A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
Akshaya Ajith, a high school student doing a remote internship with the Writers in the Schools program at SAL, attended SAL’s Literary Arts Series event with Madeline Miller, the author of Circe and Song of Achilles, on January 27, 2021. Read on to hear her reflections. By Akshaya Ajith, WITS Intern Through her rich interpretation […]
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 […]
By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director Maggie Smith is the author of three books of poetry and just this fall, a book of micro-essays entitled Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change. You might have first encountered Maggie through the poem, “Good Bones” which—let’s not say, went viral, let’s say, took hold, let’s say, […]
By Ruth Dickey, SAL Executive Director In one of my favorite passages in Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller writes of the first time that Patroclus hears Achilles play the lyre: His fingers touched the strings, and all my thoughts were displaced. The sound was pure and sweet as water, bright as lemons. It was like […]
We have a few new faces on the SAL Board of Directors to introduce to you over the coming weeks! Most of our board members began their SAL journey the same way you did as readers and event-goers. Learn about the moments that inspired them to get involved more deeply, what they do, where they […]
We have a few new faces on the SAL Board of Directors to introduce to you over the coming weeks! Most of our board members began their SAL journey the same way you did: as readers and event-goers. Learn about the moments that inspired them to get involved more deeply, what they do, where they […]
We have a few new faces on the SAL Board of Directors to introduce to you over the coming weeks! Most of our board members began their SAL journey the same way you did: as readers and event-goers. Learn about the moments that inspired them to get involved more deeply, what they do, where they […]
If you’ve been following us for a while, you may know of Tessa Hulls, the “SAL Official Doodler” and author of the forthcoming graphic novel Feeding Ghosts (MCD Books, 2022). On December 2, Tessa watched co-editors Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham’s online-SAL Presents conversation with contributor King James Britt, celebrating the release of their Black […]
We have a few new faces on the SAL Board of Directors to introduce to you over the coming weeks! Most of our board members began their SAL journey the same way you did: as readers and event-goers. Learn about the moments that inspired them to get involved more deeply, what they do, where they […]
By Gabriela Denise Frank During our conversation about the Seattle Children’s broadsides project, WITS writer Sierra Nelson raised a familiar inner doubt. “As a writer and an artist, I wonder, what is it for?” she said. “Like, what good does art do? Sometimes, it does so little. I wish it could change everything—or change something.” […]