>> Peter Vankevich:
Good morning.
If everyone wants
to take their seats,
we'll get started in a moment.
Welcome to our fiction stage.
I think one of the finest
of those wonderful
National Book Festival.
My name is Peter Vankevich.
I have been fiction
manager for many years,
but I worked 30 years at
the Library of Congress,
and I'm the last standing person
be a volunteer for every one
of them, so I'm very -- one of
my proudest accomplishments.
I live in North Carolina.
This is my homecoming
weekend here.
So, we're going to have
a wonderful day here.
This is the best part, and we've
got some fantastic writers.
I do want to introduce
Mare Arana, my good friend.
She's the literary director
for the National Book
Festival and welcome.
[ Applause ]
>> Mare Arana: Thank you
and welcome to all of you.
This is a grand occasion
every year.
The Library of Congress puts
on a very big show for you.
I hope you have a
chance to go down --
we're very grateful to our
sponsors and our donors,
and I hope you have a chance
to go down to the expo floor
and thank them personally,
because you're able to come
to this wonderful free event
because of their generosity,
And, really no amount
is too small.
If you're willing to
give to the Library
of Congress' National
Book Festival, please,
I invite you to do so.
We love your support,
and we love to see your
faces here every year.
It's a wonderful,
wonderful event.
It's a great lineup this year.
I always think that every year
it's the best it could possibly
be and then it gets better.
So, wonderful to
have you with us.
It's now my pleasure to
introduce the Librarian
of Congress, Carla Hayden.
Dr. Hayden was sworn in as
the 14th Librarian of Congress
on September 14, 2016.
She was nominated by President
Barack Obama, and she came
to the Library of Congress from
the Enoch Pratt Free Library
in Baltimore, wonderful
library if you don't -- yes--
[ Applause ]
Where she was for
23 years the CEO.
So, she is, I don't
think it's been --
it's probably a hundred years,
since we've had a
librarian be the Librarian
of Congress, so we're
very proud.
[ Applause ]
One of Dr. Hayden's primary
goals is to make the Library
of Congress accessible to all
Americans through its website,
check it out loc.gov,
through its exhibitions
and reading rooms we
invite you to come.
It's a public place.
It is your library.
So, and with grand events
such as the National Book
Festival please welcome our very
wonderful Librarian of
Congress, Carla Hayden.
>> Carla Hayden: Thank you
so much, thank you so much.
Well, I'm delighted
to welcome all of you
to the National Book Festival,
my favorite event of the year.
The fiction authors
being brought to you
through the generosity
of the Library's James Madison
Council really brings this
to life, and they have been
a sponsor of the Festival
for the entire 18 years.
I also have to say that
I share Mare's excitement
about the wonderful
lineup of authors
on this stage and
all the others.
While you're here, I hope you
make it down to the lower level,
where there are many fun
family-friendly activities
devoted to bringing you
and young people more
from the Library of Congress.
So, I hope you have
a wonderful day.
Now, I have to also tell
you that I am super excited,
and so you will probably
see me throughout the day,
running around.
I wore this top especially.
So, just wave, because,
as a librarian,
this is like being in heaven.
Books, authors, poets,
illustrators, authors,
it's just, I'm aquiver.
So, that's why I have to make
sure that I write down all
of my remarks, because
I can get distracted,
and I know you will, too.
So, this is wonderful, and I'm
very pleased to be able, no,
to be, to present
something today
that is very dear to my heart.
Since 2008, the Library
of Congress has honored
great writers of fiction,
from John Grisham to Toni
Morrison to Marilynne Robinson,
Dennis Johnson, and this award
recognizes the best writers
of fiction, and the winners are
chosen by a distinguished panel
of Nobel and Man Booker Prize
winners, Pulitzer Prize winners
and other literary
award recipients as well
as past winners of the prize.
And, this year, to my
personal delight as well,
the panel has selected
Ms. Annie Proulx.
