>> Roswell Encina:
We are definitely living in a
time. where, you know,
reality seems to be stranger 
than fiction.
And sometimes
when you turn on the news
or you’re
just watching a reality show,
it feels like it’s
an episode of Veep,
or it’s a sketch on Saturday
Night Live.
So we have one question today.
Is anything
funnier than politics?
We're bringing together three 
talented authors
whose new books will make you 
laugh out loud
at our political landscape.
Please welcome to the 
National Book Festival,
Susan Coll, who is the author of
Bookish People.
[Applause]
Grant Ginder, the author of 
Let’s Not Do That Again.
[Applause]
And Xochitl Gonzalez, the author
Olga Dies Dreaming.
[Applause]
Welcome to the three of you.
Let me get this started.
So, I just said it, like,
what makes politics
so darn funny?
Or, is the better question,
what makes Washington so funny?
We’ll start with you, Grant.
We were just chatting here
that you worked on Capitol Hill,
so you must have some stories.
>> Grant Ginder:
I did. I did.
So I interned on Capitol Hill
when I was in college,
obviously.
Then after that, I went to work
at the
Center for American Progress,
where I was a speechwriter for
for John Podesta.
And I you know,
Susan and I were talking
beforehand.
We’re like, is politics funny? 
But I guess going to find out.
But, I think
what, particularly
I think when I was on the Hill,
you know, the Center
for American Progress was like
sort of something different.
But when I was on the Hill,
what struck me as
funny was just like
how screwed up
our, I mean, this is
this is not news,
but how screwed up
our elected officials are like
just as just as much as we are,
Right?
As well as the people who are 
who are working for them.
And so, like all of the pomp
and the circumstance,
was just sort of a trick
of smoke and mirrors. Right?
And so and so watching them all
kind of fumble around
like that’s funny, right?
>> Roswell Encina: Yeah.
>> Grant Ginder:
And so I think that, like Veep
for example, like, gets it
right on the head with that.
>> Roswell Encina:
Is it more Selina Meyer
or more C.J. Cregg?
[Laughter]
>> Grant Ginder:
I think more Selina Meyer.
>> Roswell Encina:
How about you, Susan?
You’re
the token Washingtonian here
who lives here full time.
>> Susan Coll:
Well, I think as Grant--
>> Roswell Encina:
Within the town.
>> Susan Coll:
Within the town.
Well, it’s a very funny town.
So that’s one good thing.
You know,
I think playing off what Grant
said, it’s the dysfunction
that becomes funny.
Politics on the face of it,
is quite dry
and not that entertaining.
It’s when, to me,
comedy begins to emerge
when things become bad or dark.
And I tend to write dark comedy
and you just kind of get to
that intersection
where things are so bad,
so absurd,
that it
either becomes funny
or you need humor
as a way to process it.
>> Roswell Encina: You
bring up a good point, pivot, to
Xochitl, do you think
us making fun
of politics or of Washington
or any kind of politics, we’re
hoping for an alternate reality,
or maybe we’re hoping that’s
what life could really be?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
Yeah, I do.
I mean,
I think a lot of what I do
is trying to think about
what about
politics was funny
is the satirizing
of the performance of it all.
And I think something
that whether consciously
or subconsciously
I was trying to highlight
was how it’s become
so distant from actually
what policy is.
It’s like, well, how can I spin
and get a media moment
out of this thing?
Or How is this like, we’re
going to
this event is now going to be
the number one
political event for one week.
And like, we’re
going to make everything
about this and it’s an emergency
until we forget about it
and the ratings drop.
And so I think that the hope is
that we could actually have it
return back to being
about substance and humans
and not about like media hits
and getting on CNN,
and how did this performance go
and like, what’s my photo op?
I think that
that is a little bit of what
I was hoping to strip away
and that actually there’s,
under the humor,
these are real people’s lives.
>> Roswell Encina: Yeah. 
Speaking of real people,
all three of your books
are all grounded
on the drama of family,
whether it’s your blood family
or your work
family, in Susan’s case.
Why do you think that’s very
important,
to keep the heart in the books,
to keep it grounded
and just authentically funny?
>> Grant Ginder: Well,
I think like Xochitl said, like
at the root of all of this
are real people. Right?
And that’s sort of where this 
divorce is happening between
the performance of politics
and how those politics
are affecting real people.
And I think that, you know,
there’s I think for most of it,
there’s nothing as visceral
and as real as a family.
And for me, I’m
really interested in the ways,
particularly within the family
unit, the imperfect ways
we love one another, and how,
even though we betray one
another,
we disappoint one another, 
we are,
that doesn’t absolve us
from the obligation to
continue loving one another.
And that itself is a political 
act, right?
It’s a, there’s
a transfer of power.
There’s a negotiation
that goes on there.
And so,
when I was writing, Let’s
Not Do That Again,
that parallel between
what is this,
this political family,
how are they navigating
their interpersonal dramas
under the limelight of this
very public campaign where there
are very public dramas?
That intersection
was very interesting to me.
>> Roswell Encina: 
How about you, Susan?
>> Susan Coll: Yeah, I was
 going to say,
it’s all politics, right?
The family, family
politics, politics
on a larger scale.
Workplace politics,
which certainly there’s
probably as much of that
going on in any workplace.
>> Roswell Encina: 
Full disclosure, Susan works
for Politics and Pros,
our partners.
[Laughter]
>> Susan Coll: Not there
of course, it’s
a great work family.
>> Roswell Encina:
Yeah. How about you, Xochitl?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez: Yeah,
I mean I think I’m always amused
by the roles
that family members play
and how like,
you could go and see like,
oh my God, like,
go with your,
in this case,
with your brother to something.
And you think he’s just like,
totally like a weakling,
can’t
stand up for himself, like,
doesn’t
like to have any conviction
and people are like, he’s
going to be,
literally it’s a line in 
the book,
he is going to be the Latino
Obama and like,
and I like, eye roll,
but that plays out at family
functions, you’re like,
all of your tias are like,
oh, he’s
so handsome, he’s so brilliant.
And you’re like, Oh, my God.
Like,
he can’t even tie his own shoe.
And I just had to make him
a doctor’s appointment.
So I think I like the idea,
and like the inspiration
behind the politician character
in my book
was I was, I was to the point
about people being real people.
It’s like, like
AOC has like
a votive candle
with her face on it.
