[smith] you teach at the school in santa fe where you got your mfa. you're not there all the time, but you're, like, doing a week a month? [orange] uh hmmm. [smith] is that right? what are you doing to bring along the next generation of tommy oranges, en looking for the next orling ? what do you see in these students an do you tell them or encourage them to do based on your own experience? [orange] i think onemff the benefits of thprogram, i mean a lot of it's just basic craft stuff, it's just teaching good writing. one of the benefits of having gone through the book experience is that i sort of understand and have access to, sort of like a gatekeeper, like you have access to the publishing world in ways and you can teach them what that whole process is like. but most of the work is just and doing the hard work that it takes to make a good book. [smith] i always think that it's hard and to teach somebody howhat it to be a good writer.book. you can talk to them about aspects of craft, but at the end of y, the story has to come from them and the desire

member of the corporation and of the authors guild council and is a faculty member at bennington college mfa program, and the new school in new york city. in her fascinating and compelling new book, she traces the pervasive influence of alcohol at key moments over centuries of american political and cultural history from the beer shortage induced a legal beer-shortage-induced illegal landing of the pilgrims at cape cod to the assassination of president kennedy and president nixon's last days in the white house and explores its impact on many historic and literary figures in between and since, asking the central question, what forms a national character? ladies and gentlemen, susan cheever. [applause] susan: thanks for coming. so, it's a great honor to be here at a store that is the center of the literary universe in this country, if not the world. i'm just going to talk about this book a little bit and read three short sections from it and hope that it somehow informs you and intrigues you at the same time. one of the great privileges of being a writer is that we get to make history come ali