Friday, September 25, 2020 7:30 pm PST
Author, playwright, poet, and multi-media artist Claudia Rankine is the author of Citizen: An American Lyric. Her new book, Just Us: An American Conversation, is described by Kirkus Reviews as a “genre-defying work, [that] combines poetry, essay, visuals, scholarship, analysis, invective, and argument into a passionate and persuasive case about many of the complex mechanics of race in this country.” Rankine will join SAL for an online talk about Just Us with poet, performer, and librettist Douglas Kearney.
Ricardo DeAratanha/LA Times via Getty Images
From September 22-24, we’re showcasing the powerful voices of WITS students with Open a New Window: A Virtual Fundraiser for Writers in the Schools. Back-to-school is looking very different for Writers in the Schools as schools, teachers, students, and families navigate the return to school in online classrooms, with school resources tighter than ever. At this critical moment, we need your help to get WITS writers online and, eventually, back in classrooms to inspire and engage our kids in telling their stories during these challenging times.
It takes many voices to reimagine a shared future—and it takes writers to offer us windows to new viewpoints and new world. Single tickets are now on sale for our 2020/21 Season of authors and visionaries, with the increased accessibility of a new $10 ticket level and the option to stream events online!
For 32 years, Seattle Arts & Lectures has brought people together for the most important conversations of our time. In this uncertain time, what is certain is that we need writers and readers more than ever. And so, we are asking you to subscribe today to a new year of imagination and re-imagination. All subscriptions and single tickets are on sale now!
Monday, October 12, 2020 7:30 pm PST
Crime-fiction writer Tana French is the author of bestsellers like The Trespasser, The Witch Elm, In the Woods, and The Secret Place. Her new novel, The Searcher, brings all of French’s powerhouse atmospherics and characterization to a story that plays with the traditions of suspense fiction and won’t fail to keep readers guessing. It’s why the New York Times proclaimed, “she is in a class by herself.” French will be in conversation with fellow crime-fiction writer Ruth Ware.
Jessica Ryan
Monday, October 12, 2020
SAL Presents
Crime-fiction writer Tana French is the author of bestsellers like The Trespasser, The Witch Elm, In the Woods, and The Secret Place. Her new novel, The Searcher, brings all of French’s powerhouse atmospherics and characterization to a story that plays with the traditions of suspense fiction and won’t fail to keep readers guessing. It’s why the New York Times proclaimed, “She is in a class by herself.” French will be in conversation with fellow crime-fiction writer Ruth Ware.
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
Free Events
Join us for a free Zoom reading and conversation with local luminaries Kathleen Flenniken, Tiffany Midge, and Donna Miscolta, moderated by Rena Priest. Each author plays with and against the standard assumptions of American identity—and as we roll toward this most critical of elections, what better time to examine how we learn to become Americans and the marks America leaves on our psyches?
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Journalism
One week after the 2020 presidential election, Yamiche Alcindor will join us for an online-only event to discuss the results. Alcindor is the White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour and a contributor for NBC News and MSNBC. She often tells stories about the intersection of race and politics, and has garnered national attention for her robust and sober questioning of President Donald Trump.
Monday, November 16, 2020
Literary Arts
Yaa Gyasi is the author of Homegoing, one of the most celebrated debut novels of 2016. A riveting, kaleidoscopic novel, Homegoing is a story of race, history, ancestry, love, and time that traces the descendants of two sisters torn apart in eighteenth-century Africa across three hundred years in Ghana and America. Gyasi’s new book, Transcendent Kingdom, is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.
Friday, January 22, 2021
Poetry
Maggie Smith is the author of four award-winning books: Lamp of the Body, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, and Good Bones, named by the Washington Post as one of the Five Best Poetry Books of 2017. Her most recent book, Keep Moving, is a beautiful nonfiction work of quotes and essays, in which she writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation.
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Literary Arts
Madeline Miller is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, The Song of Achilles (2012), a reimagining of The Iliad, and Circe (2018), a feminist inversion of The Odyssey. In each book, Miller brings a fresh perspective to ancient tales, re-centering these stories on characters whose voices have been excluded from the narrative for thousands of years.
Seattle Arts & Lectures champions the literary arts by engaging and inspiring readers and writers of all generations in the greater Puget Sound region.
Blog
Black lives matter. Black stories matter. Seattle Arts & Lectures (SAL) stands in solidarity with Black authors, teaching artists, educators, students, colleagues, board members, volunteers, artists, partners, community members, and audience members. We stand with protestors who are demanding justice. Words matter; they have the power to spark change and to tell the stories we need to hear. But actions also matter. So how will we take action?
Community
We believe that reading, writing, and creative thinking are indispensable to a curious, engaged, democratic society. Our goal is to make these experiences available to as many people as possible, regardless of economic circumstances—which is why we created our Community Access Tickets (CAT) program for our digital and in-person events.
