what a great occasion - to be able to take an hour off in the middle of the afternoon to go and celebrate a colleague who won a Pulitzer this year! I wish I hadn't been short, and behind lots of heads - about three more rows of them than you can see here - and could have got better shots, both of Percival Everett himself, being very gracious towards - well, I would say USC, but in fact, the English department - and then of the panel: Aimee Bender, Dana Johnson, and the honorand. Someone came up with a brilliant idea for the format: have students send in questions (mostly about James) in advance, which were read out by Dana and Aimee, while the students (present: those heads) had their photo and question put up on the screens on either side of the stage. Percival was his usual idiosyncratic, sardonic, honest, modest, scathing, self-deprecating, unpredictable self. I think I would have been quite terrified to have been in one of his writing classes or workshops.
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