All day here at the Library National book festival where celebrating the importance of reading and authors and books. The library of Congress Makes it easy to do this year it is a huge undertaking and huge financial undertaking we cant take for granted that this will continue so i would ask you to considerti making a contribution right now using your cell phone. You can send a text to make a onetime gift that will be added to your g phone bill. The details are on the screen and on the back of your program and as soon as you finish the contribution, please silence your cell phones. Now onto the main event i would like to introduce the cochair of the National Book festival. [applause] we are pleased too have one of the bestselling authors of person that wrote his first book and on the bestsellers list. How many people have read the book. Wow. How many are going to read the book. How many people are going to buy the book today . P okay. Guest is j jd vance. [applause] introduction, a native of middletown ohio and graduate of the middletown high school. He then went into the marines for four years and served in iraq. [applause] and came back, went to ohio state and finished in two years. [applause] then went to Yale Law School, graduated as a member of the journal, clerk for a federal judge for a year and is now in the investment world in washington, d. C. And is married to a former classmate from Yale Law School if you see a twomonth work somewhere that is his son. So shortly when you started to write this book in your wildest imagination you could not have thought you were going to write a New York Times bestseller or didoo you . I certainly didnt think i would. Where did the idea for the book come from . It actually started in law school and the genesis with some of the concepts and ideas i wrote about in the book and the question in the United States at yale we had to write a thesis in order to graduate and i wanted tout write about the legal and policy implications in the United States or the lack thereof and the more i started to talk through the idea, the more especially my primary advisor to a. She thought i could write something that was interesting but also powerful and as i continued to write the book i was a little resistance to that at first i didnt like the idea of opening up my personal life but the more i wrote the more i realized to the degree i had a unique contribution and i understood these things from the inside as opposed to an academic. So you had the idea of writing a book. How long did it take to write the book lacks i was always working on a parttime, so i had another job while writing the book and so i started writing it to words the middle of 2013 and i finished towards the end of 2015. Longhand on the computer . My hand writing is absolutely terrible. So, as you are writing it, did you have a publisher line it up . At this exemplifies the social capital and social connections on these important benefits. So when i started to think about making this into a book project she said okay let me introduce you to these people i know in the publishing world and one of the people she introduced me to a. The hard partt for me was gettig into the agent publishing world. I wanted to abandon it and my wife can probably tell you how miserablery i was about 50 of e way through the process. For me, what was so tough is once i got about halfway through the book obviously it was too late to give up. I s could just stop writin writt writing an additional 40 or 50,000 words still seems imposing and i realized theyre what therewhat i didnt realizeo the project that i ha have a 101 ratio of words typed to those that need it in the final manuscript, so i didnt realize how bad it would be until i was about halfway through and yes, i definitely thought to myself what it be possible to get out this . So the publisher had some confidence into the initial print run was 10,000. 10,000 is not 500,000 but it is good for a first author. At what point when the book came out did people say there are not enough copies anymore. I went to check my amazon ranking to check in real time how the book is actually selling so there was a point in my life i was checking it every seven or eight seconds. I realized then we dont have enough books out there so thats when they started to turn on the process. I dont know how many total or in print. It came through a conversation with my agent, i wanted the word hillbilly to be in the book title. I thought it captured both the sort of particular cultural segment i was trying to write about but i also thought that it captured this sort of interesting inside or outside dynamic that existed in my family where my grandmother would say we are hillbillies, we are allowed to call each other hillbillies but if anybody else calls you aer hillbilly, then yu have to punch them in the nose. So it was a sort of interesting word that always had a textured meaning as i grew up so i wanted to be in the title, but its something that really had to take a while before i was more comfortable, and i think that was her idea to pair it up and there were a couple of reasons for that. So now the book has become so well known. It depends on where im at. I guess noticed a pretty fair amount and i get noticed sometimes in dc and certainly i was back in Eastern Kentucky and ohio but i was in nashville a week or a week and a half ago and i didnt get noticed ones. You have to make a record of air or something i think. [laughter] what has been the reaction of the families o family that manye really do not want revealed about themselves, either every family secrets what was the reaction of the family to this . I didnt reveal every family secrets. [laughter] you know, its interesting, in talking to my family about revealing the secrets i think that i noticed there had been a slight shift from when i started to write a book to where it is now. People were much more open about spilling the Family History on the pages of a book that no one expected anybodydy to read. So i think now that we are at the number of t copies weve sod and people are talking about the book, or is a little more sensitivity that some people definitely say. People appreciate it is an important