New SAL Board Member: Welcome, Candace Barron!
August 18, 2016
By Annie Gala, Marketing & Programs Intern
Meet Candace Barron, SAL’s new board member—she specializes in PR strategy for Boeing in the areas of engineering, technology strategy, and intellectual property. You may also know her by her former byline, Candace Heckman, under which she wrote and edited for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper until it disbanded in 2009.
To welcome her to the board, we spoke to Candace about her favorite childhood book, what inspired her involvement with Seattle Arts & Lectures, and what reads are currently on her nightstand…
Annie Gala: How were you inspired to get involved with SAL on a deeper level?
Candace Barron: First of all, I was simply asked. The answer was a no-brainer for me. I feel there is a need today for people to gain a renewed appreciation for good literature and good writing in general. There is an abundance of work out there competing for readers’ time. Yet, most of it is not good. The bad stuff leads to poor public discourse, or, in the worst-case scenario, a retreat from public discourse. The literary arts comes from and leads to intellectual curiosity, which is essential to the advancement of our society.
AG: Do you have a favorite SAL event? What makes it so special for you?
CB: I enjoy the Words Matter Gala, only because it exposes people, longtime supporters and newcomers, to the fantastic things that WITS accomplishes with young writers.
AG: What is a book you remember from your childhood that affected you?
CB: I really got into Choose Your Own Adventure tales. I felt these books both sparked my interests and inspired me to imagine what could be. There were times when I would skip the endings all together and write my own.
AG: What are you reading now?
CB: Sarong Party Girls by Cheryl Tan. The book is told in Singlish, a type of English spoken in Singapore.
Thank you, Candace—welcome to the SAL team!