[ Applause ]
Now, Ms. Proulx has
received just
about every literary award
there is, the Pulitzer Prize,
the National Book Award,
and the O. Henry Award among
many others.
She is the author
of eight books,
including "The Shipping
News" and the short story
"Brokeback Mountain",
both of which were adapted
into major motion pictures, and
her latest book is "Barkskins".
She is truly an American
original.
She has given us monumental
sagas and keen eyed,
skillfully wrought stories,
and throughout her writing she
succeeds in capturing the wild,
wooly heart of America
from its screwball wit
to every last detail.
She is so deserving
of this award,
and we are about to
confer to Ms. Proulx.
Will you please come forward
and accept the 2018 Library
of Congress Prize
for American Fiction?
Please join me in welcoming
a true American treasure,
Ms. Annie Proulx.
[ Applause ]
And, we're even giving
her something.
>> Annie Proulx: Thank you,
thank you so very much.
>> Carla Hayden: Would
you say a few words?
>> Annie Proulx: Certainly.
[ Applause ]
Thank you all so
much for coming.
It's wonderful, wonderful to
see so many pals up there,
and I do think of
readers as friends.
And, I've had the great pleasure
of meeting people everywhere
who like the things I write
about who have stories
of their own, and once in a
while I get a real big surprise.
One time in Australia,
after I had been reading,
a lady handed me in the book
signing line a little note
folded over, and she
looked very sorrowful
as she handed it to me.
I didn't have a chance
to open that until later
and when I did open it,
it was about two sentences
of a very hard story.
She said that she had hated her
husband all the years she'd been
married to him, and the
only surcease that she had
from her misery was reading.
And, I found that extremely
poignant and it's troubled me
to this day to think
that her only escape
from what was an unhappy
situation was reading,
but reading can do that to us.
It can do that for us, and
I know this is an audience
of readers, and I
share that with you.
We're all readers here.
I'm so pleased to be
here and thank you,
thank you very much for coming.
[ Applause ]
>> Mare Arana: It's such
a pleasure to be here
with Annie Proulx, one of I'm a
devoted loyal fan for many years
and have read every single
book that she has written
from the very beginning.
It's extraordinary.
I think, I said to
her last night,
"I think you're the great
chronicler of North America."
She's done the Range and I don't
mean just the Wyoming Range.
I mean she's done Newfoundland,
she's done Canada,
she's done Wyoming.
There's this tremendous
cavalcade of characters
that she has brought to us.
Her stories can be raw.
They always hit you in the gut.
They are really an extraordinary
collection of American,
North American beautiful,
beautifully written works.
I am so pleased that you have
received this prize, Annie.
Congratulation from the bottom
of my heart and thank you
for that anecdote,
because reading is,
in many ways, an escape.
You gave us a good -- last
night at the pep rally,
because we have a pep rally.
We call it the Gala where
authors all get together
and they talk about
what inspired them
and what put their
heads together in a way,
and you gave the most
extraordinary sort of litany
of works that had, from
the very beginning,
that had informed you.
Could you sort of give a short
version to our audience here?
>> Annie Proulx: Sure.
The message that I was trying
to get across, much condensed,
is that you can never introduce
your child to reading too early.
When you get home
from the hospital
or even before the baby is
born, read, read out loud.
It may sound silly, but it's not
and as soon as you do get home
from the hospital with that
new kid, pick up a book,
preferably one with pictures,
even though those little
eyes aren't really focused
yet and read.
Start reading and repeat
this recipe every day
until the child says I
want to read by myself,
and you will have a smart,
intelligent, involved,
terrific person in your life.
You have to start young.
Don't wait until the kid is
six or seven or eight or ten,
right away, as tiny infants,
introduce them to books.
That's what I said.
>> Mare Arana: That's, yeah,
that's exactly what she said,
and your background, I
think, predisposes you
to really know North
America so well.
You have Anglo-American and
French-Canadian backgrounds,
and your father was from Quebec,
and your mother was a painter,
and that, in many ways, I think,
seeing, because your books,
your short stories
are so vividly drawn.