But at the same time,
I was like, I have a hard time
that she never bickers
with her fiancee
or that her mother doesn’t
nag her on the phone.
And I think that the idea
of taking people out of that
like, sort of deified
position, particularly,
I think politicians of color
are like set up
to have to be something bigger
than just their legislative job.
And so I sort of thought
the family was a great way
to like, pull at those like,
strings of the illusion. Yeah.
>> Roswell Encina:
In your book,
you deal
with a lot of serious subjects.
Despite it, there’s a lot of
funny moments and light moments.
You talk about gentrification
and colonialization
in Puerto Rico.
How did you easily blend
the serious subject matter
with the light hearted moments?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
I think that
I personally have
a twisted brain
and find lots of things absurd.
So I, you know, one of 
the things
that I, he’s
sort of an inspiration
for one of the villain
characters,
but with Steve Bannon
and this idea of
like deconstructing the state,
and it was like and so I sort of
had this idea of like,
what if people just out of like,
you know,
poops and giggles were like, I’m
just going to play around
with the government
and deconstruct the state
and what would happen?
And then I sort of
was watching that
actually start to happen
in our own government.
And on the one hand,
it was disturbing
and on the other hand,
it was so absurd
that you can manipulate things 
so easily.
I think that the humor sometimes
comes in the fear
that actually it’s
all quite fragile,
like the democratic process
and what our rights are
and what things mean
and who has power
is a little bit fragile and like
it was,
happened to just get exposed
while like in real time, 
like in certain ways
in terms of corruption,
especially after Hurricane
Maria, which is a part of 
the book.
So I think that sadly,
the humor
came from the truth of it.
>> Roswell Encina: 
Grant, your
book deals
a lot with some major family
drama in the middle of this
political campaign.
I mean, nothing tops
political drama
than family drama.
I mean, both stories
could have been
two separate books.
How were you able
to put that all together?
>> Grant Ginder:
Well, like I said earlier,
I mean, I think that I write
family books, right?
I wouldn’t
say that I necessarily
write political novels.
This is, in fact, my only novel
that is overtly political.
And so, and really,
I think the politics is just
sort of a set piece for the ways
in which
this family drama plays out.
So the family drama
has always been the thing
that really interests me.
But Xochitl, as you were saying,
like as I was crafting
this story about this one
particular family
kind of in the limelight
as they were dealing
with their own personal dramas
that the world around me
was getting more
and more absurd.
And I became really fixated
on this question of,
you know, I was watching this
very fragile thing,
American democracy.
This was like in 2018,
really start to crumble.
And I became fascinated
by this question of,
well, how far would I,
a seemingly sane person, though
that is up for debate,
how far would I go
to protect this thing, that I’m
now realizing
is not to be taken for granted?
And how far would I,
how far would I bend
my own personal ethics
in light of some greater good
as the world
is becoming more and more
kind of dangerously absurd?
And so I decided
to take that question
and make this family face it.
And it’s
a decision
that the consequences of
which are going to haunt them
for the rest of their lives.
And so that’s how
I kind of melded
those two things together
with this central question,
which was really plaguing,
and continues
to plague me,
over the past few years.
>> Roswell Encina:
Susan, for you, there’s
no politician in your book,
but again, it’s set in
Washington, D.C.
and it’s set at a time
during one of the darkest
moments in the past five years,
during the events
that happened in Charlottesville
and how the employees of this
bookstore dealt with it.
And this was happening
like in the background
of what’s
happening in the bookstore.
What was your process
of trying to make sure
nothing focused
too much on the serious,
but kept it very focused on what
was going on in the bookstore?
>> Susan Coll:
Yeah, that’s a good question,
because I had set it
against the backdrop
of Charlottesville.
You know, I started off
just writing a comedy
set in a bookstore, really,
about a vacuum cleaner
as the inspiration.
But it was,
Charlottesville had happened
around
the time
that I was writing this,
and I felt that I couldn’t
not ground it
in that moment,
which also was bookended
by the solar eclipse.
So it just seemed like
a really kind of interesting
ten day period.
But I’m losing
my thread here.
>> Roswell Encina:
That’s all right.
>> Susan Coll: Oh. But it 
was, yeah, it was too much
in the background.
And when my editor read
the book,
she pointed out
that you couldn’t
really take an event
as serious as Charlottesville
and just have it
as the backdrop.
And she was absolutely right.
So I wound up weaving it in
more into the texture
of the novel.
>> Roswell Encina:
Okay.
You mentioned your vacuum
cleaner.
All three of you have an item
that kind of
is pivotal to your plot.
And for most people,
this will just be an item,
but for you guys
they were just instant gems.
For Susan, it was the vacuum.
Xochitl, yours were the napkins?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez: Yes.
>> Roswell Encina:
You have plenty.
You have the trash compactor,
you have
a sword, you have a carpet.
How did you identify things 
like this
that could be turned
into comedy gold?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
Oh, my God.
I never thought it wouldn’t
be about the napkins.
I worked
as a luxury wedding planner
for, like, 13 years,
and I didn’t
want to make the character
a wedding planner
because I wanted to try
and pretend like
I make things up for a living.
And so,
but I realized that it was like
the perfect opportunity
to talk about class
and the way in which we view
service and service work,
without it being too
polemic or heavy handed.
And I had personally
been summoned to many meetings
about napkins
in the course of my career,
and I worried and tested linen
to see if it left lint
or it didn’t leave lint.
So these were,
these were really events based
in real life,
ripped from the headlines and
made into fiction.
But then
it was sort of a fun thing
to think about
if you were to take
all these resentments.
What I loved about Olga is like
I wrote purposely a character
that was far more resentful
than I ever was,
but how would you get back
at people?
And it’s like, I’m
going to steal these napkins,
like I’m going to give them
to my cousin.
And so, like, I think, the idea
that they became this
symbolic Robin Hood gesture
of like robbing from the rich
and giving to the, quote
unquote, poor of your family
so that they can swab their laps
and linen, was like nice.
[Laughter]
>> Roswell Encina: Susan,
what's up with the vacuum?
>> Susan Coll: 
Well, a few things.
First, I think vacuums
are just inherently funny.
And one of my favorite
comic novels
was Graham Greene’s 
Our Man in Havana,
which centers around a vacuum.
So I already had that
in the back of my mind.
