above baghdad there have been no need. He had nothing to fear. He had an invincible, absolutely but today he was not. The same two specialists Marion Jackson 19 Trenton New Jersey number 914, dead as the result of wounds sustained in a mortar attack at landstuhl medical regional center. We were glad, not that she was killed, only that we were not. We hoped that she had been happy, that she took advantage of her special status before she inevitably arrived having gone out to hang her freshly washed uniform on a line behind your of course we were wrong. Our biggest error was thinking that it mattered what we thought it seems absurd now that we saw each death is an affirmation of our lives and each one of those deaths belonged to a time that therefore that time was not ours. We didnt know the list was beyond a thousand. We never consider that we could be among the walking dead as well. I used to think that it may be living under that contradiction had guided my actions and one decision made or unmade in this philosophy could have put me on, kept me off the list of the dead i know it isnt like that now. There were no bombs made just for us. Any of them would have killed us just as well as they killed the owners of those names. We didnt have the time laid out for us or a place. Ive stopped wondering about those to the left and right of my head. The threemile an hour difference it would have put us directly over an ied. It never happened. I didnt die. Murphy did. I know i wasnt there when it happened but i believe unswervingly that when murphy was killed to 39 were addressed to nothing made it special, not living, not dying, not even the ordinary. Still i would like to think there was a ghost of compassion in the event and that if i had a chance to see those i would have noticed them. His body crumpled and broken at the foot of the building didnt shock me. Murphy passed me a smoke and we lay down beneath the wall again but i could not stop thinking about a woman whose conversation had reminded me of who served as t. In small cups. The memory seemed impossibly distant, buried in the dust, waiting for brush to uncover it. I remember how she smiled. And how impossible it was for her to despite her age, the pawns, a few teeth gone brown and her skin appearing like the . Of dry clay of summer. Thank you very much. [applause] [applause] thank you. If you are a frequent listener of npr if you have his voice many times. Calm, even, kind and so very humane. This is the voice that pervades every word. The recipient of this year anisfieldwolf for nonfiction. In this massive and necessary look solomon writes about every family writing about families grappling with challenges that most of us cannot even begin to imagine or i should say challenges most of us were not able to imagine before reading this beautiful, patient and affirming book. The writing about the complexity of families in which the child is radically different from the parents. Andrew solomon has given us a new and fuller idea about what difference diversity can mean. I spent the past several years professionally and the past several decades personally thinking about virtual identities though that was not the name i played to my recent studies. Solomon, a vertical identity as a conduit to which the benefits of shared experience empathy, insight into you are can travel. A horizontal identity on the other hand is one claire and i quote there is a rupture between the childs life and the parents experiences. They seem to challenge many premises of family he continues an interrupt the basic continuity that relationship assumes. The genealogy of africanamericans if you think about it is replete historically with all sorts of ruptures between the childs life for example in the parents experiences. Imagine that first generation of slaves in this country. The first generation to arrive from africa to this new enslaved world. Could there have been a rupture more profound . The first generation of children born to those slaves would have known a world radically different from the one their parents could possibly hands down. Still, culture, language and Even Movement made their way down and it is these vertical connections that so many of us spend time pursuing. What solomon does in far from the tree is create worlds in which horizontal identities come to dominate family life through the sheer force of their difference. Dwight garner writing in the times called it diversity of the harrowing sort. That makes it no less generative than the other types of diversity that we tend to celebrate. Andrew solomon conducted interviews over a decade with more than 300 families accumulating 40,000 transcripts pages. The volume of reviews in this book may be at that level as well. It is rare that anisfieldwolf are reviewed in nature but our description of this major editors that i quote professionals from clinicians to caregivers. If you are a scientist healthy with no disabled person to look after this book will change your view of your own species. Im not sure that Parents Magazine has made an appearance at the ceremony before either but here it is and i quote. This is one of those rare books that makes readers want to be better people. The usual suspects are here too with Julie Meyerson in the times calling a quote quote at breathtaking rating at that account of who we are right now and what exactly happens when we try to make ourselves. Time magazine puts it in a league with great histories, timeless patient inspiring raucous