A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
Akshaya Ajith, a high school student doing a remote internship with the Writers in the Schools program at SAL, attended SAL’s Literary Arts Series event with Madeline Miller, the author of Circe and Song of Achilles, on January 27, 2021. Read on to hear her reflections. By Akshaya Ajith, WITS Intern Through her rich interpretation […]
What books about love do you love? Lately, the staff at Seattle Arts & Lectures have been sharing and chatting a lot about this essay by Matthew Salesses, which came out this past August. In it, Salesses scrutinizes the popular belief that literary fiction gives rise to empathy in readers—and whether empathy can even be […]
Dear friends, I am writing with news that is deeply bittersweet. As you may have seen today, at the end of April, I will leave SAL to become the next Executive Director of the National Book Foundation. While I am thrilled to get to continue championing books and reading on a national scale, I will […]
Somewhere, deep in the valley, I sit in the darkness. I am reading; it is intriguing. As I sit reading, the words seem to fly off the page and into the night sky. The words seem to illuminate the meadow, illuminate the meadow in which I sit. The words seem to dig down deep inside […]
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 […]
At a word, we jump, run, and jostle our way to a far corner, vying for a spot on the cushioned couch instead of the cold floor. We attempt to be quiet and hold in our laughter as we peek over the edge of the couch towards the door amidst scolding words from our teacher. […]
By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director Maggie Smith is the author of three books of poetry and just this fall, a book of micro-essays entitled Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change. You might have first encountered Maggie through the poem, “Good Bones” which—let’s not say, went viral, let’s say, took hold, let’s say, […]
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 […]
“There’s a reason Sappho wrote in her complex hexameter.” 2019/20 Youth Poet Laureate cohort member Maeve Kenney reads her poem “Ars Poetica,” which she performed before Madeline Miller’s 2020/21 Literary Arts Series event, presented on the digital SAL stage.
I am the breeze that hits you on a cold day I am the perfect but imperfect plant you try to grow I am the expected but unexpected snow on a chilling night I am the rain that disturbs a sunny day But I’m not the fresh-baked pie straight from the oven Or the perfect […]