But the reason
I wove a vacuum into this novel,
I wasn’t
going to write this novel.
I promised everyone
at the bookstore
I wasn’t going to
and I had left the job
But I was still on the email,
internal email distribution
list.
I kept asking them to
take me off,
but I remained on it for a while
and I’d
read the end of day reports
that the store manager
sent around
and the vacuum cleaner
was just always
coming up in those reports
and it was frequently broken.
Or, you know,
there would be a message like
just kick it a few times
before you plug it in
or the hose is clogged.
And finally I thought,
this is a novel.
So that’s where that came from.
>> Roswell Encina:
With Grant, with you.
We could focus either
on the sword
or the trash compactor.
>> Grant Ginder: I’m going 
to focus, I think that there’s
no way
to focus on the trash compactor
without
sort of like guess much away.
So I’ll focus on the sword.
So when I started writing
the novel, I’m, we’re
kind of
in the middle of drafting it.
I was reading
like a ton of Agatha Christie
and I
hadn’t read a lot of Agatha
Christie before.
And like the pandemic
had just started,
we were in lockdown
and I found this
pleasure
in, I usually read fiction
because I like to see sort
of my world
mirrored back, right?
I like to see myself represented
as something, my feelings
articulated in a way I’ve
never felt them before.
But with Agatha Christie,
the pleasure I was finding
was seeing
these details
that were seemingly
inconsequential suddenly become
consequential later on.
And so I kind of melded that
with the idea of Chekhov’s gun,
that principle
of if there’s a gun hanging
or a rifle hanging on the wall
in the first chapter, it’s
got to go off in chapter
two or three.
And this sword, it’s
an antique German hunting sword
from the 18th century.
Don’t ask me.
I was like,
okay, I want to make this thing,
this Chekhov’s gun.
I want to make it absurd.
The book operates
kind of at an eleven,
and I thought,
I knew how
the book was going to end,
and I thought it had
to kind of operate
the entire time at an eleven
for this absurdity to work.
I remember
some good reads reviewers,
I remember like the ending
could never make sense.
And I was like, Yeah,
I mean, there’s a character
writing a musical based on Joan
Didion
[Laughter] called
Hello To All That.
Like,
obviously this is not our world.
And so, so I decided, like,
it couldn’t
just be a gun, this item,
it had to be,
I was like, okay,
so it’ll be a sword.
How do I make this more absurd?
Oh, I know.
I’ll make it from 18th
century Germany
and I’ll put monkeys
on the handle.
>> Roswell Encina:
Oh, boy.
For all three of your books, 
there’s
a strong female character.
For Grant, for
you is Nancy Harrison,
the woman who’s
running for Senate.
Susan, yours is Sophie,
the owner of the bookstore.
You’ll be glad it’s
not a Mags, we’d
all think it was Brad from--
>> Susan Coll:
Which it was not.
>> Roswell Encina: 
Xochitl, for you, it’s Olga
and actually her mother.
>> Xochitl Gonzalez: Yes.
>> Roswell Encina: 
Are there any women either
in real life or
in in literary history
that you admire or kind of
formed your characters from?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
Well, I’ll talk to my therapist
about this on Wednesday.
[Laughter] Definitely.
I was, my mother
was a political activist.
And that was sort of the route.
But I was also the very, very,
I would watch the Nina
Simone documentary
that had been on
I think Netflix.
And I connected a bunch of dots
about just sort of like, it’s
a term
that I think
a Puerto Rican
journalist would use about it,
which is kamikaze moms,
like where the cause is
bigger than anything else.
And I just sort of found
that idea of like, it’s
not that you don’t
have the capacity to love.
You just have the capacity
to love on one scale
and maybe
not on a smaller scale.
And that was definitely
the inspiration
for Blanca, the mom, for sure.
And like, and
Olga, I think,
really like I
wanted to just sort of
give body
to a lot of Latina women
that I know that are living in
so many worlds,
you know, like they’re
living in their home world
and the world
that they came from
and then the world that they’ve
been told to aspire to,
and trying to find their space
in both.
And so, but definitely Blanca
is a mix of my mom
and then just sort of studying
political activists as parents.
And I was really intrigued
because like there is a true
figure that’s in the book
called Ojeda Rios.
And he had been,
you know, a matadero,
fighting for revolution
in Puerto Rico.
And I just was like,
what if he didn’t see his kids
for 15 years, he would send them
audio recordings.
And I was like,
What if a woman did that?
Like, what would people think?
So it was kind of a composite
of these different concepts.
Yeah.
>> Roswell Encina: 
How about you, Susan?
Is Sophie formed from someone
or any other literary characters
you love?
>> Susan Coll:
I can’t say that she was formed
from anyone in particular.
I think she’s an amalgam
of a lot of different people,
including, just in my mind,
the two women who founded
the bookstore
were women, and I had them
in the back of my mind.
She also does,
even though you said I don’t
have any politicians
in the book, I’m
just thinking like they come
through a lot in different ways.
And at one point somebody thinks
she looks like Nancy Pelosi.
So I did not think of
Nancy as I was writing it.
But that’s
what she looked like in my mind.
But no, really just,
I think in part,
I when I went to work
at the store,
I was a lot older
than most of my colleagues,
but I had the job
of the younger
character in the book.
So I was, that was kind of me
bifurcating myself
into two characters.
>> Roswell Encina:
How about you, Grant?
>> Grant Ginder:
So people will ask me like, Is
Nancy Harrison, is it
Nancy Pelosi?
And it’s similar to Susan’s
answer.
She’s not. She’s
a pastiche, I think, of a lot
different characters, a lot
of different kind of types
that I’ve seen.
I also speak to my therapist
how every book,
every woman in all
my books is my mother.
But, you know, thank God she’s
not here to hear that.
But, I did know
setting out to write the book
that she, that that character,
the politician, was always going
to be a woman,
simply because I,
that I’m
not saying anything new here.
But I think women face
just, you know,
such an uphill battle really in
any industry,
and politics is no different.
And thinking back to the 2016
elections,
I was constantly
just appalled by the language
that was used in the mainstream
media,
even to talk
about the Clinton campaign
and the double standards that
women and particularly mothers,
face when it comes to having
any kind of career
and any kind of ambition.
And so that tension
I knew was something
that I wanted to explore.
>> Roswell Encina:
All three of your books
have big secrets in it.
I don’t
want to give anything away.
