SAL/ON

A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures

Category: 2019/20 Season

A microphone, standing atop a lectern, is lit by the glow of stage lights

COVID-19 Updates

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 […]

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Late Bloomers: A Comic by David Lasky

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 […]

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A woman stands at the microphone on stage, holding a piece of paper. A young girl stands at another microphone to the right.

WITS Voices: Clearing the Lowest Bar—The Writing Warm-Up

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, […]

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Amy Wheeler, with short-cropped, slightly spiky hair, stands in front of floor-to-ceiling, rustic-looking windows.

An Interview with Amy Wheeler

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 […]

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Introducing Piper, Our New WITS Program Associate!

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 […]

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The warm, bright interior of Ada's Technical Books shows patrons sitting in the cafe area, on their computers behind a cookbook section, while a barista makes coffee in the background.

An Interview with Ada’s Technical Books, Capitol Hill’s Haven for Geeks

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 […]

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The shadowy foreground of the image shows the backlit heads of several audience members, listening to a short-haired woman who is reading and slightly out of focus in the background.

WITS Voices: A Tower of Dreams

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 […]

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Two women with long, dark hair stand at a lucite lectern in front of a full Benaroya Hall, a brigh SAL banner and a living room stage set-up behind them.

How to Confront a Bully: A WITS Student Reflects on “She Said”

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 […]

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Paisley Rekdal, in a red satin suit, stands against a wall at Hugo House that is designed to look like the shadows cast by Emily Dickinson's bedroom window.

Paisley Rekdal on Writing the Wrong Thing

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 […]

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A man wearing a golf cap speaks into a microphone at a lectern. The stage lights cast a blue, artsy lens flare across half of the image.

WITS Voices: The List Poem

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 […]

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