Seattle Arts & Lectures is celebrating our 35th anniversary! For thirty-five years, SAL speakers have joined our stages for transformative experiences through story and language. We hope you will join us for a new year of connection, joy, and belonging in our 2022/23 Season, in-person or online, near or far. All subscriptions and single tickets are on sale now!
Please join us this September to help Seattle Arts & Lectures raise $160,000 for Writers in the Schools (WITS)! Together, we can support WITS Writers-in-Residence through another year of creative writing residencies, as they cultivate spaces of belonging and creative expression for thousands of K-12 public school students. Thank you for believing in WITS and the next generation of readers and writers!
The Literary Arts Series season opens with Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature for Afterlives, a sweeping, multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of east Africa. Following the story of Ilyas, a boy stolen by German colonial troops, Afterlives is a novel that “gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure.
Everyone’s favorite summer reading program, Summer Book Bingo, is back! Every summer, SAL partners with The Seattle Public Library to create a Summer Book Bingo card. Adults and kids play along from May – September to be entered in a chance to win fabulous prizes.
Join our free event with Maribel Morey and Megan Ming! Building upon the recent publication of White Philanthropy, author Maribel Morey will come together with Megan Ming Francis, author of “The Price of Civil Rights,” to discuss white philanthropy’s historical role in narrowing our definitions of racial equality in the United States.
Building upon the recent publication of White Philanthropy, author Maribel Morey will come together with Megan Ming Francis, author of “The Price of Civil Rights,” to discuss white philanthropy’s historical role in narrowing our definitions of racial equality in the United States.
Morey and Francis also will discuss how, today, we can take steps towards shaping more liberating relationships between funders, scholars, and movement activists, as means towards supporting and sustaining more meaningful national definitions of racial equality.
Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Elsa Sjunneson celebrate the release of Year of the Tiger on Alice Wong’s behalf.
Join SAL and The Seattle Public Library for a free community event celebrating the release Alice Wong’s new memoir, Year of the Tiger. Wong is a disabled activist, writer, media maker, and consultant. She is the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture created in 2014.
Winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives is a sweeping, multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of east Africa. Following the story of Ilyas, a boy stolen by German colonial troops, Afterlives is a novel that “gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure.
Q&A with author Sonora Jha.
Maggie O’Farrell, the Northern Irish author of the “magnificent and searing” novel Hamnet, returns with The Marriage Portrait, an electrifying new tale. Full of the drama and verve with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life and offers an unforgettable portrait of a resilient young woman’s battle for her very survival.
Celeste Ng is the bestselling author of three novels: Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and her latest work, Our Missing Hearts. In 2020, Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere was adapted into a popular limited series on Hulu, starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. Following its nationwide success, Ng’s latest work, Our Missing Hearts, explores the ways that supposedly civilized communities can pretend to ignore the most searing injustice.
Most tickets, with the exception of a limited number of Pay What You Can and complimentary tickets, include a copy of Our Missing Hearts, mailed to the ticket holder’s door.
An Indigenous human rights lawyer and writer from Guam, Julian Aguon is the founder of Blue Ocean Law, a progressive firm that works at the intersection of Indigenous rights and environmental justice. Part memoir, part manifesto, his forthcoming book, No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies is a coming-of-age story and a call for justice—for everyone, but in particular, for Indigenous peoples.
SAL is requiring proof of full vaccination for our in-person events this season. We will require masks for all attendees, regardless of vaccination status. Likewise, our staff and volunteers will be vaccinated and masked. We hope these actions will keep you and our greater community safe while also allowing us to experience the magic and community of live events again. Click “Learn More” below to read more and see our policy exceptions.
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 in-person and digital events.