joyful rainy triumphant new wants. These are just some of the adjectives used to describe this incredible book. I love what tim adams in the guardian wrote about it and i quote you dont so much read far from the tree is cohabit with it. [laughter] its stories he take up residence in your head and heart messily unpack themselves and refused to leave unquote. The same of wars can be said of wright children. [laughter] solomon makes us understand this messiness in new and quite riveting and intriguing ways. The distinctions earned by this look are too numerous to mention this evening. Far from the tree is one won the National Book critics circle award, the j. Anthony lukas award from the Colombia School of journalism yields Research Advocacy award the humanitarian war and the distinguished Achievement Award in nonfiction of the National Council on crime and delinquency of all things. It was included on the 2012 best vocalist of the New York Times published weekly that got boston globe that San Francisco chronicle amazon the economist buzzfeed and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Solomon has also received the society of why logical psychiatry humanitarian award and the brain and Behavior Research foundations Productive Lives award. His previous book the noonday demon and alice of depression when the 2001 National Book award for nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. He is not only an awardwinning writer but also an advocate of writing in research himself having found the Solomon Research Fellowships in lgbt studies at you. His other books include the irony tower soviet artists in the time of glasnost glasnost and a novel. Im proud to say we have traveled a similar educational path. Andrew has a degree in english at yale and 1985 were as an undergraduate when he was undergraduate a professor of english and he took his bachelors degree in english language and literature at Jesus College at the university of cambridge where i earned my ph. D. In English Literature and where wear red african literature and tragedy with my professor named wole soyinka. [applause] he is currently pursuing a ph. D. In psychology at cambridge on maternal identity. And on the way here, the flight was delayed. We are rushed into the crowd and many of you saw us steaming the suits backstage. Its great to be in a theater where they can do that kind of thing and upon the way we talk about how wonderful it is to meet each of the recipients. I said tell me about my fellow yalie wole soyinka. She said Andrew Solomon . He is the mozart of listening. The mozart of listening. I want that on my epitaph. Unfortunately that will never happen. [laughter] ladies and gentlemen for stories that make us better people and showing us lives of right there conception of family and community can be, the anisfieldwolf book award for nonfiction is awarded to Andrew Solomon for far from the tree parents, children in the search for identity. [applause] i would like to thank my editor, my agent and most of all my family. This award and unbelievably thrilling award to win. The history of the people who wanted and the people who are winning it tonight with me and the extraordinarily distinguished panel of judges. Its a humbling honor. Even in purely nonreligious terms, homosexuality represents a misuse of the faculty. It is the pathetic secondrate substitute for reality that pitiable sight and as such deserves no amortization no rationalization and above note pretense that it is anything but it pernicious weakness. Time magazine in 1966 when i was three years old. And in the last two years the president of the United States and the Supreme Court have expressed their support for marriage. [applause] and i set out to write this look determined to understand how that happened. How did in velmas become an identity and if that illness, my illness have become an identity for me and were so many other people who are living in this particular moment, what are the other illnesses that could become identities . What are the other identities that could be constructed as illnesses . I will tell in an antidote anecdote. I went with my mother and brother to a shoe store in manhattan to get shoes and after the salesman had fitted us he said my brother and i could each have a balloon. Might rather wanted a red balloon and i wanted the pink walloon. And my mother said that she thought i really would rather have a blue balloon. [laughter] i said i really wanted the pink balloon and she reminded me that my favorite color was lou. [laughter] the fact that my favorite color now is blue but im still. It gives you evidence of my mothers influence and limits. When i started working on the look i was interested in the idea of love and i became interested in the idea that love and acceptance are not actually the same thing. Its my belief and my experience that most parents love their children. Some dont and we read the stories of some abuse and neglect that most parents do love their children. It takes an effort to accept her children. It takes time to parse the question about what things about your child he tried to improve for expressing values and are having a notion of what constitutes good Health Mental and physical and what are the things about your children you need only to accept because they are not going to change who they are. Parsing that line is very difficult and when i started the book was a little angry at my family because i felt they had accepted me the second they learned more about who