How fun was it writing that?
And it’s
going to kind of struggle here
for any of you, having read
any of these books,
try to describe not giving away
any of these secrets.
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
Oh. Was it fun
or was it heartbreaking?
I think I felt sad.
It was I guess it was like
fun to think about creative ways
in which this person has gone
to lengths to keep their secret.
And at the same time,
then sometimes I would just
heartbreak for the character 
because
the person was rooted
in what I know is a real life
struggle for people.
And so sometimes it was like,
you know, the disconnect of it.
When he finally comes to terms
with the fact that his secrets
are no longer a secret,
I felt sad for him.
Like,
you know, I hurt, my heart broke
with his heart
about all the things,
the machinations.
But it was fun to kind of think
about the desperate
things that a person will do
to keep a secret to some extent.
Yeah.
>> Roswell Encina: That happens
a lot in your book, Susan,
the desperation of trying 
to keep
something coming out?
>> Susan Coll:
Yes. Although the secret
is not so much a secret,
because I begin
with the character wondering
about the answer
to a certain question.
And I struggled
with how to tell that
in a narrative sense for so long
that I finally decided
to just bring it
right up to the forefront.
So it’s not really
it wouldn’t be a huge
spoiler for me to talk about it,
but that my character begins
just wondering
if this poet who’s coming in
to speak at the store, who’s
become very controversial,
she wonders
if that’s her birth father.
So that’s what’s
being resolved through the book.
It just made it easier to
just get it out there
rather than try to--
>> Roswell Encina:
It’s no episode of Maury.
[Laughter]
Yours has
a couple of secrets
in there, too, peppered in.
>> Grant Ginder: Yeah. So 
the secret is, I’m
going to kind of, like,
have two answers
this question, which is one,
the sort of,
the big secret that emerges
was really fun
to come up with, that’s
going to make me sound
like a crazy person once
you read the book.
But like coming up with
that idea, it was really fun.
But then, I am
like so bad at logistics.
I am like not a detail
oriented person.
So for, to then figure out
like how this family
logistically was going to try
to keep this secret was,
I had nightmares about it.
I was like, oh my God, like,
you know, like, I don’t
even know where my keys are half
the time.
I don’t know where my dog is
half the time Like
how am I going to figure out
how to do this in this book?
So untangling
that was stressful.
Fun, but stressful.
>> Roswell Encina:
Speaking of stress,
it’s been
a rough couple of years here
between the pandemic
and everything else.
What got you guys
through the pandemic?
Were you able to,
was it more like
I was able to finish this book
because of it, or what else?
Did it inspire you?
Did it scare you? What?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
I. I guess
it relieved me of an anxiety
of making excuses
to get out of social obligations
to write.
[Laughter]
I felt really let off the hook
in a lot of ways, and
I was really deep into doing,
I just sold the book right at
the beginning of the pandemic,
so I was deep into revisions
and a couple of other projects,
and so it was like
I didn’t ever feel guilty.
I guess that’s
a very Catholic answer.
[Laughter]
>> Susan Coll: Well,
I have a similar,
my own version of that answer,
which is first,
I was kind of relieved
to not have to go anywhere and
just be
home for a year plus.
So that part was enjoyable,
but I was anxious
in the opposite way
because I was just trying
to sell this book
and I was hearing first,
I wrote a piece about this
for Washingtonian,
so I can say my agent didn’t
drop me after that,
but I was commenting
on how I kept trying to call him
and he wasn’t
answering my calls,
but he’s posting
pictures
of his dogs on Facebook.
And then when he did
try to shop it, editors
weren’t really in the right
frame of mind to be reading.
So it just,
I had this couple of years
of thinking, I’m never going
to publish this book.
But at the same time,
it was a nice, nice to
just retreat for a bit.
>> Grant Ginder: I, 
you know, it’s,
it was a kind of an escape,
like the book was.
I the book is set
in both New York
and Paris, and it’s very,
very grounded
in those two places.
And I was in the middle
of drafting it
when everything shut down.
And so I did look at it
as a, sort of a world
to escape into.
And I was writing about these,
like my favorite bars in
New York.
And so it was fun being able
to kind of like,
think I was also like
longing for them.
And so this helped.
I will say my husband
and I, you know, we live
in a small New York apartment.
And he was obviously, you know,
his office was closed
and so he was home working.
And as someone who like
works from home a lot,
I was like,
I’ll tell you how to do it.
You got you got to wake up,
you got to
shower in the morning,
you got to just treat, you’ve
got to go to the desk,
got to treat it
like your job and like
he was like, all right.
And so he would do that.
And then he would be like,
How many days
has it
been since you’ve showered?
[Laughter]
I’d be like, four, four days.
Four days.
But I’m a writer,
so it’s different.
But that dynamic
was kind of interesting,
like trying to carve out space,
like physical space
when you have someone else there
with you was,
was a challenge, as we all know.
>> Roswell Encina: Has 
anything from the pandemic
or the past several years, I’d
say for the past five years,
inspired you for future books
or future
short stories or anything?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez: Yeah.
>> Roswell Encina: I mean, 
there’s a lot of comedy
that’s happened in the past
couple of years.
A lot of sad stuff too.
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
Yeah, you know what?
I think it gave me a lot of time
to like reflect.
And so,
and I think,
I think it’s
been an interesting time to
just really see
the different
generational attitudes
towards things like,
you know, I’m
pretty firmly in Gen
X and it’s been interesting
to just see younger
people’s take
and what that makes me question
about my own take.
And so I think that in this time
of watching that,
my next book in part
is a campus novel set
in the nineties,
because I, it made me realize
how much has changed
about the way
that we,
that institutions think about
educating students
in terms of diversity
and breadth of opinion
and also how students
think about
being at an institution
and what that does.
But in a fun way,
you know, like a fun way.
Like I was looking at it
with a lot of fun.
But I think that the time,
seeing so much happen
and seeing people have such
deep emotions and reactions
to things, but then also
how nuanced and different
they are.
Like based on your relation
to technology, to media,
to growing up,
where feminism was always
existent, like,
you know, it’s
been really interesting.
So it gave me a lot of time
to mull these things, I think,
in a way that’s shaped
new curiosities.
Yeah.
>> Susan Coll: Yeah. That’s 
an interesting question
because I tend to turn
almost anything into comedy,
but I think enough
time needs to pass between,
before that happens.
