As Chris Abani once stated, “The art is never about what you write about. The art is about how you write about what you write about.” Here, we find Abani’s “how” thick with feeling, ...

Nikky Finney is not only a poet but a storyteller, the kind of voice that weaves through the air in a room until every person there feels that much closer together. Her poems travel the world, from he...

In this episode of SAL/on air, two poets from SAL’s Youth Poetry Fellowship, Mateo Acuña and Aamina Mughal, talk about access to arts education, finding community in Seattle’s literary sc...

For James Tate, comedy and tragedy are inextricably linked within poetry. They appear as dual facets of ordinary life—the mundane and the extraordinary as one. As you’ll hear in this recording fro...

The works of Barbara Kingsolver have shaped a generation of readers. From her first novel The Bean Trees and beyond, Kingsolver’s characters speak to us, cradle our faces in their hands and exchange...

When Dean Young took the stage in October of 2012 to read from his Copper Canyon Press collection, Bender, we were incredibly fortunate to bear witness to his humorous, irreverent, and fearless poetry...

In October of 2003, Sandra Cisneros joined us for an evening 20 years after the publication of her luminous work The House on Mango Street. Now, we have the chance to listen again with reverence, 40 y...

In September 2019, Malcolm Gladwell stepped on stage at Benaroya Hall as part of SAL’s Literary Arts Series to discuss his book Talking to Strangers. That night, his talk brought us into the compl...

In A Gentleman in Moscow, the subject of Amor Towles’ 2019 SAL lecture, the ever-charming Count Rostov says, “By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully...

Richard Powers’ characters are often both artists and scientists—disciplines he sees as intertwined. In a delicious moment in this March 2008 reading, he describes the commonality between art and ...

In this new episode of SAL/on air, Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, and Jim Rainey, an award-winning reporter with the Los Angeles Times, spoke with hometown hero Timothy Egan ...

In this episode of SAL/on air, former U. S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove shares poems from Sonata Mulattica. This collection tells the story of George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower. Previously a footnote i...

This reading by Adam Zagajewski, recorded in March 2001, was postponed from its original date by the forces of Mother Nature. On February 28, 2001, the Nisqually Earthquake struck. In wry form, Zagaje...

This talk by celebrated novelist Wallace Stegner, recorded in 1990, is really a master class on the intermingling of life and art. With equal measures of charm and critique, Stegner questions the very...

“I live in a space between,” Imbolo Mbue says in this talk.

Maxine Kumin, whom we lost in 2014, once said that, quote, “The garden has to be attended every day, just as the horses have to be tended to. Not just every day, but morning, noon and night. Writing...

As with any condition, until we have language for what we are experiencing, until we can name it, we often feel controlled by it. In January of 2019, Soraya Chemaly renamed and redefined anger for us.

When Barry Lopez died at the age of 75 this past December, we knew we had lost one of the greats. His writings have frequently been compared to those of Henry David Thoreau, as he brought a depth of e...

“Every generation has to reiterate, rewrite what those genres are and what they mean in the vocabulary of the moment. So the elegy is not a set genre, it’s not a set form. We each have to re-w...

Have you ever had a slice of cake that had been soaked in a sort of syrup? Maybe rose-syrup? Maybe lemon? Dense and rich at the same time—soaked in joy—it’s almost not cake anymore. Every one of...

As our annual reading program, Summer Book Bingo wrapped up, we asked readers to reflect on their favorite reading experience of the summer. One of you wrote: “My favorite reading experience was rea...

Almost exactly a year ago, on May 21, 2019, we closed our Poetry Series with a reading by Jericho Brown, followed by a conversation with Copper Canyon editor and poet Elaina Ellis. It was a riveting a...

Four weeks after her passing in her hometown of Dublin, we want to celebrate the ways Eavan Boland drew up a new science of cartography for Irish poetry: one that included women in their everyday live...

In a time like this, where do you look to for joy? In a recent episode of Krista Tippett’s podcast, On Being, poet Ross Gay said, “It is joy by which the labor that will make the life that I want,...

What drives storytelling? What is the story—who gets to tell it—and how? In a twist on the American road trip genre, Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive explores these tensions. As an artis...

What the 20th century economy typically required of Americans who wanted success was to step away from their passions and embrace sameness. Now, in this new century—amidst concerns about our jobs be...

When Rachel Maddow, host of the Emmy Award-winning Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, set out to research her latest book, Blowout, she wasn’t necessarily looking to write about the oil and gas industry...

Port Royal in Henry County, Kentucky has a population of less than a hundred. And it’s there that farmer, novelist, poet, and cultural critic Wendell Berry—whose family farmed Kentucky land for 7 ...

What happens when your world shifts, and you have to come to terms with a whole new reality? Barbara Kingsolver – the bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible, The Lacuna, Animal, Vegetable, Mirac...

Why write about slavery in 2019? And when you write about, how do you defy the popular conceptions about slavery that readers have in their heads? How do you make the subject new? It took Ta-Nehisi Co...

In this episode, we hear from Indian-born food and travel writer Madhur Jaffrey, who joined us in November 2013 for a talk on how we become who we are. At the time of her visit, Jaffrey, who is recogn...

In this episode, we hear from poet Ada Limón, who joined us in October 2016 at McCaw Hall for a reading from her collection Bright Dead Things. Named a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Po...

In our latest episode of SAL/on air, we hear from actor and filmmaker Tom Hanks, who joined us at McCaw Hall in December of 2017 as part of our 2017/18 SAL Presents Series. Seattle’s beloved librari...

In 2003, Azar Nafisi electrified readers worldwide with Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which went on to become a long-running #1 New York Times bestseller. A modest professor of English ...

In this episode, we hear from poet Jane Hirshfield, who joined us in March 2009 at Benaroya Hall for a reading spanning across her career, and for a discussion on the importance of inviting the intima...

In this special Thanksgiving episode, we hear from Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer and The Refugees, who joined us at Benaroya Hall in May 2018. He is introduced by Ruth Dickey, SAL Exe...

In this episode, we hear from Frank McCourt, who joined us in November 2006 for a lively talk about committing his youth to paper in his phenomenally popular memoir series, beginning with Angela’s A...

When Lucie Brock-Broido, poet of the witching hour, sadly passed away in March 2018, we released audio of her reading “Infinite Riches in the Smallest Room,” a title that’s an apt ...

Madeleine Albright was America’s first-ever female Secretary of State, from 1997 to 2001. Her distinguished career of public service includes positions in the National Security Council, as U....

In our latest episode of SAL/on air, we hear from one of the pre-eminent authors of the 20th century—Philip Roth. He joined us back in October 1992 for a reading from his National Book Award-winning...

This episode is Part Two of our double-feature with Chilean writer Isabel Allende, who joined us for the second time for Seattle Arts & Lectures’ 2017/18 Season. On November 28, SAL had the ple...

One of the world’s most widely-read Spanish language authors, Chilean writer Isabel Allende is a master of the magical realism form and a colorful storyteller.

Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest, whose award-winning novels have been described as “witty, intelligent and passionate” by the Independent, and as possessing &#...

Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge, the bestsellers Abide With Me, The Burgess Boys, My Name is Lucy Barton, and the award-winning Amy and Isabelle, all se...