and worthwhile story to tell. Especially since this is on cspan but talk about the book itself. Ive read it and enjoyed it a great deal. One thing is the writing style was very crisp and clear and to the point, not a lot of excess verbiage. Second, it is extraordinary and almost like a novel and third the impact. Lets go through these first. First, the writing style word you gifted in college and also, where did you get this crisp and clear writing style . I think definitely law school helped a lot in that regard because one of the things they teach is dont write with a a lot of excess verbiage. Try to be clear and correct but also engaging. So thinking about how to write as a lawyer and cut out the excess words was definitely helpful. But its interesting you asked if i was a talented writer. I dont know if you think i am a talented writer but its funny because there was in eighth grade biography that i had to write and my family still has a biography and its interesting because it is very similar to what is in hillbilly and they will pass it around like such a great writer even at 14yearsold and then when my wife picks up the same thing and feeds if she will say your family isnt being honest with you. Youre not the good of a writer when you were 14yearsold. [laughter] i dobe think that wall school helped. Theres a story i tell in the book where the first big writing assignment i handed it in, i was proud of that and this professor handed it back and circled a big section and said this is masquerading as a paragraph. So if you asked him if i was a talented writer, he would probably say no. So having a first book that is very successful, normally publishers will go to the offer and say you are ernest hemingway, you are great, lets have another book right away and the sooner you get it out, the better. So surely they want you to write another book. Are you thinking of writing one right now . . I think i eventually will. My view on this is its not something i am trying to undertake tomorrow. If i write another book, it will be a couple of years from now as opposed to immediately. Butrs eventually, there wille a paperback edition. Edition. While you edit or change it a little or go the same way . I will probably go with the same way. I would like to add a chapter just to contextualize some of the political salience a lot of people have attributed to the book because when i started writing this in 2013, i have no idea thahad noidea that it would to so i think i would like to write at least a little bit about that but otherwise the rest will stay the same. Before the paperback comes out or maybe after commanders a movie and ron howard is producing the movie and directing as well. Who is going to play you . I dont know. The thing about this as i wanted to be somebody that is good looking but not so good looking but they are disappointed when they actually meet me. [laughter]od but yeah, this question i have trouble with because who really fits into that not too warm and not too cold category. Lets go to the second part of why it is successful and that is your life story. For those that may not have read the book, i dont want to give away everything but a paragraph. Where were you born . Middletown ohio. In your biological mother and father were married at the time . They were. Okay. Did they get divorced shortly after . Very shortly after. I think i was a year old if memory serves. Your biological mother was raising you in your early years . Correct. Then you had a very close relationship with your maternal grandfather and maternal grandmother. What were their names you called them . Mamaw and papaw. Is that a hillbilly word or unique to your family . It is common in the broader culture. To the sortlusive of hillbilly culture but its definitely something people from that region of the country disproportionately called her grandparents mamaw and papaw. People on the east coast might say what is hillbilly about ohio, that is the center of the United States. But you described your roots were really fromas kentucky. You came to ohio come your family came to ohio. They were part of a massive migration from places like Eastern Kentucky, tennessee, West Virginia to the industrial midwest and i think when they moved they also brought a lot of their cultural attributes with them. Them. As of again, even though my family was in southwestern ohio, you know, we traveled back to Eastern Kentucky a lot because i spend so much time with my grandparents, i spent a lot of my formative years in Eastern Kentucky and it always felt i got was our homeland. Its interesting that is a common attitude. Folks have countryiv music songs like stories of mine grew up in the industrial midwest in michigan, indiana or ohio and felt like their home was in West Virginia because they spend much of their life in these places and that is where their family waspl from. So you are growing up and have a stepsister . A sister, yes. Different data, same. Those are being raised by a single mother. How did she supportd herself . Mama i remember became a nurse sometime after maybe i was eight or nine. A couple of years she wasr a nurse and they were pretty good at times economically during the period in our lives and before then, i dont know. I think she worked odd jobs. My grandparents helped out and certainly one of the stories in the book is after mom was no longer working in nursing, things were pretty tough for our family economically and more importantly not just socially, there were a lot of issues. Or your mother or was married or had mail relationships with People Living with her four or five or six different times. Wasnt that kind of disconcerting to see a different man in the house all the time . It was definitely an unstable childhood from the people coming in and out of oure lives and i didnt realizeze until i was olr whawould affect that was havingn me. I certainly didnt like that i befriended this guy or felt like he was starting to become a bit of a father figur figure and ala sudden he was out of our lives. I knew a lot of my friends from back home were going through the thing. I didnt quite appreciate the te effect it was having on me until i was older to look back on these things. At some