blood type. of all art -- a colorado judge vacated the conviction or green the d.a. to retry or traffic charges he was released december 2015 but the district attorney decided to retry until he was finally found not guilty of all counts november 2016 please give him a big hand. [applause] >> welcome. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations]l day >> all day hear we are recognizing and celebrating authors and books the library of congress makes it seem easy but the truth is the national book festival is a huge undertaking a huge financial undertaking and is possible from generous support you can see if they

are from the convention center but i would ask you to consider making a contribution right now you can send a text for a one time gift added to your mobile home bill -- will phone bill as soon as youn, make that contribution please silence of cellphone and now i would like to introduce co-chair of thena national book festival. [applause] >> we are very honored today to have one of the w best-selling authors who wrote his first book how many people here have readav the book? how many people are going to read the book?

our special guest is j.d. vance. [applause] >> thanks for coming for those who do not know your background a little introduction come ahead native of middletown ohio and a graduate of middletown high school, going into the marines for four years and served in iraq. [applause] and came back and went to ohio state and finished in two years then yale law school and graduated there as part of the law journal clerked for a federal judgeno now in the investment world

and married to a former classmate who is your summer with his two month old son. [applause] if you see his two month old somewhere that is his son. so let's start so when you start to write this book in your wildest imagination you cannot have thought you were right 80 your time is best seller?. >> no. >> where did the idea come from? so really the genesis t is the concept of the ideaificay most specifically ofof mobility of the united states so let yield we had to write a thesis to graduate with those legal policy implications and the

more that we talked to that idea she is author of battle hymn and encouraged me to bring my personal experiences to bear because she thought i could write something that would be intellectually interesting and powerful as i continue to write the book the more row dammar realized i had a unique contribution more as an academic. >> how long did it take to write the book?. >> was always working

part-time because i always had in other job so i started writing it in the middle of 2013 and i finished for the end ofddle of 2015. >> i did it on my computer because my handwriting is terrible. >> did you have day publisher lined up?. >> so it exemplifies the idea of social capital to have these benefits so because of amy and started to think about making this into a book project. >> host: me introduce you from the publishing world and then she became myon publisher and then when you have an idea and somebody like tina to advocate to

find a publisher is relatively easy. that is what happened with me. the hard part was getting into the publishing world that it wasn't so hard. >> some say it should not be this hard to write a book and others say how do i get out?. >>. >> but for me what was so tough getting halfway through the book with an additional 50,000 words seemed so imposing.realiz that i probably have a 10 / one ratio.rds that m

so i remember what a long slog it would be. >> with 10,000 is good for a first author sought 1. --- so at what point did they say we have to print more?. >> that is momentarily after two were three weeks there was an interview that i did but the very kin conservative that went by rule people were sharing on twitter in facebook i went to go check my amazon ranking that is a way to check in realtime how your book is selling. so checking it obsessively like seven or eight seconds.

[laughter] and it says the book is out of stock and will ship in a week so that i realized we don't have enough books soso that is when they started to return. >> i know how many total are in print but how many copies have been sold this just under a million. [applause] >> the title very often authors don't come up with the title right away but where does that come from?. >> conversation with my agent. i really wanted though word hillbilly to be in the ofll book title i thought it captured the particular

cultural subsection was trying to write about also the interesting insider outsider dynamic where my grandma would say we are hillbillies weaken caller cells that but if anybody else does punch them in the nose.a sort o but for that to have a textured meaning but to say elegy it took me awhile and there were a couple of reasons for that. >> now the book has become so well known so now asking for autographs or selfie?. >> so back in columbus sighted noticed a fair amount sometimes in

washington d.c. or in southwestern ohio but after a week and a half ago are is a national i did not get noticed once. >> you have to make a record >> [laughter] so many people everybody has family secrets what is the reaction to your family. >> in talking to my familyg thee so there has been less a slight twist for where started to write the book to now that nobody expected to read died did not expect