i was. As i interview the many families in these many interviews i realized except insist that rss and processes take time. My family had really done pretty well. I was looking at families with so many different kinds of different and looking at how families have struggled with them and looking at how they have come to terms with them. I know even for the families who seemed most nobly to get through the vocation that relationships are an ongoing in developing process and they dont happen in an instant. Having road when i did that was nice proud to be gay. In fact i was deeply ashamed of it at one point. If you would have said to me when i was 12 i would be standing on a stage in cleveland giving a speech i would have been somewhere somewhere between shocked and horrified. I didnt know what it was that it had for me. And yet now for me being gay is an identity. I consider the question which skip alluded to what i call vertical identities that are passed down from parent to child and separated them from horizontal identities which one learns from peer group. I looked in my book in a variety of identities looked at families who are death, divorce, autism, multiple disabilities could i look at families with prodigies because i wanted to reflect on the idea that what is challenging is different and not the positive or negative associations of those differences and its not necessarily easier. I looked at families bringing up children who had been raped because those were families who had an impediment to love that had nothing to do with the childs natural fabric and only to do with where the child came from but i looked to the families who committed crimes because i want to show that experience of having a child whos done something horrifying in figuring out a way to let that child. I had a chapter on families of people who are transgender. In each of these areas i tried to look at the way they were presented. What i felt increasingly strongly as i worked on the look and as i moved from family to family was that each of these kinds of differences was quite isolating. There are only so many people who are transgender. Therell me so many families dealing with crime. There are only a few prodigies dotted around even in down syndrome which occurs more frequently affect a relatively small population. If we allow ourselves to think that all of these families are negotiated and experience with difference that all of these parents have given birth to children or acquire children in one way or another who are fundamentally different from them and all are trying to figure out how to wait make their way through that difference then we discover discovered the people in these categories arent living in terrible isolation but are actually in broad and embracing communities. A lot of the families i met talked about how much meaning they had found enacting these children who were the opposite of what they had set out to do when they have children and lots of them said to me that ultimately they felt their bond with these children was even greater than it would have been with the child who is more ordinary. And even they were in off the resilience that those children found in the way that resilience inspired resilience in them. The mother of one of the dwarfs i interviewed said when i asked doctors said she should leave him to die quietly because it is short Life Expectancy had turned into a charming and delightful young man who would finish college, the first one is family up to go to college. I said what did you do that allowed him to emerge as he has . His mother said, what did we do . We loved him, thats all. He just always had that life in him and we were lucky enough to be the first to see him there. In the beginning i wondered all the time, is it really fair . Why do some people find the meaning and other people dont find the meanings . One of the mothers i interviewed said for us its not believing in god that has given us that perspective. People always regaled us for these Little Things like god doesnt give you any more than you can handle and they can be very comforting but for us, children like ours are not preordained as a gift. They are a gift because that is what we have chosen. I have a husband who was supposed to be here by thunderstorms that kept him in new york. He is the biological father of two children with friends in minneapolis. I have a daughter with a College Friend who had been through a divorce and wanted to have a family and mother and daughter live in texas. My husband and i have a son who lives with us all the time for whom i am the biological father and there were surrogates of the pregnancy who were the mother of johns two biological children. [laughter] [applause] and the day that last child was worn the pediatrician at the hospital told us that he was behaving oddly in the first hours of life and she thought he had a brain defect. And it turned out that he didnt have a brain defect. What he had in fact was a cramped. [laughter] i remember feeling at the time these two things so strongly and so immediately. One, that i wanted my child to be okay. I wanted it for him and it wanted it for me as every parent has wanted their children to be okay. But i also knew that if he had some form of difference that form a difference would become a locus of intimacy for us. It would be his identity and if it was to be his identity it would also be mine. This award is particularly meaningful to me because its an award dedicated on the question of identity. In