I got the news a couple weeks ago. It started like any other day. I was bored after classes, and there was no way in hell I was going to start my homework— it was naptime. As is customary, I logged onto my laptop so I could check my email to ensure that I wasn’t missing out on some super-important club meeting that I wasn’t going to attend anyway. My inbox was full of the usual junk: the school newspaper, emails from professors about my classes, porn advertisements, (kidding) the works, until I stumbled upon an email with the subject header that read: You’re Invited to Have Dinner With Writers From the Visiting Writers Series, RSVP. I was ecstatic.

For those of you who don’t know, I attend Butler University in Indianapolis. Each year, they run a program called the Visiting Writers Series, where famous authors from around the country come and speak to the people on campus. The next morning, the author hosts a student-only Q&A in the creative writing center. In past years, Butler has had some pretty big names come to town: Tim O’ Brien, Margaret Atwood, and Jennifer Egan, to name a few. This year, there were some people I’d never heard of before, and one name I had: Jonathan Franzen was scheduled to come on October 28th. Continue reading →