There's a very painterly
quality.
Did you paint as a child?
>> Annie Proulx: We all
grew up with pencils
and brushes in our family.
It was just what we did.
I think our parents were
not happily married.
I'm the oldest of five girls.
I think our parents were not
really happy with one another,
and my mother took
refuge in painting.
I've seen some of her paintings
from before she met my father
and they're joyous and
with very strong colors.
And, then, as years went by,
the paintings became smaller
and tighter and almost
always landscapes.
People began to disappear
from her work,
but she had a storytelling
talent
like her mother before her,
something about women
and stories.
And, she could, and often
did, we'd be sitting outside,
and she motioned to the ground
and we noticed some ants
down there, and she would pick
out discernable ants like one
with a particularly large
crumb, would identify the crumb,
and that particular ant,
it would quickly
had a name attached.
And, this went on with
everything around,
so that we had stories just
boiling up from the ground,
and she just did this
as a matter of course.
If the wind was blowing
the leaves a certain way,
there was an animistic
touch to this.
It was a story that
came out of it.
So, we were very
much in the bosom
of nature during my childhood,
which was a wonderful thing.
She was an amateur naturalist
and noticed everything.
We had a house full of pressed
rose petals, and animal skins,
and butterfly cocoons, and
it made for a rich childhood
in addition to reading.
>> Mare Arana: This
was in Connecticut?
>> Annie Proulx: It
was in Connecticut,
but not just Connecticut.
My father was, my father left
school at age 14, not by choice,
and went to work in the
textile mills of New England
as bobbin boy, and
his ambition was
to make something of himself.
He felt very keenly, being
a French Canadian at a time
when French Canadians
were disliked and despised
as being unwelcome immigrants.
It didn't matter that his
grandparents had been born
in New England.
Anyway, he set out
to improve himself
and that affected our
home lives very much.
We moved. He was constantly
after the better job,
went to night school,
read, and read, and read,
and taught himself, and
we moved, and we moved,
and we moved, and we moved.
And, I think by the
time I left home,
I had lived in maybe 20 places,
and I've continued
this in my life.
I think I've moved maybe 40
times in my life, most recently
within the last five years
I've moved four times.
There's a big problem with this,
because as a reader I have a lot
of books, and even though I have
shed myself of many of them,
from time to time, I tend,
when I'm doing research
on a particular facet of life
or history, to collect all sorts
of books about that
period of time,
people, place, and so forth.
So, I've had to divest
myself over and over again
and to make the load of moving
lighter, hundreds of boxes
of books, and I lifted every
one of them with bad results.
But, now, I have to replace
the ones that I've lost,
because them so badly.
I'm not one who lets
go of books easily,
and it's very embarrassing
privately
to want a particular
book and not have it.
I knew I had it.
I knew where it was
four houses ago.
So, that's my life,
getting more books
and replacing the ones
I've gotten rid of
and repeating this
over and over.
>> Mare Arana: That's the
challenging part, of course,
of moving, but travel
seems to feed you in a way.
>> Annie Proulx: I've
done a lot of that.
>> Mare Arana: You have.
>> Annie Proulx: A
lot of traveling.
I really do have itchy feet.
I think I'm always looking
for the right place,
the place I really belong.
But, I guess in the end, it
boils down I probably belong
in New England, although I lived
just about the opposite of that.
I'm in the Northwest
Pacific corner,
and New England's far away,
but New England is not
something you can escape from.
For those of you who
know New England,
it's with you right to the end.
>> Mare Arana: The travel
part is important, I think,
at least in my mind, as
a reader, as your reader,
because in The Shipping News,
the language that is used is
so -- I mean, one can hear the,
that sort of Northeast pander,
sort of the language
that is used.
The way that a Northeasterner
will drop the subject
or the pronoun in a
sentence and you, I feel,
you feel that you are in
Newfoundland, and you are a part
of these, this community,
and in Wyoming,
my grandparents were in Wyoming.