many kinds of diversity that i looked at all of them are connected in one way or another to the psyche of identity and i feel that it was identity politics that rescued me in the element of despair present to my earlier life. There has been a tendency much of the time for any group that achieves recognition to ally itself with the recognition before and to distance itself from everything on the other side. There was a sense search me that the gay movement for which im a beneficiary followed in the footsteps of the Civil Rights Movement and there a lot of gay people who talk about our indebtedness to the people who brought about that confirmation. I feel to win Something Like has particular meaning to me. [applause] but i also think its important not only to reach towards the people who came before but also to reach toward the people who will come after and meeting people in the disability Rights Movement, the transgender movement, meeting people in the autism Rights Movement and so on and so forth i really felt if there could be no rights for me and tell there were rights for africanamericans and there could be no rights for those people of whom i write and ultimately my deepest belief coming out of this is we are all free until we are all free, none of this is free. [applause] and for that reason i accept this award with utter delight. My thanks to you. [applause] bank you, andrew. It is a singular honor to present this years anisfieldwolf Achievement Award to my teacher, my friend and my hero, wole soyinka. Its not enough to say that wole soyinka demonstrates that edith anisfieldwolf held dear when she established these awards some 70 years ago to commitment to social justice and racial equality and also the compulsion to his shed light on these matters and write as if ones life depended on it. He has in fact live that compulsion for most of his almost 80 years on earth. Wole soyinka is without question africas most acclaimed and accomplished writer. In 1986 he became the first african to win the nobel prize for literature. His creative writing is as much about the human condition under all of the various pressures of postmodernity as political writers are about the challenges of development. Modernity and democracy in postindependent africa and especially in his native nigeria. In Wole Soyinkas plays are the sites through which he stages the universal drama of the human condition. In the same way shakespeare wrote about one dilemma inherent in the human condition is situating one of his greatest place in the difficult choices facing an uncertain prince and denmark. Its indeed difficult to find exact analogs in the west for his public role in nigeria and throughout the continent. Through plays and novels poetry and essays hes one of the most widely read African Writers both inside and outside the continent. He is also perceived as a force of the political arena with his unquestioned moral authority, a moral authority earnest by years of courageously speaking truth to power as we say. And putting himself in harms way. The stature of an artist depends on his remarkable ability to avoid confusing the realms of art and politics. All the while knowing that the two are inextricably intertwined and given equal weight to both and showing us that nonetheless there are separate rhetorical forces, different artistic demands. It was one set attempt to force rhetoric to do the work of the imagination. If all politics is local as tip oneill wisely opined then wole soyinka shows us shakespeare gave us all arch truly universal art is local as well. Its a doorway through which this great writer ushers us into sublime depictions of the weaknesses and frailties of the human condition. The strength of will necessary to confront and transcend those ever recurring challenges of existence that together make us human. You might say that wole soyinka has taken this motto or malign and hamlet. The action to the word and the word to the action. Wole soyinka was born in 1934 in western nigeria. His father was headmaster of the Anglican Mission school in the village and it was here that he received his earliest education. Christian training in school unfolded in parallel with this lived experiences in traditional europe and religious beliefs and culture practices. He attended universal University College and then went on to the university of leeds where he read tragedy with g. Wilson knight the foremost shakespeare critic of his time and the preeminent marxist critic. He began his artistic ascent as a reader at londons Royal Court Theater between 1957 and 1959 for the performance of his oneact play called the invention was the first of numerous performances of his work that winner in him a place alongside his fellow countrymen on the International Literary stage. Acclaim for his work came early on. A british writer wrote of wole soyinka in 1965, wole soyinka has done for napping language what perkins have done for centuries. Booted it away, rifled his pockets and scattered the loot in the middle of next week. Lap go the image of the artist is one that sub to essentially embraced. U. S. Arrested again at the start of the nigerian civil war and he offered the leader to plead against him in nigeria. For 27 months, ladies and gentlemen, he was imprisoned, including 22 months in solitary confinement. Living under horrific condition, deprived almost entirely of books and pens and paper and he nonetheless wrote in secret on whatever and whenever he could. Including scraps of paper thirded away. On toilet paper as well. He nearly died more than once. But he survived. Out of that experience came this book. What many have called what contains the most famous line he has written. And i quote that the man dies when all who keep silent in the face of tyranny. So he emerged from prison even more family with the human will to structure and restructure the world and it takes all possible steps to break that well. The primacy of the will and strength even in the face of political forces, it will attempt to dismantle or crush it and it achieves a higher expression. 