So I haven’t
really thought about, I’m
not sure that I ever
will think about
the comic possibilities of that,
but I am writing a novel
that’s set
now and I’m facing the dilemma
of what to do
with the remnants of the virus.
And, you know,
I just the idea that there’s
just like face masks
littering the street
or one character
appears wearing a mask
when it’s largely over.
And just how to incorporate that
into the book
has been interesting.
>> Roswell Encina:
How about you, Grant?
>> Grant Ginder:
Yeah, it’s interesting.
I’m also
writing a book right now
that’s set in the
in the nineties,
in Laguna Beach where I grew up.
And it’s,
it’s entirely first person,
which is something
I haven’t done
in a very long time,
which is like a fun, unique
challenge. But
the narrator is 15.
And I think what the pandemic 
did, kind of
the more I think about it,
is that Let’s Not Do That Again,
it deals with obviously
the interpersonal dramas
of this family,
but also these sort
of large scale
political global problems.
And I think kind of
just in my own life, just being,
dealing with that kind of day
in and day out for the past,
however many years, it’s
made me like
intensely
interested in this period
of my life, of one’s life,
adolescence, where the dramas
kind of taken out of adolescence
are actually quite small
when I look back, right, like,
oh, the problems
I was having with
my friends are kind of
very small, but felt
so monumental
and felt in fact larger
than a pandemic at the time.
And so trying to kind of capture
that feeling of what
a pandemic feels like now like
and then bottling it
into adolescence in the nineties
and kind of turning inward
with that,
I think is how it’s
manifested itself for me.
>> Roswell Encina: Cool. So all
three of your books read like it
could be
either turned into a movie
or limited
series on HBO Max or Netflix.
Grant I know your last book,
The People We Hate at
the Wedding, is coming out.
It has Allison Janney, 
Kristen Bell
and Ben Platt starring in 
that film.
Congratulations. 
[Applauase]
Who would you star in this,
in your new book?
>> Grant Ginder:
Well, it’s funny.
So I was fortunate enough
to actually visit
the set of People
We Hate at the Wedding
when they were filming it
last October.
And the leads in that,
like the main characters in
that are sort of like age-wise,
the same as the main characters
in this book.
And so now whenever
I write a book, I just cast
Allison Janney, Kristen
Bell [Laughter] in those roles,
and so, which like, you know,
probably something else
to talk about with my therapist.
But, so I’m like, oh,
Allison Janney,
she would be great.
And Allison Janney would be
great and everything, right?
And so,
I don’t know, it’s like it
kind of constantly changes.
It basically changes on whatever
TV show I’m
watching at that moment.
You know, like I love
Yellow Jackets, for example.
So I’m like cast
Melanie Lynskey in everything.
But yeah,
it changes very rapidly.
>> Roswell Encina:
Julianne Moore maybe?
>> Grant Ginder: Oh, she 
would be fantastic. Sure.
>> Roswell Encina:
I’ll pass them off for you.
>> Grant Ginder: What if I
 was like, No, I don’t think
Julianne would be right 
for this.
[Laughter] Oh no, obviously.
Yes, Julianne Moore.
>> Roswell Encina:
How about you, Susan?
You know, in my head,
you don’t have to agree with me.
It was Francis McDormand.
>> Susan Coll:
Oh, well, sure,
that would be fantastic.
[Laughter] Absolutely.
I don’t
think about that
when I’m writing
or even when I’m finished,
because maybe that will jinx
the reality of that happening.
>> Roswell Encina:
Oh, come on.
>> Susan Coll: But wow.
But, there was a but,
the one book that I had turned
into a television
movie starred Joan Cusack.
And I could imagine her.
I would love for her
to be in this.
>> Roswell Encina:
How about you, Xochitl?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
I’m in the midst
of a long and arduous
journey of adaptation, but
my dream cast has come together.
I’m not sure if
we’ll be able to hold them
because of time
and other commitments.
But Aubrey Plaza was attached
to play Olga,
Ramon Rodriguez
was attached to play Prieto.
Jesse Williams, Mateo,
Dermot Mulroney as Dick.
So I am hoping
in the next iteration,
time will allow us
to keep this group together
because they were, oh,
the amazing
Jessica Pimentel as Mabel.
So it was just really,
so fingers crossed.
And yeah.
>> Roswell Encina: We are going
to take questions
from the audience.
There are two microphones
here on both the aisles here.
So if you have a question,
come on up
and I’ll ask it once I see you.
Anyway.
Grant, I know you told
Good Morning America
a funny story
that you were apologizing
to everyone who was on the set.
>> Grant Ginder:
Oh, so I, I’m so lame.
Like, crushingly lame.
I, so I’ve
never been on a movie
set before, right?
And they were filming about
two hours outside of London
and they sent a driver
to pick me up in my hotel.
And it was really early,
like it was a whole day,
but it was a really early day
and I don’t know what I thought,
if it was just going to be
like one person with a camcorder
and like Allison Janney, like,
I don’t
know what I was thinking,
but I showed up
and there’s like, you know, it’s
like a city
they’ve built out of trailers.
And so, and again,
it was really early
in the morning and
something else I can
talk about with my therapist,
I just started apologizing
to everyone
for like being the reason
that they had to get up
so early.
[Laughter] I like, everyone
I went up to, I was like,
I am so sorry.
It is so early.
And they were like,
who is this guy?
[Laughter] Get him out of here,
you know?
So, they were like, it’s fine.
But yeah, I was just
I was so apologetic.
>> Roswell Encina:
Without giving, you know, or
disparaging any of the studios
you’re all working with.
How were your experiences
working
with any of your adaptations
or your planning for it?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
I mean,
the process was great.
I think it’s the,
you know, it’s a challenge.
I’ll just be very honest.
It’s a challenge.
There’s I think
eighteen percent
Latino people in America
and there’s like point
one percent
television representation.
So, you know, it’s
a challenge
when people don’t necessarily
understand the community
to convey
that you’re getting an accurate
representation.
And when you’re communicating,
you know, the only industry,
apparently,
is actually the entertainment
industry executive
landscape is, the C-suite is,
whiter than oil and gas.
It’s something like ninety
two percent
completely white
and mainly male.
So, you know, you’re
trying to communicate a culture
to people that don’t understand
or have any exposure
to your culture.
So that’s a challenge.
But the onset experience
was amazing.