I visited Wyoming as a child
from very far away and the --
when I read your
Wyoming stories,
these are my cousins,
my uncles, my aunts.
The lingo that you managed
to capture is extraordinary.
>> Annie Proulx: Well,
that's what I do.
>> Mare Arana: You
sure do, you sure do.
>> Annie Proulx: My great
interest is in place.
I am quite fascinated by the
geography, geology, the climate,
the weather, the
ancient history,
all of the things about a place.
If it's a small place,
fine, but I try to find
out everything I can about
it, who's been there before,
what was before anybody
and put them all together,
because I strongly believe that
place makes us what we are.
It's extremely difficult
to escape from your place.
Lots of people try it and
very few succeed entirely.
So, the mores, the accents,
the climate, the weather,
everything that you grew
up with is stuck in there.
It's the measurement for
anything that comes afterwards,
which is why I think so many
of us are having trouble
with climate change.
It can't be right.
It has to be like it was.
So -- and it's not.
>> Mare Arana: Indeed.
>> Annie Proulx: So, this
examination of place is, for me,
the main reason for
writing stories.
I try, in the writing, to
understand what made this place
like it is and what are
the problems of the people
who live there and how
do they solve them,
and that's my recipe
for story writing.
>> Mare Arana: Yeah,
and it's spelunking
into the culture that you do.
Let me take you back to
the' 70s, which was when --
just let's, speaking
of spelunking,
you began your career
by writing nonfiction,
and you actually founded
a newspaper in Vermont.
>> Annie Proulx:
It wasn't fiction.
>> Mare Arana: No.
[Laughter] We could go off
on that one, but at the time,
you were and, you know, skiing,
canoeing, hunting, fishing,
all of these wonderful
outdoor things,
and you were doing
how-to-books on gardening and--
>> Annie Proulx: Madness.
>> Mare Arana: And,
making cider and all
of that wonderful
sort of lifestyle.
How -- and you, I think,
began a PhD in history,
which you decided to
abandon, but the --
all of these things
fed, in some way,
what you eventually
did in fiction.
>> Annie Proulx:
Yes, absolutely.
>> Mare Arana: Tell
us about that.
>> Annie Proulx: I've had
learned people commiserate
with me for not finishing
the degree,
but it was the smartest
thing I ever did.
The academic life, for me,
would have been a prison.
I don't like to be
pinned into a corner,
which is probably why I have
been married so many times.
[ Laughter ]
But--
I don't know, this stuff
is hard to talk about.
>> Mare Arana: Yeah, yeah.
>> Annie Proulx: I did
do all those things,
and this little newspaper
started as a joke.
It was called Behind the Times.
It was a small town in Vermont,
and a friend and I learned
that the selectmen were
having secret meetings,
supposed to be public
but weren't.
And, so we took turns in
actually appearing there
and defying them
to have a meeting
without a member of the public.
We wrote about it.
We wrote about the
selectmen's meetings at length.
They got used to it, although
they were really upset
and angry at first.
And, to get this paper off the
ground we called together a
bunch of friends and interested
persons and put a note
up on the general store
counter that we wanted
to start a newspaper and
would everybody come together
and we'd talk about it.
So, the town folks turned
out, and Vermont is one
of the few places
left in this country
where town meetings are
really, really important.
And, the whole town
comes together just
like the Norman Rockwell
cover and people stand up
and speak their piece and sit
down again and are drowned
out by shouts, but it's
something to admire
and wonderful to live through.
So, our paper got off to a
flying start, and we ran it
for several years, my
friend Tom Watkin and I.
Eventually, I went on
to different things.
I started moving and writing
fiction, and he sold the paper
and it soon disappeared from
the surface of the earth.
I don't know the
history of what happened.
I think the fellow who
bought it filled it full
of political tripe, and
that's what happens.
But, we had a good thing going,
and while we did it,
it was a lot of fun.
