Believe it or not, Santa Claus was real. He lived in Asia Minor in the third century. And even more strangely, several hundred years later, there was a race by two rival Italian gangs to steal his body from its tomb and take it back with them to Italy. It was a strikingly bold heist, the story of which was retold again and again throughout the Middle Ages. National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson, author of Vermont Book Award Finalist Nicked, will talk about the historical St. Nicholas and the theft of his corpse, pulling from medieval accounts, the modern archaeological evidence from his tomb, and the forensic evidence of his body, which now lies beneath a floor in Apulia.