Wow. Thursday night the reading was great. Peter Ho Davies read a short story called “Minotaur”, and “What You Know”.

Ty introduced him before he read. Here are some pictures.

My favorite part of the talk was when Davies was asked, “Why do you write?” His answer was that sometimes he is in a situation where he doesn’t know what’s going on, socially, or otherwise, and writing is his way to work out what really happened. That really resonated with me for many different reasons.

My favorite part of his visit was taking him to Smitty’s BBQ, and just hearing the fiction writers talk about craft. Nothing like watching people who mine experiences and distill them into words just shoot the breeze over tasty pork ribs.

Ok we’ve got the words and the visuals covered. If you really want more of the Peter Ho Davies experience, you should listen to this podcast.

On a completely unrelated note, I have a poet friend named Zach Schomburg who really likes to take blurry pictures. Recently, he’s gone more grainy and tight crop, so I may have to take up his blurry mantle. This weekend I was addicted to what I call the blur setting. Since the days are getting shorter, this is how my camera acts. The first of a long series, Ty getting ready to introduce Peter Ho Davies.

I just showed Ty all of my blurry pictures from this weekend and he wonders how long it will last.

Andrei Codrescu had a commentary on NPR today. Go to that link and listen to it. You can read it, but I urge you to listen to it. Since he moved to the mountains in Arkansas, he sounds much more like a uber libertarian hillfolksy academic. The strokes of the fantastic, or magic realism make me smile. They also make me think that is the peace my father is searching for plotting away in his man cave, brewing his elderberry and rhubarb wine in a 20 gallon crock while sharpening his chainsaw or cleaning his guns.

Last night, Ty and I had the pleasure of picking up Peter Ho Davies at the Little Rock National Airport. We showed him around Conway, and took him out to what we believe is the best BBQ joint in the area: Smitty’s.

Tonight he will have a reading at 7:30 at Trischmann Hall. This summer I read stories from his book Equal Love to Ty in the car while we were driving cross-country. Sometimes I have problems reading prose aloud in the car, stumbling over every other sentence. This set of stories was a joy to read out loud, requiring me to take frequent pauses to read the fun word play as it was written, instead of the cliche my mind instinctively anticipated.

Last week, when Ty’s class went to a reading and discussion over Mexican food, the majority of the students loved the story “Frogmen” from Equal Love.

I haven’t read his latest novel, The Welsh Girl, but I’ve seen a few of Ty’s students carrying it around. I’m not sure what the reading is tonight. I’ll let you know tomorrow.