1000 years from now, people were still reading this marvelous play. The play controls western drama into a literary form that is distinctly african. I cannot do justice to the play here. So i will only say that stages the conflict among the ritual and communal well that attempts to the cannot render it inactive. And sometimes the political machine acts out what he thinks are humane modes. Pitting one idea that humanity against another idea of humanity. So youll just have to read the play itself. To give you a sense of this masterpiece of the english language, let me share with you the lines that comprise one of the most beautiful passages in all of world literature. Can you hear me at all . Her eyelids are pleased and is it that you see the dark gloom and master of life . Tell your your father that i stated you to the last. But my voice bring in your ears for it while . And have the eyes to gauge your worth . Have a the heart to love you . Do they know what thorough bred prances toward them and comparison of honor . If anyone haircuts you were young with a small knife and portier wine in a small calabasas, turn back and return to welcoming hands. If the world were not greater, i would not let you go. There is not much music and listening to us as a listening to his words grateful i will refrain from naming them except to say that this is not the first time that he has been recognized by the cleveland foundation. His beautiful autobiography of his earlier years received the book award for nonfiction back in 1983. It is with good reason that he comes back with us tonight. He once wrote that books are terror for those who wish to suppress the truth. Fighting against tierney of all sorts and a conviction that the written word is the most reliable and efficient weapon in this fight and it is, i believe, precisely what these awards honor. It is my greatest pleasure in my cherished privilege to present to you the lifetime Achievement Award to my dear friend. [applause] [applause] thank you. Thank you. Thank you and good evening. And it is evening now, i believe, yes. I must begin by thanking the foundation for being patient with me because i was supposed to be here last year, but i could not make it. And instead of throwing me off the list, they decided to give me another chance in this time and made sure that i came whatsoever. In the second statement which i would like to make is to ask to dedicate this award tonight to my friend, wole soyinka, lets just say its one of my most favorite poets in world literature. He died with us two weeks ago. I think he has been. Now there is absolutely no time to get him if youve. And a number of projects have involved him to be kept aside since he is no longer with us. To wit or permission, i would like to dedicate this award to him. [applause] and as i came in this evening i underwent a very strange and rather strong emotion. I say strange only because it was not a positive feeling and everything about this event, the history, the occasion itself, the companionship. It is a very positive one. And in fact, what kind of negative feeling was a very positive statement in a positive revolution, which is not all related by on experience, which i narrated. A lady came up to me as i walked in and said i felt an affinity with you. Because exactly the same thing happened to me when i was about five years old and so you actually began school at three and my mother took me to school and tried to enroll me and i was told no, you have to come back the next year. And she said that i will so do that. And i said that my father was the headmaster of the school. [laughter] and the teacher involved was also a friend of the family. And why did that bring back so many feelings . Well, i thought immediately of children like i was bent like this lady was. Today in nigeria, for instance, who will go to school and learn to read. With the african continent and other countries and continents, some of them are still undergoing the same negative experience. And i have gone into pakistan and somalia, in which to go to school, it becomes a lifeanddeath event. And they have their hands tied behind their backs, their throats slit, for bid and to go to school. And he saw the image of the young girl, malala, and shes become the figure that cuts across all stages and all ages. And when this lady and myself exchange this and to go to School Without fear and we enjoy the very smell of books, even those that we can read among the instruments of the language in a few decades ago in egyptian novelist and Nobel Laureate was stabbed in the neck. I thought though, that could never happen here to my country and in nigeria. But it has been happening. Fast and furious. And before i left nigeria before addressing the united nations, a certain few governor friend said you must get a recording of that speech. And so this is a watershed in communication between children. So lets get a tape of that. So that