A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
By Ruth Dickey, SAL Executive Director A few years ago, everyone I knew began telling me about a book they absolutely adored and that I simply must read. But when I learned the book was about a Count who spends 30 years in a hotel in Moscow, I was first skeptical, and then outright resistant. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
What’s better than a summer playlist? A summer playlist of songs that SAL authors love! Find out what Lindy West, Malcolm Gladwell, Rachel Maddow, and others are listening to. Access the playlist on Spotify here, play it below, or click on the song titles for YouTube videos of each track. Hanif Abdurraqib A Tribe […]
“I would love to say that the state of Alabama made an honest mistake,” Anthony Ray Hinton began, addressing a packed house at Seattle First Baptist Church on April 30. “I wish I could look you in the eye and tell you that class and race had nothing to do with me spending thirty years […]
By Christina Gould, SAL Patron Services Manager A year ago, almost to the day, I traveled to Montgomery, Alabama for the Equal Justice Initiative’s unveiling of the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. It was there on a panel discussion, Reforming Criminal Justice in America, that […]