A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
At SAL, we envision a future in which story and language continuously and courageously revitalize equity, justice, and belonging. Since 2014, The Prowda Literary Champion Awards, selected by a group of literary visionaries, have celebrated the individuals and organizations that do just that. Every year, the Prowda Awards recognize leaders in our community who are […]
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 […]
Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools (WITS) program is delighted to announce the theme of this year’s Elaine Wetterauer Writing Contest! Every year, WITS holds the Elaine Wetterauer Writing Contest for students and teachers from all WITS schools, representing all writing genres. The 2020/21 contest, open until May 14, invites students and teachers […]
My sister’s hair is very straight and smooth. Normally it looks like she just combed it even if she just woke up. For a while, she dyed it a blonde at the bottom, and it looked like caramel dipped in old honey—but now, it looks like when you split a Snickers in half and the […]
By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director Maira Kalman is the writer or illustrator of more than 30 books for adults and children, including The Elements of Style (Illustrated), My Favorite Things, The Principles of Uncertainty, and, most recently, an illustrated version of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. When I read The Principles of Uncertainty […]
Nathalie Marver-Kwon, 2020/21 Youth Poet Laureate Public Outreach & Exposure Ambassador, read this original poem to open our SAL Presents event with Maira Kalman. Performed on the digital SAL stage on Monday, March 15, 2021.
By Gabriela Denise Frank Talking with the writer Kip Greenthal who, with SAL Founder Sherry Prowda, launched the Writers in the Schools (WITS) program, brought to mind a quote by Grace Paley: “Every story is two stories. The one on the surface and the one bubbling beneath. The climax is when they collide.” In pop […]
By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director Toi Derricotte is the author of six collections of poetry, including “I”: New and Selected Poems, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2019. She is also the beloved co-founder, with Cornelius Eady, of Cave Canem, which was established to remedy the under-representation and isolation of […]
In appreciation of our local indies who have reinvented their processes and protocols over and over again in the service of getting the just-right book to the just-right hands, we are launching Bookshop Superheroes, a new blog series on our bookstore partners. Over the course of the winter and spring, we will feature a bookstore, […]
Dear friends, It’s been an extraordinary last two weeks at SAL, hearing from Bill Gates, Bill Bryson, and Toi Derricotte. Each event was delightful in its own way, and I’ve been thinking about how each spoke to the power of curiosity and learning—Gates talked about scheduling half-days for diving into topics, and Bryson spoke of […]