this so now we're at the number of copies there is more sensitivity and then to air the of families dirtybu laundry and some people come t down in the middle. >> i have not gotten that yet but maybe now because of c-span. let's t i enjoyed that a great deal but to go through each of those the writing style is very crisp and clear and second your personal story is extraordinary almost like a novel and the relationship

between what is going on in the country with unemployment so let's go through each of these first, first the writing style where did you get this style?. >> it helped in that regardrd. because dealing with excess verbiage barrasso in beijing and thinking how to write ass a warrior with those excess was helpful. as a talented writer but it is funny because there is a neat gray biography and my family still has this big is it is similar to a "hillbilly elegy" and say

j.d. vance was such a great writer even though he was 14 then my wife picks up and says your family is not being honest with you. [laughter] so i don't know. do th what school helped there is a story in the book the first big writing assignment that i had the law school professor handed it back and circled a big section saidfe this is an abomination and it is a sentence masquerading as a paragraph.ueri [laughter]ld say n so the first book is successful normally publishers you are ernest hemingway the sooner you get it out the better. rethinking of anyone righttt now?. >> my view is is not

something i am trying to undertake to moral. >> but eventually there will be a paperback edition?. >> i think i will go read it the same way i would like to add a chapter to contextualized some of the political feelings people have contributed to the book when i started in 2013 i had no idea it would be attached to the election in this bizarre way so i would write a little bit about that so the rest of the book will stay the same. >> after the paperback ron howard is producing a movie? >> i don't know.

somebody who is good looking but not disappointed when they beat me.op [laughter] -- meet me but yes but i do have trouble because not too warm not too cold. c >> that is your life story?. >> if you have not read the book to give away a fair bit where reborn?. >> southwestern ohio. >> your biological mother and father were married at the time?. >> they were. >> divorced?. >> very shortly after arabia was one year old. >> your biological mother raised you?. >> yes. >> up close relationship with their maternal

grandparents. >> i called them mamaw and papaw. that is common in the broader culture. that is into the hillbilly culture by something people from that region a disproportionately called them mamaw and papaw. >> what is hillbilly aboutthei zero high-yield you describe your roots are from kentucky so describe how you came to ohio?. >> there was a massive migration to the industrial midwest and with those cultural attributes even though my family lived in southwestern ohio we would travel back to eastern

kentucky a lot. and felt and then to be in a michigan and added is where they are from. >> you have a sister?. >> different dad. save mom. >>. >> how did she support herself?. >> mom and the cable vendors and those were good times economically cenci work died

jobs after mom was no longer working in nursing. >> so your mother is having male relationships living with her at six different times so was a bad disconcerting to see a different man in the house all the time?. >> there was an unstable childhood people were coming in and out of our lives i did realize until i was older what the effect it was having on me. havin i did not like that i would feel this guy was the father figure down all the sudden he was out of our lives.

i knew that was common to my friends were going to the same thing i did not realize that affect it was having on me and tell of looked back. >>.xp >> not as pleasant as i thought it would be. >> and had day happy home life i was searching for that family stability but i realized i had become of incredibly attached to my grandmother even with my mom we would spend a ton of time with our grandparents we would spend more and more time with their grandparents is a weird moment ith

recognized my dad had a mobile home but i was so desperate to get back to mye grandma's house that is what s i did. so in that moment that is to become the chief caretaker. >>. >> and the shock of his passing away?. >> select it affected me as of the situation in growingg up that my grandfather was the closest thing i had to egad during the formative years he took care of thingsear,

