A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Interim Executive Director It is such a delight to introduce Mary Roach to you tonight. Mary is the author of books like Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, and Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, all books that are about […]
Stools are crabs that crawl across the carpet sands Chairs are the horses that once rose from the sea Tables are the rocks that the stools hid under to escape from the projector that is a white snake hunting for prey Violet Hilgenberg, of Lafayette Elementary School, read this poem to open our 2020/21 Literary […]
By Ruth Dickey, SAL Executive Director I first learned of Bill Bryson’s work from my brother and sister-in-law, who have what I believe is one of the most romantic hobbies. For 25 years, they have read books out loud to one another, and Bryson was one of their early favorites. Diving into his work, it’s […]
1 Trail blazing through his work, a student loses himself to the sound of thoughts and inquiries echoing throughout his skull, disregarding exchanged pleasantries passing by that would only encave him. 2 Blindly wandering the streets, a child loses themselves, taking their time getting home, asking the question of where it ever was, if they […]
Zoë Mertz is a University of Washington student doing a remote internship with the Writers in the Schools program at SAL. After attending SAL’s recent Literary Arts Series event with Madeline Miller on January 27, Zoë reflects on her own obsession with retelling and adapting classic tales, as well as the anxiety—and the creative power—that […]
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 […]
Zoë Mertz is a University of Washington student doing a remote internship with the Writers in the Schools program at SAL. After attending the recent Literary Arts Series event with Yaa Gyasi on November 16, she wrote this reflective piece on attending events pre-Covid and what it’s like to attend online now. Read on to […]
Born from island clay Red and wet, with eyes open Crawl to a garden Place me in a bed of ferns I grow, I am energy. I’ll tell you of my first time talking to a plant. Most was listening. I swam forever Because I could, and I had to. Water carried me. My fear […]
Although we couldn’t share a reading from our Writers in the Schools student to open our 2019/20 Literary Arts Series event with Carol Anderson, we’re pleased to be able to share the poem “To Who I Think: I Want These Things to Stop” by Ebenezer Tewolde, a 5th grader at Leschi Elementary School, written with WITS […]
By Ruth Dickey, SAL Executive Director Every summer, the SAL staff picks an author from the coming season and reads one book all together. Last summer, the book we read together was Carol Anderson’s New York Times bestselling One Person, No Vote, and I remember sitting in a circle and sharing our outrage at what […]