Like the creatives, like the set
designers, the costume
people, like the crew,
everybody was so excited.
And so I know that we’ll
capture that again,
but it’s like I recognize it’s
a slightly
uphill battle, but I’m
forging ahead.
>> Roswell Encina:
How about you, Susan?
>> Susan Coll: I was very
uninvolved in the process.
I was advised to not
work on the script,
and that was fine with me.
I thought they did a better job
than I would have been able to.
I was too close to it
to see the other
possibilities, but
I was given the final
script to, as a consultant,
so I was able to make
some suggestions,
which they didn’t take,
and then I didn’t
go down to see it
being filmed
and they were kind of
discouraging me
from coming down.
I think they filmed it
in Louisiana and later
one of the producers told me
there was just
a lot of drama on the set,
so I think they just
didn’t
want any extra people there.
So if I have
the good fortune to do that
again, I will take more
advantage of it.
>> Roswell Encina:
We have a question here.
>> Audience member:
My question is for Susan.
So I work on a bookstore
right now,
and so I totally get
about the vacuum.
But I was just wondering
if there were any
like specific experiences
from working on politics
and prose that kind of like
inspired you to write
about a bookstore
or that you use
when you were writing?
>> Susan Coll:
Where do you work?
>> Audience member:
I work at Eleanor’s Norfolk
in Norfolk, Virginia, right
by Virginia Beach.
So everyone should come.
>> Roswell Encina: We should 
applaud all
independent bookstores.
We're talking about this
right now.
>> Audience member: We’re
turning one year old this year
and a couple of days.
>> Susan Coll:
Well, that’s great. Yeah.
I think some of what I wanted to
capture were
the things that hadn’t
occurred to me
before working in a bookstore,
because everybody just thinks
that it’s
such a lovely, sweet job.
In fact, somebody I knew in
Washington
came in once and saw me
working there and said,
that’s so cute.
I thought, you know, it’s
really a very challenging,
very physical job.
And I think in part,
the physicality of that
job is part of
what I wanted to capture,
but also
just the daily,
I mean, I love all workplace
novels, including,
you know,
I enjoyed both of your novels
because they are both workplace
novels.
So to just kind of capture
the daily
rhythms of what goes on
in a bookstore.
But also I work in
events, I still work in events.
So the world of author events
is its own
sort of subgenre
that is very funny.
Can be very stressful
and can be very funny.
>> Audience member: So I 
know politics is all about
human behavior.
And so there’s all different,
everything is politics.
But on the national scale,
the politics isn’t
really funny now because there’s
so much at stake.
So I’m wondering for all of you,
is anything off limits?
And everybody
I know thought the Producers
and Springtime for Hitler
was a riot, except me.
And it probably is funny.
I just couldn’t
get past the Hitler thing.
Is anything open for comedy?
>> Susan Coll: Well, I would 
say that if you look at it
as a release, then, yes.
I mean, there was an article
about bomb shelters
becoming
comedy clubs in Ukraine.
I think people need comedy
as a way to process and release.
So, yeah, there’s
very dark topics.
You know, the Holocaust
is not funny.
And yet,
sort of turning that into
humor helps us process it.
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
I would just add on, like
I think about, let’s say
a show
like Orange is the New Black,
and there’s
like what can be more limiting
or like debilitating
than having being incarcerated,
having your freedom
taken away from you.
And yet there’s so much
organic humor
that comes from just,
because we are humans.
I think our nature is to laugh,
to find things
absurd, even
in the darkest of circumstances.
So I don’t know
that I would set out
to satirize anything
just to be controversial.
But if, like in thinking
about something
I find a humorous take,
I wouldn’t shy away from it.
>> Grant Ginder:
I agree.
I think that there, I mean,
there are certainly things that
I would not feel comfortable
satirizing or that like comedy
that I wouldn’t truck in.
But I think kind of
going off
what you were saying, Susan,
I think that there’s
it’s a form of processing
and a form of release and a form
of psychological coping.
And so that’s how I look at it
sort of in
as a mode of communication.
And so while there are things
that I certainly would not
touch.
Because I
don’t think that they’re funny.
I don’t
know if I would say there’s
something that’s off limits.
>> Roswell Encina: 
Yes, ma’am.
>> Audience member:
I’ll make a pitch
for Susan’s novel, your class
at the writer’s center.
But I wanted, as I began
reading your book, came
the shocking news
when Salman Rushdie
was stabbed at Chautauqua.
And I couldn’t help
but think about your themes,
about the bookstore wrestling
with whether to invite this
writer and security issues and
I think was when you were doing
some of your book signings.
So maybe you could
reflect on that a little bit.
>> Susan Coll: Yeah. Thank you
for mentioning that.
In fact,
I just, I rarely go back
and look at my books
once they’re finished.
But I know I was looking
for a scene to read and noticed
I had talked about Salman
Rushdie and Midnight’s Children.
That comes up early in the book.
Yeah, in the book
I have this happening
that they’re
getting security
in for a controversial event.
And I started
working there 11 years ago.
And that was,
you know, a periodic concern.
And as we’ve
just seen with Salman
Rushdie, it’s,
you know, that’s
still a concern.
And I don’t
have anything wise to say
about that other than it’s,
you know, horrible times.
>> Roswell Encina: And none
 of you are stand up comics,
clearly or comedians—
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
Clearly. [Laughter]
>> Susan Coll: Right, Clearly. 
[Laughter]
>> Roswell Encina: But, you 
know, after, you know,
the Oscars,
everything that happens on
social media,
does that make you more careful
of what you write
and what topics you touch?
Or, I hate to say
make fun of, but,
you know.
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
So I just,
I also write,
I have a newsletter
for The Atlantic,
and I just wrote a piece
that was in the print issue
about noise
and the gentrification
of quiet and
I didn’t
think it was going
to be controversial.
And what I decided after that,
apparently
it was very controversial.
But what I decided after
that was that
I just was not going to engage
with conversations
with people, like I did
NPR and I did Collins
and had civil conversation,
but I won’t engage
with social media about it,
if that makes sense.
So I don’t want to censor myself
because of fear,
but I won’t engage
in subpar conversation.
That’s not actual
interrogation of the idea.
So I think that that is, I’m
not going to define my art down
because the nature of the
conversation is so base online.
And so I think that that’s
the best way to answer it.
