A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
American Poetry I imagine my brand-new copy of The Best American Poetry 2021 lying stiff and silent after the apocalypse. I’d like to remain conservative a little longer. save seed for winter. watch it sprout in the spring. I break bread by myself, sitting on the floor, hunched over by the fire, like God’s lap […]
If you’ve been following us for a while, you may know Tessa Hulls, the “SAL Official Doodler” and author of the forthcoming graphic novel Feeding Ghosts (MCD Books, 2023). We were so lucky that Tessa attended our event in collaboration with the On Being Project on February 15, 2023, and captured the evening in doodle form! Take a […]
By Rebecca Hoods, Executive Director It is now my immense pleasure to introduce Maggie O’Farrell. Born in Northern Ireland and now a resident of Edinburgh, O’Farrell is the author of nine novels, a memoir, and two books for children. I came to her work first through her 2017 memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: […]
If you want … I will sing. If not … I will hum. If you’re sad, I’ll give you a beat. A song I’ll sing is my dream. It is something that belongs to me. It’s loud, even with no sound. It’s quiet when it’s loud. I don’t care if you don’t listen but this […]
By Rebecca Hoogs, Executive Director It is now my immense pleasure to introduce Professor Abdulrazak Gurnah. We are here tonight to celebrate Gurnah’s tenth novel, Afterlives, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Literature almost exactly one year ago today, as well as to honor his long career in literature. Gurnah’s books have been […]
There’s a poem in this place a poem stronger than a steel cup a poem that races through your mind faster than a modern car There’s a poem in this place a poem so calm it feels like you’re sailing on the sea There’s a poem in this place a poem so wild it sounds like a rock […]
“Here” feels so lonely. The hands of a ghost who loved another ghost, the space between fingertips, the hall light under the door. Whispers that evaporate into thin air like an August creek. Ferns line the sidewalks and the trails, spores frequenting their undersides. In kindergarten, someone told me that those spores heal cuts, but […]
Amanda Miller created this comic while a student at Renaissance School of Art and Reasoning with WITS Writer-in-Residence David Lasky. Amanda read the poem to open our Literary Arts Series event with Daniel James Brown on March 15, 2022.
By Rebecca Hoogs, Executive Director Charles Yu is the author of four works of fiction, including Interior Chinatown, which won the 2020 National Book Award for fiction. Previously, he received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award, which he was selected for by Richard Powers, whom we will see on this stage in April. […]
By Rebecca Hoogs, Executive Director I came to Bernardine Evaristo after she won the 2019 Booker Prize for her novel, Girl, Woman, Other. Her win was notable for several reasons. It was the first time that the Booker had been shared by two writers—Margaret Atwood was the other winner for The Testaments. Evaristo describes the […]