A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
To celebrate our long-time partnership with Bushwick Book Club Seattle, we’re speaking with local musicians who have composed and performed songs inspired by the written works of SAL speakers over the years. Learn about these hometown talents and discover their work in our Faces of Bushwick interview series. In this first conversation, we talk with […]
Bookstore workers and owners have been absolute essential workers during this pandemic—heroes on the frontlines of our mental health. After those first months when reading felt really hard, when the doom-scrolling kept us in our lizard brains, books were there waiting for us in all their analog selves. Books, as one 2020 Summer Book Bingo player said, are […]
Roberto Contreras, of Licton Springs K-8 School, read this poem to open our 2020/21 Poetry Series event with Alberto Ríos on Friday, May 28, 2021. Written during the 2019/20 school year with WITS Writer-in-Residence Arianne True.
Our utmost congratulations to the 2021 Elaine Wetterauer Writing Contest winners and runners-up! Every year, Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools (WITS) program holds the Elaine Wetterauer Writing Contest, named for beloved English teacher Elaine Wetterauer, who taught for years at Nathan Hale High School and was an early champion of WITS, as […]
By Donna Miscolta This essay is part of a series in which Seattle Arts & Lectures partners with Poetry Northwest to present reflections on visiting writers from the SAL Poetry Series. On Friday, May 28, at 7:30 p.m. (PDT) Alberto Ríos will read and discuss his work with Donna Miscolta at 7:30 pm in a […]
Bookstore workers and owners have been absolute essential workers during this pandemic—heroes on the frontlines of our mental health. After those first months when reading felt really hard, when the doom-scrolling kept us in our lizard brains, books were there waiting for us in all their analog selves. Books, as one 2020 Summer Book Bingo player said, […]
In April, a group of students from Big Picture High School had a soul-enriching conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer, in which they discussed writing, attention, and care and nurturing for and from the Earth. SAL’s Spotlight Author visits, held through our Writers in the Schools program, connect young public school writers in WITS classrooms with […]
Gears of time, cogs of life home is the trees rushing by as I speed down a mountain, the scent of pine sap as I leave the ground, the shocks of a downhill bike absorbing force as I slam back down to earth. Home is my dad coming home after months on a halibut schooner […]
Stools are crabs that crawl across the carpet sands Chairs are the horses that once rose from the sea Tables are the rocks that the stools hid under to escape from the projector that is a white snake hunting for prey Violet Hilgenberg, of Lafayette Elementary School, read this poem to open our 2020/21 Literary […]
Dear friends, I arrived at SAL in the summer of 2013, and my very first SAL event was Malcolm Gladwell at Town Hall. I was so nervous that Rebecca basically had to push me out onto the stage to introduce him; I put my remarks in a heavy file folder so no one would see my […]