, major we had all the things the kids need and the emotional support and that it was something we retaking care of. to be called when family drama was happening he never flew off the handle and papaw did not. so affecting me in different in negative ways of of really what came after it.vely a but papaw held the family together that i realized it was in a very obvious way would he was not there would have been. >> so let 1.living with your mother she was violent and difficult to deal with and

had a drug problem. what was that like? theie police gave and save you from your mother. is that fair?. >> yes. i think about this story a lot because i wonder i was well over 13 when it happened i always wonder if maybe it wasn't quite as dangerous as i remember. i think i am closer to her now they try to remember things to reflect fondly on people that they love. bir doing pretty well and our relationship now but i was terrified. i thought we were going to die and mom was going to try to call us when negative kill was the car was traveling very fast she did not see a stable supply read and and found a woman to call the police and the

police cave and rested her she was charged with domestic violence.at the was a dramatic moment there is no other way. >> the live with their grandmother then it?. >> four o time i did. i was always living withandmothe mamaw weeks or months at a time so as not that much of a departure from my a normal routine but that was the way that things went. >> i could not recall what happened i was 12 for 10 so how do you recall that? how do you know this so well?. >> relying on your family

helps i tried to cross reference as much as i could what have been here? here's the draft or the manuscript hape would've maya beating out? going back to how the family reacted they tried to be part of the writing process wel, to try to make it a family memoir but as they said the introduction i'm sure things are not perfect but how i remember them they were pretty well documented. >> your grandmother died is will the minister than dramatic.

>> i was in the marine corps at the time. >> then lived with her for almost all of high-school. >> filling out applications for college and then found you could not afford college so why did you not go?. >> i did not feel ready i felt i had just enough maturity to recognize this as my one real opportunity that if i would screw this up that would be it i would blow my one chance so i thought i was in this position as the person that i would have taken advantage of it.

i knew i would have to take out loans even with that i knew would be a significant amount. but with that logistical side to make that so imposing what is your dad's an annual income? i had heard from my legal father in six to seven years.quired a there were the pages to sign off on massive loans it just seemed really imposing and terrifying to go through this entire administrative process know they had gone through and i did not feel

comfortable. >> so i'll just walk down the street?. >>. >> that is a simple versionat hp there are six kids it in my generation and have grandchildren so i was encouraged pretty strongly by my cousin to say if you are worried how to pay for whetol or if you are ready just go joy the marine corporation for about will be great. get out of town, i gave financial independence you should think about doing that. >> did your family tell you that was a good idea?. >> this is a patriotic community because people were proud but not happy i

had chosen if i signed up bin 2003 we were adjusted iraq and afghanistan so there was that justifiable apprehension what that meant and mamaw reacted very negatively a thing she framed that decision is a betrayal to leave me you could get hurt and obviously that was very hard. >> you went to basic training?. >> i was never afraid i could not get through. maybe a little afraid of those physical demands butt thrg that they said if you thinkor t they will be meeting will be nothing like that gramm lot of your.

[laughter] -- gramm of yours about the psychological part i could make it that that was true marine corps boot camp is challenging but maybe it is stockholm syndrome but i was no different. >> and there is colorful language did that ruboff on you?. >> if think my son is too young to show evidence but i definitely tried to cut back on the of language relative to my grandmother because she loved a dramatic and well placed f word. [laughter] if you go from teethirty

house to the record curse like a sailor does not come from nowhere so i definitely had to scale back just the way that i operate in civil society but it is ingrained in me. >> so then you go over to iraq? were you not sure you would survive?. >> i think anybody is worried if they will come back in one piece bute piec without a military occupation all specialty to combat death and injury but i wasn't thinking quite as much of the danger may be if i was working in the infantry so i was worried by it i tried to talk myself book that will be dangerousso ti

certainly more than drivingus down the street but i will come back croquet. >> city leave the military and then you decide to go to dellege. >> so then you are fourol years older than your contemporaries. >>. >> the reason i wanted to go to ohio state. >> and not as tough was that college decision that basically thinking of was

not thinking as smartly as they should have ben. >> un to college for four years how do get too high a state in two years?. >> take a lot of classism going during the summer to transfer credits from the marine corps transfer over i could cut a couple of years of. >> out queue support yourself? was the salary enough?. >> all a little bit of savings, a little bit of debt that i incurred from subsidized loans, i had some bill grants and the g.i. bill which i was trying to save for law school that i

