SAL/ON

A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures

Bookshop Superheroes: University Book Store

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, […]

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The 2021/22 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate Application is Now Open

Seattle Arts & Lectures is excited to announce that we are now accepting applications to the 2021/22 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate Cohort, from now until Friday,  April 23, 2021.   Program Overview The Seattle Youth Poet Laureate (YPL) program is part of Seattle Arts & Lectures (SAL) with support from Urban Word NYC, Northwest Folklife […]

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Introductions: Maira Kalman

By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director Maira Kalman is the writer or illustrator of more than 30 books for adults and children, including The Elements of Style (Illustrated), My Favorite Things, The Principles of Uncertainty, and, most recently, an illustrated version of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. When I read The Principles of Uncertainty […]

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Faces of SAL: Kip Greenthal, Co-Founder of WITS

By Gabriela Denise Frank Talking with the writer Kip Greenthal who, with SAL Founder Sherry Prowda, launched the Writers in the Schools (WITS) program, brought to mind a quote by Grace Paley: “Every story is two stories. The one on the surface and the one bubbling beneath. The climax is when they collide.” In pop […]

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Introductions: Toi Derricotte

By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director Toi Derricotte is the author of six collections of poetry, including “I”: New and Selected Poems, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2019. She is also the beloved co-founder, with Cornelius Eady, of Cave Canem, which was established to remedy the under-representation and isolation of […]

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Bookshop Superheroes: Book Larder

In appreciation of our local indies who have reinvented their processes and protocols over and over again in the service of getting the just-right book to the just-right hands, we are launching Bookshop Superheroes, a new blog series on our bookstore partners. Over the course of the winter and spring, we will feature a bookstore, […]

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Introductions: Bill Bryson

By Ruth Dickey, SAL Executive Director I first learned of Bill Bryson’s work from my brother and sister-in-law, who have what I believe is one of the most romantic hobbies. For 25 years, they have read books out loud to one another, and Bryson was one of their early favorites. Diving into his work, it’s […]

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Faces of SAL: Sherry Prowda, Founder of SAL

By Gabriela Denise Frank Sherry Prowda, the founder of Seattle Arts & Lectures (SAL), never used the word synchronicity when she unfolded SAL’s origin story for me, but it hovered over our conversation. Instead, she spoke of fortune and luck, gifts and generosity, even signs from the gods. When I asked how SAL began, she […]

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Bookshop Superheroes: Phinney Books

As we approach the anniversary of the start of the pandemic in our region, we are reflecting back on the year that has passed. And we know this for sure: bookstore workers and owners have been absolute essential workers—heroes on the frontlines of our mental health. After those first months when reading felt really hard, […]

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On Love: Book Recommendations from the SAL Staff

What books about love do you love? Lately, the staff at Seattle Arts & Lectures have been sharing and chatting a lot about this essay by Matthew Salesses, which came out this past August. In it, Salesses scrutinizes the popular belief that literary fiction gives rise to empathy in readers—and whether empathy can even be […]

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