SAL/ON

A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures

Category: Behind the Scenes

Ragini Gupta stands against a very tall bookcase, smiling.

Welcome, Ragini Gupta, WITS Intern!

We’re giving a warm welcome to Ragini Gupta of the University of Washington, who recently joined the SAL team this fall as a Writers in the Schools intern. We’re so grateful to have such a talented creative writer on board—learn a little bit more about Ragini’s passions below. Welcome, Ragini! Tell us a little bit […]

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Sarah Burns, sitting at a restaurant on a Roman street, smiles in to the camera.

Five Questions: Sarah Burns, SAL’s Event & Corporate Giving Manager

Meet Sarah Burns, world-explorer extraordinaire, who is joining us in a new role at SAL as our Event & Corporate Giving Manager! So the SAL community can better get to know her, we asked Sarah five questions about what excites her about the position, what’s on her nightstand, and some of her many adventures abroad […]

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A close-up of Woogee Bae.

Five Questions: Woogee Bae, SAL’s Donor Relations Associate

Meet Woogee Bae! Formerly a poetry student at UW Bothell and SUNY Buffalo, Woogee is SAL’s brand new Donor Relations Associate. To introduce her to the SAL community, we asked Woogee five questions, so read on for all the intel about her new role on SAL’s development team, her hobbies – including two of our […]

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Introductions: Richard Kenney

By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director Twenty years ago this fall, I walked into the deep time of Richard Kenney’s classroom at the University of Washington. I was young and dumb—and by dumb I mean dumb but also quiet—painfully shy and silent, writing an all-thumbs poetry. I can’t blame Professor Kenney for making me older—we […]

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More of a River

This essay is part of a series in which Poetry Northwest partners with Seattle Arts & Lectures to present reflections on visiting writers from SAL’s Poetry Series. At 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 17, Richard Kenney will read at Seattle Central Community College—Broadway Performance Hall. Tickets are still available! By Jason Whitmarsh In 1997, I moved from […]

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What Happens in the Margins: Riding in Cars with Naomi Shihab Nye

Words by Danielle Palmer-Friedman, illustration by Madeline Kernan “Everything is always bits and pieces,” Naomi Shihab Nye writes in I’ll Ask You Three Times: Are You OK? As soon as I saw that sentence, I stopped what I was doing and started reading. It’s a beautiful thing when an author’s words succinctly express a feeling […]

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Introductions: Naomi Shihab Nye

By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director It is an honor to welcome Naomi Shihab Nye back to the Poetry Series, ten years after her last appearance. In the last year alone, she added a new title to her bio: the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation, and a new title to her shelf, […]

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How to be Patti Smith: A Guide in 10 Steps

Listen—we can’t all be a rocker, a genius lyricist, a Bohemian New Yorker, a style icon, and an award-winning author. That particular blend of legendary is reserved for Patti Smith, and we on the SAL staff are just her acolytes. So if you, too, find it impossible to achieve even “Step 1” on this how-to […]

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Our Girls: Notes on Poetry and Palestinian Motherhood

This essay is part of a series in which Poetry Northwest partners with Seattle Arts & Lectures to present reflections on visiting writers from SAL’s 2019/20 Poetry Series. At 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 19, Naomi Shihab Nye will read in celebration of her new collection The Tiny Journalist at Town Hall Seattle, and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha will […]

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Summer Book Bingo: The Many Reasons to Play

by Kate Jones, Summer Intern   Another wonderful summer has come and gone, and I’m looking at my finished Summer Book Bingo board, trying to articulate why I love this experience so much. I’m no Book Bingo veteran—this is only my second card—but I’m starting to boil it down to a few reasons, reasons that […]

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