the schoolchildren here know that they are not alone. In the rivals, what do they do . Not internal ones. And music and etc. And to have centuries old manuscripts to begin the work. Of course, the larger portion of these books are manuscripts and some of them are older than William Shakespeare and, in fact, the process of restoration of restoration and creating permanent spaces and the force had become so blind and so cruel and so focused. So much as to make a beeline for human intelligence and imagination and this is something that has always baffled me. We had humanity dedicated to extinguishing it, what is the most illuminating and i suspect that this is in the field of psychiatry and it should be fought or else one way or the other we will be realized. [applause] [applause] i didnt mean to be solemn. My appreciation for events like this over the ages. It doesnt matter whether it is a book fair order wherever books become the commodity of exchange and the basis of humanity. And it has become an obsession for me, if i can come i try to be there. And this award, which celebrates books and this is one of the most noble undertakings of any organization can have. So what ddts all of this . What you do to relax . Well, you know, when youre writing and youre not your not being clear. What do you do . [laughter] and i said that i escape. And they ask me where do i escape. And i say it doesnt matter. I say that i escape into space. I just escape. And just a few years ago, you can see the kind of fantasy which some of us are engaging in some of us will actually go through the expense of weightlessness. What i am going to read tonight is to invite you to join me in one of my territories of escape. It is a wonderful experience and you should try it sometime. I couldnt afford it, but i happen to belong to a Certain Organization and i got a letter from there one day in the letter said that we have a ticket on one of these space shuttles and space ships and we would like you to recommend somebody to use the ticket. [laughter] and so i sent a letter back saying that, well, what a 70yearold man in reasonable shape who is willing to do without wine for a week wellqualified. [laughter] would that be acceptable . And the man go back and said, you are not talking about yourself, are you . And i said, dont be stupid, of course i am. [laughter] and i just well, the other reason i went there is because we had decades ago, we wanted to make sure to write from time to time. And so this is unpublished. In this section here is the fragment here. Id like to share it with you that sense of space looseness and to which we can from time to time be able to escape. Then came sublimity. Demure and the light framed in the lotus pose rose slowly and floated up and she seemed pleasant and hardly human like the rest too brief, yet the ragged circle was suddenly transformed in on silence. And she floated to her next situation. The body transferring in suspended animation closed into the dream of space. But i must tell you that i have known space and incongruities and affinities and solitude and even hallucinations and not drug infested but levitating and sleep, no, not evil knievel on his demon motorbike or the deadly drifting. I heard through bedroom windows and walls and down staircases and the embodiment and silence so impenetrable, not a sound emerged and i called for help. I drifted over the edge of the world with a silence the silence of huge and deep that it made me dread the unthinkable. Mobilize and so the earth is best. And there is a paradox here with nature that opens in order. This includes the reform of serial chambers and antagonist that oppose with waste dumps. Once thats over the silences with confidentiality and not only with the intrusive order, breaking it back since one learns to be part of the sustenance. In the forest understands that here is where all managed languages of the world can be. Each tree is warehoused greatly and they are specific beings. Soundless narratives from times, you are welcome to the unspoken banquet and the guest who had his own right of the initiation and the gods decide this and youre welcome to the banquet. Thank you so much. Cinema without. [applause] thank you so much. Thank you so much to her 2013 honorees and it is a privilege and joy to be here. Im karen long, i am manager of the book words in this evening would not be possible without the support of the Foundation Staff and our partners who are listed on the screen. We are grateful to all of you. To share a video tonight with families and friends of this event, i urge you to go visit build anisfieldwolf book awards website. Anisfieldwolf book. Org. The site is uptotheminute news and art and history. And you can find the poem they are now. And after authors receive their awards, please join us to cap off a stimulating evening with wine and hors doeuvres and a book sale and i have just one caveat. All winners will be autographing their work. If you want to have a book signed, please see to that first. Our office authors can stay only a short while. It is time now to present our honorees with their anisfieldwolf book awards. Each will receive monetary stipend and a glass sculpture in the color of his book jacket, handcrafted by the artisans on the streets of manhattan, the creative glass studio on east 33rd street. We hope these unique works will remind them of our city for many years to come. Please stand for a final round of applause as our writers receive their prizes. [applause] [ala