A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
Every year, Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools (WITS) program holds the Elaine Wetterauer Writing Contest to celebrate the wisdom, creativity, and heart captured in student and teacher poetry. This year, participating students and teachers were encouraged to reflect on art and culture that makes them “feel free,” inspired by the essay collection Feel […]
We’re thrilled to present our sixth annual Sherry Prowda Literary Champion Award to Claudia Castro Luna, Washington State Poet Laureate, and the literary arts organization Hugo House. Together, they demonstrate true commitment to our region’s community of readers and writers. The awardees will be honored at our Words Matter Benefit Gala & Literary Auction, and also in […]
By Kathleen Flenniken, WITS Writer-in-Residence Andrea Davis Pinkney has written a moving and imaginative story-in-poems for middle grade readers called The Red Pencil (Little Brown, 2014). The Red Pencil is a Global Reading Challenge selection this year and currently available as an audiobook to all Seattle Public Library cardholders until March 19. Amira is twelve […]
By Ruth Dickey, SAL Executive Director When Bryan Stevenson was at SAL two years ago, he shared that one of the most important things that any of us can do to address inequality in our world is to get proximate, to get closer to poverty, to suffering, to injustice. Katherine Boo has spent her entire […]
Remember Remember to pack. Remember to look out your telescope every day. Remember to tell your loved ones you’re leaving soon, until the final day comes. Remember to invite them to come to the rocket ship to say bye, and they will remember you, too. Then they will launch you into orbit and remember everything […]
Home and No Home There’s a person that can come home to a home with a light on the table and there’s someone that can come home to a home with a light on the balcony And there’s another person that can come home to a home with a chandelier on the ceiling but there’s […]
Avoid the busiest travel times Find a SAL partnering bookstore in your office neighborhood (look here for a full list) and head over to browse the stacks instead of rushing home when the clock strikes 5 p.m. Waste an hour or two (or three) wandering the aisles of perfectly aligned book spines at Phinney Books, […]
We’re giving a warm welcome to Kesha Howard, who joined the team earlier in January as a Writers in the Schools intern through Seattle Central’s work study program. She brings years of experience working with students from kindergarten through high school, and she truly shares SAL’s mission of bringing opportunities for creativity and expression of voice […]
By Peter Mountford, WITS Writer-in-Residence For the seventh year in a row, I’ve been fortunate to be part of a group of WITS writers who’ve gone to Port Townsend for two weeks in December. While Seattle has gone through some dramatic changes in these last seven years—to the extent that I sometimes get lost in […]
By David Lasky, WITS Writer-in-Residence The fourth graders in Mrs. Kahn’s and Mr. Moreno’s classes at Lowell Elementary are learning one of the most important, most vital skills practiced by humankind: the writing of fiction. Without the ability to imagine, possibilities in life become limited. And without the ability to work through fictional problems, real […]