So, citizen science is another
thing that's very dear to me,
and I see that newspaper
adventure
as a kind of citizen science.
As citizens we have a tremendous
amount of power, if we take it,
but if we just sit there
and wait for the next guy
to do it, it doesn't get done.
>> Mare Arana: Indeed.
How did you -- going from this
sort of nonfiction introduction?
You were, if I may
say, of a good age
when you started
writing fiction.
>> Annie Proulx: Yes.
>> Mare Arana: You would
have some life behind you.
How did you make that decision
to suddenly write
through the imagined?
>> Annie Proulx: I don't believe
it was really a decision.
It just happened, as
most things in life do.
I'm not one of those people who
wake up one morning and say,
"By god, I'm going
to do such and such."
That's nice, but it
didn't happen to me.
I just started writing.
I've been a reader forever and
ever, and it was just natural.
I think at one point I picked up
some terribly popular new novel
and read about 30 pages and
thought, "I could do that."
Put it aside, I don't
remember what it was now,
but it had its day
and then its night,
but I just started writing and
I found it to be engrossing.
I saw it as working
out of puzzles
and it's still that for me.
To write is to examine a
place and the people in it,
the people who might be in it,
because I never use
real people as models.
I always use names from
the past or invented names
or just completely make
people up who are composites
of characteristics added to
swaggers, head scratching.
And, this kind of thing is very
fun and if you haven't tried it,
I suggest that some day when
you have a little free time,
sit down and invent a
world that you know.
It's really very engaging.
>> Mare Arana: You
began with stories.
"Heart Songs" was
your first book.
That was 1988, and
then you moved on to
"Postcards" very quickly,
because that was
published in 1992.
Very well received,
wonderfully received,
and then very shortly there
upon came The Shipping News,
and I just want to read one of
the -- from one of the reviews,
which is really, I
think, wraps it up nicely.
"The writing is charged with
sardonic wit, alive, funny,
a little threatening,
packed with brilliantly original
images and, now and then,
a sentence that simply
takes your breath away."
So true, and The Shipping News
came so quickly after Postcards.
Was this something that you
were holding in your back pocket
or in a drawer somewhere
that you had written early
and how did that happen?
>> Annie Proulx: I had
been thinking about it.
My newspaper friend Tom Watkin
and I went on a fishing trip.
We both liked fishing,
and I had wanted to go
to Newfoundland for years.
I did graduate studies at the --
at Sir George Williams
University in Montreal,
and at the time, Newfie
jokes were just rife.
They were like the Polish jokes
that had been in this country
and I can't remember when,
the '50s or something or other
and the ditsy blonde jokes.
So, I was curious about
Newfoundlanders, and so Tom
and I decided to go fishing
up there and away we went,
headed for Newfoundland and
decided to camp out all the way,
brought a canoe along with
us, which was silly, but--
I fell in love with the
place, as we were just sliding
into Port aux Basques.
There's a long ferry crossing
from Nova Scotia
over to Newfoundland.
It's about a seven-hour ferry
ride, and just as we came
into the harbor, everything was
coming with a deep green moss,
and it was foggy, and
there was fog horn going,
and there was a bell
clanging in the distance.
And, it was just exquisite,
and salty, and unknown,
and I just thought this is
a place, and I determined
to learn more about it.
So, that was the
beginning of that book.
I went back ten times, over
the next two or three years,
gathering material, listening
to people talk, eating the food,
staying in different
places, and there are lots
of stories connected with
that, which are still untold,
but it was a grand place, and
I loved it deeply and still do.
>> Mare Arana: Well, you
captured it beautifully.
You won the Pulitzer Price
and the National Book
Award for that book.
I should mention
also for Postcards,
which was her first
novel, she was the first,
you were the first
woman, I believe,
to win the PEN/Faulkner Award.
>> Annie Proulx: I was so lucky.
I was really lucky, yes.
I think I just happened to be at
a certain age at a certain time
and things just fell into place.
So, it was good fortune for
me, really good fortune.
