A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
This essay is part of a series in which Poetry Northwest partners with Seattle Arts & Lectures to present reflections on visiting writers from our 2018/19 Poetry Series. Ilya Kaminsky reads at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, April 1, at Broadway Performance Hall. Tickets are still available here! By Kristen Millares Young I read Deaf Republic in one swoop, felled. […]
By Christina Lee Barnes, WITS Writer-in-Residence My first-ever WITS residency started off with a fire drill. I’d made it about halfway through my introduction when the loudspeaker cut me off with a garbled a reminder that students would file out to the field in the last ten minutes of class. Covert murmurs of excitement rippled […]
By Laura Gamache, WITS Writer-in-Residence Good writing depends on the author or poet knowing far more about what they are writing than what they put down on paper, and the same probably goes for teaching. I have worked with Marianne Clarke and her 6th grade Language Arts students at TOPS K-8 for several years. She […]
“Across her career of five award-winning novels and two essay collections,” Executive Director Ruth Dickey began while introducing Zadie Smith, “The joy for us as readers is Smith’s enormous, beautiful, incisive intellect that roams widely around – from art to music, to considering the idea of joy, to reviewing books, to exploring families, to unpacking the […]
Homeland My family is from Nicaragua. Where the lush grass is green, and the exotic trees are like something from a Dr. Seuss book. The most interesting person in my family to me is my grandma, her accent is firm, sturdy. She holds her accent like a battle-axe ready at any time to go off […]
By Ruth Dickey, SAL Executive Director About Zadie Smith’s fourth novel, NW, the Washington Post wrote, “The impression of Smith’s casual brilliance is what constantly surprises.” And, indeed, across her career of five award-winning novels and two essay collections, the joy for us all as readers is Smith’s enormous, beautiful, incisive intellect that roams widely […]
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 […]