for coming tonight thanks is always to the brooklyn public library especially gabe kaplan and meredith walters for hosting this event. my name is matt weiland, and this is the fourth installment of a series of events called true to life, the art of nonfiction. in recent years they lines between fact and fiction have grown blurry. journalist, historians in memoirists have increasingly incorporated novelistic techniques into their work and in turn increasingly have been challenged on the voracity of their nonfiction. meanwhile novelists have sought ever more tricky ways to capture on a page the way the world looks and feels, leading some readers to wonder just what it is they are reading. to celebrate and explore this turn we have invited six acclaimed writers whose work is often right on the knife's edge between true and not true, to read from their latest books and to talk about the many ways a rider stays true to life. is part of this theory so far we have had michael save on, padgett powell and the later events we will welcome the distinguished writers maryland johnson and david shields. i h