>> Mare Arana: Postcards has
a very powerfully sad ending,
Shipping News does not.
It has a powerful sort of
happy ending as in a way.
>> Annie Proulx: Sometimes,
you can't avoid happy endings.
[ Laughter ]
>> Mare Arana: That's a quote.
That is a quote.
I am writing that down.
You've moved to Wyoming.
I think it was in
the late '90s or so.
>> Annie Proulx: Yes.
>> Mare Arana: That
must've been a, quite,
a change of just certainly a
change of landscape from all
that moss to all that prairie.
>> Annie Proulx: Yes.
>> Mare Arana: How did it go?
>> Annie Proulx: Well, it was
actually when I was working
on Postcards, I needed
a place that was Western
for my peripatetic protagonist.
And, I looked in the guide
to writer's residences
around the country
and, low and behold,
there was one in Wyoming.
I'd never even been in Wyoming,
but it sounded very promising.
So, I wrote to them
and got particulars
and made an application,
and they said come on out.
So, one day in, I think it was
February, I threw all my stuff
in the back of my old truck
in Vermont and headed West,
and as I crossed the line from
Nebraska from one of the Dakotas
into Wyoming, there
had been a light skiff
of snow the night before.
And, it was late afternoon, that
is about 3:30 in the afternoon,
and I saw the landscape was
a color I had never ever seen
in my life.
The yellow grass under the snow,
the way the light was hitting
this very light, fluffy,
dry snow made everything
have a kind
of glistening mauve purplish
color that was ethereal
and bizarre at the same time,
a color I had never seen.
What kind of a place is
this that can make colors
that you've never seen before,
because I was, you know,
I was certainly not young,
and I thought I'd seen all
the colors in the world.
So, I was enchanted right off
the bat and spent a couple
of weeks there working
on my story for --
what was the name of that book?
>> Mare Arana: For Wyoming
Stories", "Bad Dirt", or--
>> Annie Proulx: Not
Wyoming Stories, the--
>> Mare Arana: Bad Dirt, or
"Fine Just the Way It Is", or--
>> Annie Proulx:
Postcards, thank you.
>> Mare Arana: Postcards?
>> Annie Proulx: Yeah.
So, I was able to get
the information I needed
for Postcards, but by then,
I realized that Wyoming
was a place
that I should spend
some time in.
I walked a great deal while
I was there, and it's a --
walking is an important
component of writing,
because if you're tied up with
knots about plot directions
or character exposes or the
way things are coming together,
walking usually solves
the problem.
The rougher the terrain,
the easier the problems are
to solve, and I did a lot of
walking there, and I decided
that I would move to Wyoming.
My mother had recently died.
I packed up, I moved and
have been out ever since.
I had 19 years of
champagne powder in Wyoming.
I was an avid cross-country
skier
for many years and
it was the best.
>> Mare Arana: I will take
your suggestion on the walking.
For me it's cooking.
>> Annie Proulx: Really?
>> Mare Arana: Cooking seems
to get the gears spinning.
>> Annie Proulx: My
god, I never tried that.
>> Mare Arana: Try it.
[ Laughter ]
Wyoming was very
fertile ground for you.
I mentioned some of
the books, Bad Dirt,
Fine Just the Way It Is,
Wyoming Stories, wonderful,
every single one of them, and I
actually reviewed "Bird Cloud"
which was your book in returning
to nonfiction actually,
to write about your travails of
the household business of living
in Wyoming and being
snowed in and all of that
and the tribulations with the
fixing things around the house.
It was really a nitty-gritty
description of life in Wyoming.
>> Annie Proulx: I
miss it very much,
but I'm not there anymore,
but it's in my mind.
So, yes, it was a
big part of my life.
I will always love that place
and the people who live there,
very particular kind
of people, hard-bitten,
able to fix anything, a
lot like Newfoundlanders.