worked jobs during college with multiple different sources of income. >> cu graduate in two years and then decide you want to go to law school how you decided to go to yale law school as opposed to ohio state?. >> i wasn't thinking super strategic i applied to a few law schools a god-given and was thinking about my best friend who himself was a lawyer if you have good grades this is 2009 i have friends from law school better struggling to find work try to get into the

best school you can that is the best insurance policy for employment so that i took off time then reappliedoyms and that is when i applied to yale.aten >> your average advisable but you did better in college. >> a think a couple of things i was just more mature this goes back to me being relief -- ready for college just with that responsibility and just try harder to pay for it to see that that bill going up that i was lucky to go there. bios so thought about my grandma when i was in college. she left she was 14 to come north without many

educational opportunitiesea into a super smart but if mamaw can sacrifice all of those to get me to a place like this that i should try t hard. >> so you go to yale law school that is the hardest the h law school to get into in the united states many people go from similar colleges did you feel out of place they're not that many people in your class from ohio state.? >> it was weird because i realized there high-school s more students from the high-school at yale law school that my university it was a culture shock more of them the marine corps or

higher state it was astonishing how different the expectations and backgrounds relative to where i came from. ka coming from arkansas did you say i am a hillbilly from kentucky i am as good as you?. >> at of the day ever introduce myself as a hillbilly from ohio how are you? [laughter] but it came through the way i conducted myself i think everyone knew where i was from the dead and no values that precise phrase. >> how did he do that? were you at the top or the bottom ?. >> i was okayed not that the top my wife was at the top

why she clerks for the chief justice. the weird dave about yale is they don't give a traditional grades would is hard to know where you rank my sense is that i was not at the bottom or at the top by was comfortable with that. >> see you get your way onto the law journal so what did you decide you want to do?. >> you bet your wife. is she your? i thought she was coming. larry schaede? there she is. [laughter]ng. [applause] so you met her in the same car aspects been acquitted

clerk of the eastern side of kentucky it is just over theh river from cincinnati to clerk for a the federal judge and both were interesting. >> you spend your life trying to escape.li >> and don't know if i was trying to escape kentucky so much but i always loved the place that day came from and always want to go back but it was exciting with really good people sometimes they are stuck with bad judges so we have had a great year. civic three reasons i think it was successful because tore be very precise and sent the life story is almost like a

novel by one of the reasons it has become so popular because the world has changed so now we'll have wrote about with drug abuse or zero pureed abuse of unemployment with those people that you come from so talk about the ovulate problems so you point out drug abuse was a problem in your area why is it so bad?. >> it is something if delta t growing up addiction in hitting our family with the prescription pain panels and added understand anybody bush in be back in the mid-90s.

has not gone as mainstream as it was now here we talk about the opioid epidemic is20 a nationwide crisis side doa feel i got it early in sight but why has it gotten worse? there are it turns of different reasons to be honest a lot of the problems were marketed as victims of people got hooked and itse caused a lot of problems. with a significant over prescription problem for cry was in southeastern ohio ands they tell me when high-school kids used to hang out together liquor cabinets now they get into new grandma's medicine cabinet so i think that'd

day consequence of negative social problems if you have a domestic violence or unemployment the vacant find mame way to deal with it with alcohol and now something that is even more addictive. >> bb you used marijuana but nothing addictive so how did you avoid that?. >> if mamaw found that we were smoking a cigarette mamaw would fly off the handle i thing shehe appreciated how bad addiction could be and thatld rolled in our family that ruined her life for the first 30 years of her

marriage was alcoholism and now routing the life of one of her kids so why was on guard i do not like to take ibuprofen for a headache because of foreign substances in my body because i have seen the diction trap people i got really six -- really sick at ohio state with the mono i called every one of my family to say i know why mamaw does not like us to take this stuff because it is fantastic. [laughter] bei >> what about alcohol?. >> i did not avoid that. [laughter] i never felt i was addicted

that though i never felt especially addicted to anything except chocolate chip cookies and i.c.e. cream. >> many people go number so you see a lot of unemployment can you describe it is better or worse?. >> it is getting better the last couple of years i don't begin as the improved significantly from where a was 34 years ago. the number of people that employed happened within the last couple of years. so we're seeing a long-term shift honestly policy makers

and everybody thought the economy would adjust they would scale up into different professions but actually what happened that is one of the undercurrents of the of book.t prob to navaid problem your editorial us between getting a four year college education and it isn't surprising those are the only to pathway. [applause] but to think more constructively to the regional economic development.

