Mark Chenault: I'd like to introduce some very important people who are here today visiting us. First we have Gene Fellner, from Seven Stories Institute, and we have our author today, a gentleman named Lee Stringer. We hope today will be the first of many meetings we'll have with visiting authors helping us to look at literacy with a different approach. Before we do that, I'd like to give a little background about Mr. Stringer. As you come in, feel free to grab a book; the book is yours- to write notes in, hopefully to get Mr. Stringer to sign it for you. So the book is your copy. You don/'t have to return it. You can keep it. It's yours.

Mr. Stringer spent eleven years on the streets of New York City, living in the tunnels under Grand Central Terminal. The book that is available here is a memoir; you can call it a log or an account of those experiences. You are free to ask Mr. Stringer any questions that you have. And he'll come back here several more times. As we read the book, he'll come in to see how we're progressing and he'll help us debrief at the very end of this book. Because, sure enough, writing turned his life around.

He's the former editor and columnist for Street News, and he writes for Newsday and the New York Times. He has an upcoming appearance on March 10th in California speaking on health care for the homeless and if you listen to NPR you can find various archives of his interviews. And he has a website, www.leestringer.net so I hope you'll get time after this to visit his website.

So, without further ado, please welcome Mr. Stringer.

Lee: Thank you very much. Well, first of all, thanks for having me at your school and thanks for showing up. You know when you write a book, they send you out on what they call readings. You go to these different cities and you go in a bookstore and they have a poster up and the people come in and you stand there and you read a little bit from the book and you tell them about
the book and you tell them about yourself and you answer questions –just like we're going to do today.But sometimes, they don't do them well and you go out and there are only one or two people there, so it's great to see so many fresh young faces here. So thanks for coming.

How many of you have read a little bit of Grand Central Winter?

[Many raised hands]

Excellent, excellent. So I'm going to ask you a few questions about how you're finding the book. But I didn't come here to tell you how great or magnificent I am because I wrote a book, I came here today to tell you how at any point in a person's life, no matter how things start up, you never know what life will lead you to. One day you're doing one thing, one day you're doing another. In my case, one day I was living underneath Grand Central, smoking crack, and the next thing I knew I was standing in front of the UN
talking to Third World Countries. I find that an amazing thing that all that can happen in one life.

There are writers who decide they're going to be writers, how many of you have thought about being a writer? [many raised hands] So, what do you do? You take writing courses, you write everyday and you learn how to do it. There are a lot of writers also who writing picks them. One of them who comes to mind is a fellow named O'Henry. How many of you know who he is? [show of hands]. Tell us who O'Henry is.

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