March 5, 2020
We’re all concerned about the developments of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in King County, and the precautions we need to take as an organization and as individuals to stay healthy. At Seattle Arts & Lectures, we are carefully monitoring all updates from the Washington State Department of Health, the Center for Disease Control, and King County Public […]
Read More
At our recent Local Voices reading on February 10 at Hugo House, WITS Writer-in-Residence David Lasky gave some much-needed advice for creatives everywhere—especially for those of us who consider ourselves “late bloomers” in the arts. We just had to share it with you, below! David Lasky teaches comics writing through WITS at Renaissance School of […]
Read More
March 4, 2020
By Karen Finneyfrock, WITS Writer-in-Residence There is a funny idea about inspiration that lurks in our culture. The idea holds that poets are just people who walk around, waiting to be struck by a fit of unexpected inspiration. We collectively imagine poets like hikers in the woods, and poetic inspiration a mountain lion watching silently, […]
Read More
Beyond being a celebrated arts nonprofit leader, Amy Wheeler, the outgoing Executive Director of Hedgebrook, is a playwright, theatre artist, and teacher. Under her 16-year leadership, Hedgebrook—an organization based on Whidbey Island and in Seattle—grew from a writers-in-residence program supporting 60-80 women-identified writers a year, plus a Playwrights Festival, to a global community of several […]
Read More
March 3, 2020
Meet Piper Daugharty, SAL’s new WITS Program Associate! Piper is originally from Homer, Alaska and is recent a graduate of the University of Washington’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing program. She sat down with us to answer five questions about what she does, where she comes from, and more . . . Welcome aboard! Your position […]
Read More
March 2, 2020
What’s easily the best thing about our SAL offices being located in north Capitol Hill? We’re steps away from the beautiful, smart bookshop, Ada’s Technical Books. Our only bookstore partner that specializes in science-minded literature, Ada’s is named after Ada Lovelace, one of the world’s first computer programmers (and daughter of Lord Byron, to boot). Ada’s is […]
Read More
February 25, 2020
By Arlene Naganawa, WITS Writer-in-Residence I love how poets use language in surprising, transformative ways, creating metaphors and images that we don’t often encounter in academic or journalistic writing. When I work with students, I encourage them to take leaps in their poems, to elevate their language. I don’t mean for students to use words […]
Read More
February 24, 2020
Today, February 24, marks a watershed in the #MeToo movement—a Manhattan jury has found former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein guilty of sex crimes. To reflect upon the moment, we’re sharing an essay from Akshaya Ajith, a ninth grader at Overlake High School and a former Writers in the Schools student. Akshaya attended SAL’s Literary Arts […]
Read More
February 20, 2020
Writers, what is your deepest fear about your craft? On February 6, we hosted a reading with Seattle-born poet and current Utah Poet Laureate, Paisley Rekdal. During the Q&A with SAL’s Associate Director, Rebecca Hoogs, Paisley answered questions about her writing process and her new work, Nightingale, but it was this question about fear that followed her home: “What […]
Read More
February 18, 2020
By Daemond Arrindell, WITS Writer-in-Residence I have been teaching a lesson focused on anaphora, aka list poems, for over ten years. I’ve used it so consistently because of the positive results it yields, especially at the beginning of a residency, when the students are still wrestling with the ideas of what poetry is “supposed to […]
Read More