so i of a local municipality that is great but not a the long term economic development. it is all level policy makers have to think differently. >> spirit with the democratic national committee to say you are a great candidate to be a member of congress had you thought about running for something? [laughter] >>. >> so that progress said it

is exactly right. >> those to like these jobs? >> talking to lou a member of congress in this environment you enjoy what you do? yes i like working on policy but we don't do that.on't >> leaving aside if he would run for something to be a spokesperson about unemployment or opioid addiction to talk about these issues or not to be seen as a spokesman?.. >> but now that i have this

platform i might as well do something with the. so with the health care reform debate how this could affect the old your a crisis -- zero pureed -- opioid crisis a you have to be careful and smart and recognize they were not being careful.ar >> said the day just one day picture or do they listen?. >> it depends on the staff members. first of all, i made be more

cynical of the political process. i do feel more optimistic about individual members and their staff by and large people want to make a difference with what effect it will have read is lifted a time it is hard to you translate interest and policy. >> people -- people could themsehemselves a hillbilly to expose those challenges. >> basically i am a traitor and you hate my guts but the thing that we care most from back home as that besmear a

way to talk about these problems nobody talked about what is a light to grow invade household of hillbilly or addictions and it is the most gratifying that really large and diverse as any large populations. >> unit of bed on the speeeighteen circuit and a contributor to cnn what is most frequently asked question about your background?. >> that is how my family

reacted. un monde is doing really well. she is in ohio she's back home so while mom may not be ready to play the role she is a good example of what could have been even after six times you are knocked off a horse in it is still i possible to climb back out that is something i read maya about bombing because she is tenacious. [applause] >> a business card j.d. vance mother?. >> what about your

biological father?. >>. >> yes. he is doing pretty well he is a great guy and most often that is why he is most interested. >> what is your sister doing ?. >> and so to be buried for 20 years so what you thought of that success is to a kid your kid the stability and comfort that we did not have if she had successfully done

that in 20 years i have done that for three months. [laughter] >> to your friends laugh at your door -- jokes more than before?. >> sometimes people ask me for money. >> so my real friends do not laugh louder.ssful so those are the ones that i've latch onto. >> right now you're not practicing law that is the

highest calling of mankind. >>. >> so you do that from ohio?. >>. correct. what i find so interesting is to create amazing new products and jobs that did not exist before. one of the things i realized it law school the people who remove call the shots are those for figuring out i

would like to be a guy tried to figure out how to get capital. >> now so the the right those first books. >> but the first is so successful. >> so i don't know if any follow-up will be totally compared so i would be an idiot if i expected that to be successful. >> so right or wrong so for

those a combative your background to feel more responsibility? you feel you should get back to your community? how does your life changed?. >> i feel a certain responsibility not to see my community looks like an idiot. i except that as reality. i amass to go on television but some people see me not to sound like a totals bassoon but the way that it has changed but a year and a half ago i was not sittingag

here in an auditorium in front of hundreds of people so it is hard to describe describe, life has changed if any person's life changes from singing at home eating an ice-cream and watching p netflix to be in front of hundreds of people. [laughter] >>. whitut i have heard something similar to that but i have never gotten a phone call from president trump. >> so today you are a happy person with a child and a wife said your mother andod father doing well. and the book is major life better?. >> yes. the book has changed my life of a weird way but in a positive way. >> i highly recommend for

those who have not read that yet. [applause]