point you redevelop a relationship with your biological father and lived with him for a while but that wasnt as pleasant an experience as you thought it would be. He had his life together living with my stepmom and they had a happy home life and in some ways i was looking for that family stability i think in the eighth grade or so when it happened but i also realized that ive become incredibly attached to my grandmother because even when i was living mom and the kids, we spent a ton of time with her grandparents and the mom struggled with problems and the spend more and more time with our grandparents, so there was a weird moment where i was living with my dad and i recognized he had a sort of normal home as people understood that i just felt so desperate to get back to my grandmothers house and live with her and that is eventually what i did. I dont think ive realized until that moment that in my own mind and in my own heart, she had become my chief caretaker. So you live with your biological mother for a while and it was not as happy an experience as you hoped. You moved in with your maternal grandmother and grandfather and they are passed away now. He was very close to you, so the shock of his passing away, how did that affect you . It affected me i think it all the ways the death of a parent affects a younger kid. Because of the situation growing up, because of the revolving door, he was the closest thing i have to a dad during those formative years. He was the person who took care of things, he was the person that made sure we have all the things we needed and was just an emotional supportsu for me and y sister and my grandmother. I always had a sense that if he was around, things would be taken care of. He was always the person who was the columnist when family drama was happening. He was the person who never lost his temper or flew off the handle. Even as much as i loved my grandmother she had a temper and he didnt, so i think that in effect it affected me in a number of ways but the way that it affected the most of all is what camee after it. I understood as a kid. Instinctively that he was the glue that held the family together and i realized it in the obvious way with what happened. So you lived with her mother for a while but then during one point she was violent with you and difficult to deal with and had a drug problem as you recount in the book. There is an experience where police came and saved you from your mother; is that fair . Yeah. I think about this story a lot because i wonder. I was 12 or 13 when this happened and i always wonder if maybe it wasnt quite as dangerous as i remember. I think in part its because im closethats becauseim closer tn some ways, people try to remember things in a way that they reflect fondly on people they love, and i certainly love my mom and we are doing pretty well in our relationship now. You know, i was terrified. I mean, i thought we were going to die. I thought mom was going to try to kill us and so in the car, the car was traveling very fast and she was certainly didnt seem especially stable until i got out of the car and ran and eventually found a woman who called the police and the police came and arrested on and she was charged with Domestic Violence. So that was obviously a pretty dramatic moment. There is no other way to cut it. Did you then go live with your grandmother or the did you go back and live with he your mother after that incident . For a time i lived with my grandmother. Again, i was always living with mamaw for weeks or months at a time even when things were going well, so it wasnt that different from it wasnt that much of a departure from the normal routine, but i went and lived with her for a little while and eventually moved back in with mom, but thats the place where things went with us. When you were growing up when i was growing up i did have the experience as you did, but to totally recall what happened when i was 12, ten, nine unaccounted recall that . Do you have document or how do you know the incident so well flex i think this is where being able to rely on your family really helps. So, a lot of the stuff i tried to cross reference as much as possible with my aunt or sister or mom, dad. What happened here . Heres the draft, heres the manuscript of this particular story. What am i leaving out orre missg or rememberingng incorrectly . Going back tok how the family reacts to the buck, thats one of the reasons they reacted pretty well is because i tried to make them a part of the writing process. It wasnt just from my memory to the page. I tried to make it a familytr memoir a msn did as i said in te introduction, i am sure things are not perfect, but they certainly are how i remember them and i think that they are for the welldocumented as much as you can with a memoir. In the book you obviously point out your grandmother died as well and that must have been dramatic. Were you living with her at the time . This was before i left for iraq in 2005 and you were graduating from high School Living with her . Yes, almost all of high school and left for the marines from her house. Succumbing to were filling out applications, you write in the book, for college. And either you thought you couldnt afford college or you werent sure you were ready. What is the reason you didnt go to college after high school . Definitely i didnt feel ready. I thought i had enough maturity of the time to recognize this maybe was mighty real opportunity to have anything in the way of a good job or a good career. If i screwed this College Thing up, that would be pretty much it, blowing my one chance. Because. Of that, i didnt want to take it for granted and i thought i was in a position as a person if i went to college, i felt like i would have taken advantage of it. The cost part of it was definitely a significant issue as well. It wasnt just the cost. Obviously i knew i had to take out all these loans and we knew there were programs and things, but even with that i knew therea ofld be a significant amount debtfi to incur, but it was actually more of logistical side of it for me to college seemed so imposing. If you think about filling out Financial Aid paperwork, what is your dads annual income or your da