It taught me a good lesson
that is not to retreat,
but is to lean in
and just ignore people
that aren’t.
I put a lot of energy
into my thoughts and ideas
if I’m
going to put them into paper
and if I’m not going to be met
with that
same level of intellectual rigor
in a conversation back,
then why pay attention to it?
>> Grant Ginder:
Yeah, I completely agree.
I think that there is, there’s
such a difference between,
as you were saying,
intellectually
interrogating an idea
and rigorously kind of
looking at rhetoric
and parsing something apart
and the sort of reactionary hot
takes that have become popular
on places like Twitter.
And so, I agree.
And I
think that it’s actually like
engaging in that
kind of reactionary hot
take ends up
making me feel dumber
and like I forget
how to interrogate an idea
which becomes problematic.
I teach at NYU and I teach essay
writing at NYU, and I’m
constantly asking
my students to interrogate
an idea as opposed to
sort of just reacting to it.
And I find myself
getting more reactionary right,
the longer I’m
like scrolling through Twitter.
And so I think that kind of
putting rules down
and saying like,
I will engage in a conversation
or a debate about an idea,
but not one that is limited
to 140 characters
and a series of back and forth.
>> Xochitl Gonzalez: And by 
the way,
people will get upset 
about anything.
I wrote a piece
about how we need
a rat czar in New York.
And I thought it was so clearly
a comedic piece,
and it was like
I was getting like hate
mail, like hate tweets
that were like, No!
Crime! [Laughter] And
it’s like,
and also rats.
>> Roswell Encina: Somewhere 
I just saw a rat here
in the convention center.
[Laughter] Susan?
>> Susan Coll:
Yeah, it can be paralyzing
if you pay too much attention
to that.
And even with this book,
you know, there’s still little
pockets of topics
that I’ve touched that I’m
still waiting for somebody
to attack me for.
And, you know,
we see that all the time
with authors, with,
you know, just
something comes up
and is misinterpreted.
And it’s, people are so quick
to just attack
somebody on Twitter
and I stay off Twitter
other than to retweet
or advertise an event.
So I’m afraid of Twitter.
>> Audience member:
Hi. Not super
related to social media,
but I was wondering
when you guys were first writing
your first novels,
I guess what was the most
challenging and maybe what like,
what you didn’t expect
to be the most challenging?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
Hmm. That’s a good question.
>> Roswell Encina: Xochitl,
considering
this is your debut novel.
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
Yes. So the most,
what was sort of challenging,
but then I realized
quite quickly that it was going
to be challenging, was managing
all the plot threads,
if that makes sense.
And so the former wedding
planner in me
was very good at detail
and organizing them.
The thing that was more
surprising
was you
get really into this thing
and then all of a sudden
you realize like
you wrote some convenient lies
that people are feeling
about things and like,
you know, you look at a scene
with two characters
and you’re like, is that really
what she’s—like,
all of these things
had happened,
to be as emotionally honest
as you follow the
through line of the plot versus
what you want to happen.
And I think that going back
and having to really interrogate
all of that and question
it was the more,
and then force yourself
to think through these feelings
and have these feelings,
was the more challenging part.
>> Susan Coll:
Yeah, I think I’d say the
most challenging part was
the publishing piece.
I was probably too naive.
I was very young.
I was too young
to be trying to write a novel.
But nevertheless,
I finished the first novel
and tried to sell it
and spent a year
or two of heartbreak
and then set it aside
and said, you know, I’m
going to take,
I try to be glass
half full person.
I’m going to take
everything I learned from
that process and incorporate
the positive things
people said and put everything
I have into the second novel.
And if I can’t sell that, I’m
going back to school
and getting a master’s
in history.
So that was the challenge
for me,
and it’s just as well
that it never published it.
>> Grant Ginder: I wish I 
hadn’t published my first novel.
I think that the hardest thing
for me
and it actually took me
three books to learn
it was writing the story
that I wanted to tell,
the story that I felt like
I needed to tell,
as opposed
to the story or the book
that I should be telling
or that like fit
at this moment
in my career
or with this sort of slice
of my identity.
And just kind of
getting rid of all of that
and writing the story
that truly interested
me and felt urgent.
But like I said, that
certainly didn’t happen
with the first book.
And it took me
until The People We Hate
at the Wedding
to kind of land there.
>> Audience member:
Thank you all so much.
>> Roswell Encina: 
If you had to write
like a historical fiction
and pick a moment in history
that you think
that you could spin
into something funny,
what would that be?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
Oh. Hmm.
>> Roswell Encina: 
There’s a lot of comedy--
>> Susan Coll:
I can answer that.
I’ll answer it
and give you both time to think,
because I did do that.
And so the second novel
that became my debut novel,
I thought I was writing
a historical novel
about a very tragic character,
which was
Eleanor Marx, Karl
Marx’s daughter,
who had committed suicide.
And when I heard that,
I thought,
wow, there’s a novel here.
And then when I wrote it
and went to try to sell it
again,
everybody said,
this is very funny.
And I thought, How in the world
is this funny?
I didn’t really mean to make
a comedy
out of something tragic,
so the comedy was not really
about her.
It was everything
else going on in the novel.
>> Roswell Encina:  
How about you, Xochitl?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
I think there could be a lot
of comedy
in the Spanish-American War.
[Laughter] I do.
I think like,
I think the idea of borders
is just sort of like hilarious.
It’s like one day, like, you’re
American now,
and I just sort of think, like,
like that is really
like a hilarious idea.
There’s
a hilarious comedy to be made in
the very first sentence census
taken in Puerto Rico,
where people were like,
I don’t want your racism
and just were identifying as
white, even though nobody was,
you know, like,
I think that stuff is kind
of really hilarious.
Like, so
the idea of imposed identity
I find kind of hilarious,
and even though there’s
some tragic consequences
and just the absurdness of
like one day
you’re one thing and then a line
is drawn on a map
and now you’re
supposed to be something else.
And what does that mean? Yeah.
>> Roswell Encina: Grant.
>> Grant Ginder:
I think that there’s a lot of,
like a ton of comedy
to be found
in the French Revolution.
Like, it’s just,
I mean, like, we have these
visions of it, of like,
I mean, obviously, it was, like,
terrible and bloody, but,
and I think I’m thinking of this
right now because earlier
today I saw on Twitter
someone had posted,
it was like a nonfiction,
it looked like a very kind of
academic
biography of Robespierre.
