He came to Purdue on Thursday for the annual Literary Awards. I missed his reading because the auditorium filled up ten minutes before the start, leaving nearly a hundred people standing upset in the hallway. He gave an informal Q&A that afternoon, which I did see, and it was one of the best writerly events I’ve ever attended. He’s very funny, very comfortable in front of a crowd. He knew the bulk of his audience was made up of writers in an MFA program, so he closed with a list of advice for us if we ever get famous: buy a book of manners and memorize it, don’t publish your first book until your second one is almost finished, take an acting class, be kind, stop drinking now, and, my favorite, stay away from writer’s conferences if you value your marriage. An audience member asked why, and Alexie said, “Because you’ll fuck a stranger. Don’t fuck strangers.” He gave similar advice about public readings: “Go back to the hotel afterwards. Don’t go to the after party. At the after party, you and everyone in the audience will be emotionally vulnerable. People love stories, and when they hear them they revert back to emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old.” Alexie is still on tour for his new novel, Flight, an aptly-timed book about a time-traveling high schooler who is responsible for a massacre at a bank.