If you ever have to be
cast on a desert island,
it's good to have
either a Newfoundlander
or a Wyoming person with
you, though I'm sure
that they don't give them out
at the edge of the railing.
Yeah, great people.
I learned a lot.
I had many fine times, and
now I'm in another place.
>> Mare Arana: And, you've given
us Barkskins in the interim,
really a tremendous sort of
chronical of the settling
of North America, a big book,
a book about deforestation.
It couldn't be more
timely, this book.
One of the, one of your
epigraphs is a quote I won't --
I'm not going to read
here, but basically,
it says that when the
conquest of America took place,
we virtually destroyed the pagan
animism, and in the process
of destroying that pagan animism
in which nature becomes very
much alive and is a character
in your life you begin the
erosion of a very deep respect,
if not worship, of the
natural world, and it's almost
as if we've invited a
curse upon ourselves.
I find that really, really
interesting, compelling,
and convincing, that
we have, in a way,
leaving that mythological
past that we've --
the connection that
we've had with nature,
that we have lost
something profound.
>> Annie Proulx: We
never had it to lose.
The people who settled, the
settlers, the adventures
from Europe and England, we did
not have those animistic beliefs
at the time that people begin
shifting to the New World.
So, this was, and among other
things, Barkskins was a contrast
between two kinds of
peoples, two kinds of thought,
two kinds of world approach
between Native Americans
and the go-getter
entrepreneurial types.
A complicated story and
it's a big book, too big,
but it was hard to make it
smaller, because if you're going
to do forests, you're
going to have to have time
and 300 years was the
absolute minimum time
that I could manage the rise
and fall of forest situation
and that means a
lot of characters.
So, that was kind of a trap.
I've often thought, since then,
how could I have made
this a smaller book.
My editor had a good idea about
how to make it a smaller book.
She had her red pencil, and we
cut something like 150 pages
from the original
manuscript, many of them--
>> Mare Arana: That's a
deforestation in itself.
>> Annie Proulx: Yes.
Many of those pages I was
sad to see go, but probably,
people would not have been able
to pick the book
up, but so it goes.
It was an ambitious thing.
I think I would have --
the ending of it was very much
darker before I changed it
at the end and gave
a ray of hope.
I still have that ray of hope,
but it's dimmer every day.
>> Mare Arana: Would you like to
ask a question of Annie Proulx?
Please come forward
to the microphones.
We'll have a little bit of time.
I will ask -- question
Annie while people do.
Please, please, I
invite you to come up.
If when you ask a
question though,
lots of things don't last
forever, but this does,
because it gets archived
in the Library of Congress
and your question and
the answer are going
to be archived forever,
so choose well.
Annie, I think you
mentioned last night
that Barkskins is going
to be a series made
by National Geographic.
You've had apart from a
life in words and in print,
you have now filmed,
and these, this writing
of yours is coming very much
alive in a visual medium.
>> Annie Proulx:
There was a time
when books were what it
was all about storytelling
and imagination in this country,
but it's not like that now.
Film is dominant.
Television serials are dominant.
Some people get around to
actually reading the books
of a film that they've seen
and liked or been provoked by.
So, yeah, it's nonsensical to
avoid film under the impression
that you're being
some kind of purist.
So, I have been involved
in and am involved
in various film ventures.
Yes, National Geographic
did option Barkskins
to be made into a series.
I don't know where the
project is right now
and like these things, perhaps
it will come to nothing.
I have read some of the
early sections and been
in contact with the writer.
Haven't heard anything for about
six months, so I have no idea.
Some of the Wyoming Stories are
being looked at with fresh eyes
by filmmakers, and I'm involved
in books that I haven't written
but that I know something
about, because I read them
and enjoyed them so deeply,
and on and on it goes.
There's a connection with
museums, exhibits, film people,
television people, and so forth.
It's part of today's
writing world.
You can't be a hermit and
as attractive as that is,
it doesn't really work.
>> Mare Arana: Yes, indeed.
Question here?
>> Good morning.
