please, help me welcome derek rah baker -- deborah baker. [applause] >> thank you, ken. thank you all for being here. it's nice and cozy. so i'm going to give a talk, and i'm going to have, luckily, some pictures. and there's a brief, little film clip in the middle of recently discovered footage from 1937. so a writer between projects faces a question, what story do i need to tell next? this dilemma is not unlike one asked by a reader between books or a movie goer on a friday night. in unsettled times such as ours, this question takes on an added urgency as if our choice might provide a remedy for whatever keeps us awake at night. the 1930s were another decade when illiberal or portents were everywhere, and it's hard not to resist noting the omnipresent parallels to our own days. the english writers stephen spender and christopherisherwood were the most politically outspoken, framing the most urgent threats in ways that provide a distant mirror to our own concerns and evolving sense of alarm. collectively, they and their cohort were known as the auden generation. that's