A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
Our utmost congratulations to the 2021 Elaine Wetterauer Writing Contest winners and runners-up! Every year, Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools (WITS) program holds the Elaine Wetterauer Writing Contest, named for beloved English teacher Elaine Wetterauer, who taught for years at Nathan Hale High School and was an early champion of WITS, as […]
Seattle Arts & Lectures is excited to announce that we are now accepting applications to the 2021/22 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate Cohort, from now until Friday, April 23, 2021. Program Overview The Seattle Youth Poet Laureate (YPL) program is part of Seattle Arts & Lectures (SAL) with support from Urban Word NYC, Northwest Folklife […]
Each year, in a project led by Sierra Nelson and Ann Teplick of Writers in the Schools, and the School of Visual Concepts, long-term patients from Seattle Children’s Hospital and a team of letterpress artists join forces to create an extraordinary collection of handprinted, limited-edition broadsides. In 2020, the Letterpress Program at the School of Visual Concepts […]
Finally, we can say Happy New Year from SAL! As a good reminder that years come and go, here’s a poem written by fourth grader Emma Lynn Goodwin, from Salish Coast Elementary School, written as part of our Writers in the Schools program. All Hail to the Calendar All hail to the calendar. Yes, the […]
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 […]
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.” […]
As a special Thanksgiving treat, make your own poem-map of wonder with this lesson and writing prompt inspired by poet and author of World of Wonders, Aimee Nezhukumatathil! In celebration of our brand new SAL/on air podcast episode featuring Aimee’s May 2018 reading, Sierra Nelson—WITS Writer-in-Residence, cephalopod enthusiast, and author of The Lachrymose Report—takes us […]
Each year, in a project led by Sierra Nelson and Ann Teplick of Writers in the Schools, and the School of Visual Concepts, long-term patients from Seattle Children’s Hospital and a team of letterpress artists join forces to create an extraordinary collection of handprinted, limited-edition broadsides. These works of art—which you may have oohed and […]
By Gabriela Denise Frank A minute into the interview, Alison Stagner said, “When an image strikes me as really beautiful, I immediately want to undercut that. For me, beauty is about disruption.” I was already looking forward to speaking with her after reading her book, but my heart flip-flopped when she said this. […]
This essay appears in Seismic: Seattle, City of Literature, an anthology edited by Kristen Millares Young, featuring writers from all across the city. Seattle was designated a UNESCO City of Literature in 2017 and has been working as part of the international network since then. Seismic is a collection that asks writers to consider what the designation […]