You mentioned that you are
in the Pacific Northwest now,
and I was hoping you
could tell us a little bit
about what inspiration
you're finding there.
>> Annie Proulx: I am living in
the Pacific Northwest now and as
for inspiration,
it's all around.
It's a beautiful
part of the country.
I've got the Olympic range
to the West, the Cascades
to the East, British Columbia to
the North, Oregon to the South,
and it's a mild climate.
The ocean is there, Puget Sound
is there, seaweed, see lions,
seals, fish, crabs, wind,
rain, interesting people.
It's a very engaging place,
and I'm learning about it,
trying to learn some
seaweeds right now
and about the indigenous people.
Many of the tribes
remained their own selves.
They weren't shuffled
off somewhere,
and they still are very viable.
Anybody who makes it out there
should go to Cape Flattery
in Nea Bay up at the
tip of the peninsula
and see the extraordinary
Makah Cultural Center,
which will teach you a
great deal about life
as it was before
white people came.
The Makah Museum, the
cultural center, is the result
of something that
happened 500 years ago.
A fishing village of Makah
people were sleeping happily
when a landslide came down and
covered their village entirely.
Beginning in the late
'70s, it was noticed
that the sea was eroding,
some of the pile of dirt
and artifacts were appearing.
Archeologists came, and after
a while, all of the people
in the Makah tribe were
engaged in helping puzzle
out what these artifacts
were, how they were used.
Plans were made for a museum.
The work went on for years,
and the result today
is extraordinary.
This entire village was
preserved in every tiny detail,
and you can see the
unfolding of those lives
and how life was lived 500
years ago in that museum.
I think it's one of
the most striking
and powerful museums
I've ever been in.
So, when you all come out to the
Olympic Peninsula, be sure to go
out there to Cape Flattery and
visit the Makah Cultural Center.
That's only part
of what's there.
It's a rich, rich place
with rainforests, with --
I can look out my kitchen window
and see those things that look
like the -- does anybody
remember when the semis used
to go up and down the
highways with big crates
of chickens stacked up on
them, feathers blowing around?
Well, the cruise ships
remind me very much
of the place of those old semis.
They don't carry chickens
around that way anymore,
but the cruise ships
are still there.
>> Mare Arana: My
timekeeper says we have time
for one more question, so--
>> Annie Proulx: I'm sorry.
I've been talking too much.
>> Mare Arana: No, we love it.
That's why we're here.
Please?
>> Yes, you talked about
the importance of place
and how it affects who we are,
and it seems to me, right now,
when experiencing a mass
migration from areas of conflict
and poverty, people moving
within our country as well
to get a better job or whatever.
So, what effect is this going
to have on the human psyche,
if we lose our sense of place,
will it be a global sense
of place rather than individual?
>> Mare Arana: Thank you.
>> Annie Proulx:
That is a question.
Cancel the rest of the day.
[ Laughter ]
I'm extremely interested
in migration right now.
I had the huge pleasure
of writing a foreword
for the Wyoming project
on angulate migration
in the state of Wyoming
recently.
I think it's coming
out in a month or so.
But, human migration, animal
migration, bird migration,
butterfly migration,
everything is in motion,
and one of the directions
that scientific studies are
taking now is in the direction
of trying to understand
that everything is moving.
We live on these chunks of rock
that are shifting
around the world.
We live next to shores
where tides are changing
and increasing.
We live in so much motion
and change that that's
where it's all happening,
and I'm utterly intrigued.
This is my keen -- one of
my keen interests right now
about migration,
human migrations.
I have zero answers.
I'm still learning, I
think like the rest of us.
So, I can't really
give you any kind
of coherent answer there except
to say I want to know more.
>> Mare Arana: Well, your
coherent answer will, I'm sure,
come in your next work,
which we all look forward to,
and congratulations for being
the Library of Congress Prize
for American Fiction winner.
Sometimes, you have to
have a happy ending.
[ Applause ]
>> Annie Proulx: Thank you.
[ Applause ]