But the person writing
the tweet was like, Oh my God,
this book has everything,
like historical intrigue,
like romantic, you know, like,
like a romantic triangle,
like everything.
And I was like,
this is hilarious.
And like,
the cover is like a very staid
portrait of Robespierre.
And so, but then also
I started thinking about it
and I was like,
they made up their own months,
like, that’s hilarious.
Like, that is hilarious, right?
Like, there’s a, there was
a tennis court involved.
Like, I don’t know.
I think I, you know,
maybe that’ll be my next book.
Robespierre, a comedy!
>> Audience member:
Hi. I wanted to ask about
how you think
about the audience, or
if you think about the audience
as you’re writing
related to either reactions
or things you’re
trying to signal or honor
for a particular community
group.
Or like I,
as an artist, like,
how constrained
do you feel to represent
something bigger than yourself
or drive
some message to a particular
audience or
are waiting for
some kind of audience reaction
once you finish?
>> Grant Ginder:
In the first draft,
I think the only level
at which I’m thinking about
the audience is like, does
this make sense?
Like, is this,
would someone be able
to follow
plot wise,
sort of what’s happening here?
But I try not to think
about the audience.
I try, at least
in the very first draft,
because I look at
most of the novels
that I’m writing
is trying to work something out,
right?
There’s like a problem
that I’m trying to work out,
not a problem
that has a definitive solution
by the end of the novel,
certainly.
But there’s, there’s
something that interests me.
And so it’s
a very personal thing.
So I try not to be constrained
too much by
thinking about an audience.
>> Susan Coll: Yeah. I think I 
should think about the audience
more and I would be more 
successful
because I just tend
to write very dark comedy.
And even with this book,
with this,
you know, colorful, happy cover,
it’s, there’s a lot of darkness
running through that.
And people don’t always expect
or appreciate that.
>> Xochitl Gonzalez: I think I 
was really driven to write.
I’m like, Oh my God,
one day I will get on a stage
and not encant Toni Morrison.
But you know,
write the book
that you want to read.
And I just had not seen
an experience like mine,
which is both as like
an Nuyorican
but also as an Nuyorican
whose community is
being displaced
and a working class family.
And I just hadn’t seen that,
and particularly,
you know, not as a young girl,
you know, like
and I felt
really determined,
from the very outset
that if somebody
with a similar background to me
read it,
they would be like, yes,
like, yes, like because I felt
I hadn’t seen that walk of life
validated on the page.
And so I think I’ve always
found this to be true
in my business life.
Niche often works.
Like you play niche
and people are very into it.
And I think I wrote it
very specifically
for a particular audience
and it happens to be that then
in the specificity
there’s a universality
and that’s a beautiful thing.
But I very much wrote for,
I wrote for
that Nuyorican woman Really.
>> Roswell Encina:
Yes, ma'am.
>> Audience member:
I was really struck by Xochitl’s
comment that borders
are really hilarious.
And I wondered if you could
expand on that a bit
and if you’ve explored it
more in any of your books
and what you think
the implications
of borderless world might be.
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
Yeah, you know,
probably
taking on a borderless world
might be more than I can do
in this seat at this moment.
[Laughter] But,
you know, I think,
I guess I do
think a lot like the next,
there’s two heroines
in my next book,
and one is a Cubana who
came to America and Operation
Peter Pan, for instance.
And she sort of picked up,
literally put on a plane,
dropped in Iowa
and now told she’s an American.
And I think I am attracted
to these ideas of like an import
that, for instance, you know,
it was like there was a war,
whereas a Spanish colony
for like three days,
it was an independent land.
And then suddenly there was like
a house, like a wife swap.
And it’s like,
oh yeah, you belong to America.
And like I think the idea
that this is arbitrary,
but that suddenly everybody
still has the name American
and is meant to feel
a particular way,
I find it
slightly absurd and interesting,
you know, like
I don’t know that,
I don’t know that I’ve
extrapolated it
to a borderless world.
And I traveled a lot
in the last year.
And I do feel like every state
seems to have
its own personality and persona.
So it’s not that I think it’s
completely absurd
as much as the notion
of shifting and moving
is funny to me
that like it comes
with an identity that I don’t
think automatically kicks in.
>> Audience member:
Thank you.
>> Roswell Encina: 
Well, you’ll be our
last question, ma’am.
>> Audience member: So, as the 
daughter of a Mexican immigrant
who doesn’t speak Spanish. 
Never been to Mexico.
In Olga Dies Dreaming,
I noticed that there were
different characters,
different characters
who connected
with their identity,
different ways.
You had the non-Puerto Rican
who knew everything
about Puerto Rico.
You had the Puerto Rican
who didn’t speak Spanish
and had
only visited once, and then
the one who’s learning Spanish
and visited quite frequently.
How did you manage
characters who identified
with their roots
in different ways
without making one seem
more valid or more important
than the other person’s
connection?
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
Oh, I love that question.
And I’d say
it was from genuine belief
and it was from the knowledge
that it’s like circumstance.
I think, especially amongst
Latinos, we’re
made to feel really ashamed
that we don’t speak Spanish.
And nobody attributes
the fact that forced
assimilation of racism
is largely
the reason why that is,
and that our families
want us to fit in
and don’t want us
to be discriminated against
And so I think
because I have sympathy to that
and that that’s the reason
why my Spanish is so pathetic.
Like,
but at the same time, like,
my mother
speaks completely fluent Spanish
and like my mother speaks
completely fluent Spanish, her
sister didn’t.
And I just think
the relationship to language
and that,
you know, Olga, the heroine,
she sort of goes off
to a private elite school
and like where these things,
the process of assimilation
is somewhat rewarded
and her brother is able
to go to like a state school
and he joins
a Latino fraternity.
And like,
the idea of like embracing
that identity
is more celebrated.
And I, I think both
experiences are valid,
and that’s
probably the reason
why that came across in the art.
>> Audience member:
Thank you.
>> Xochitl Gonzalez:
Thank you.
>> Roswell Encina: I want to
thank all three of you, Xochitl,
Susan and Grant,
this was fantastic.
I’m hoping
we answer the question
that politics is funny
when you watch the news tonight.
They’ll be signing
books
downstairs on the expo floor.
Thank you again
for coming to the Book Festival.
We’ll see you next year.
[Applause]