Soraya Chemaly
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Women You Need to Know

Soraya Chemaly

Past Event: Thursday, January 31, 2019

At Benaroya Hall — Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall

Listen to Podcast

Soraya Chemaly is an award‐winning writer and activist whose works focus on the role of gender in culture, politics, religion, and media. Rage Becomes Her (2018) is her conversation‐shifting book that urges women to understand their anger, embrace its power, and use it for positive change.

The Q&A portion of this event will be moderated by Carole Carmichael, former Seattle Times Assistant Managing Editor.

Through a combination of priceless stories, rigorous research, and interviews with women of all backgrounds, Rage Becomes Her argues for a fresh conception of one of our core emotions.  “Anger is our natural reaction to perceived injustice,” writes Soraya Chemaly. “It is a tool like any other, which means not being proficient with it puts us at a major disadvantage, and often in harms way.”

Analyzing female anger as it relates to topics like self‐worth, objectification, pain, care, fear, silence, denial, and political authoritarianism, Chemaly illuminates how women are socialized from a young age to repress their anger, revealing the harm that this causes, and then helps them learn how to marshal rage as a tool for positive change.

Chemaly is the Director of the Women’s Media Center Speech Project which aims to curb online abuse, increase media and tech diversity, and expand women’s freedom of expression. She is also the organizer of the Safety and Free Speech Coalition, an international civil society network dedicated to expanding women’s civic and political participation.

Chemaly currently serves on the national boards of the Women’s Media Center and Women, Action and the Media, as well as on the advisory councils of the Center for Democracy and Technology, VIDA, and Common Sense Media. As an activist, she has spearheaded multiple successful campaigns challenging corporations to address online harassment and abuse, restrictive content moderation and censorship, and institutional biases that affect free speech.

After occupying various leadership positions in corporate marketing and founding her own consulting firm, Chemaly returned to her writing and advocacy work full time. Her articles appear frequently in Time, the GuardianThe Nation, HuffPost, and The Atlantic, where she speaks frequently on topics related to inclusivity, free speech, sexualized violence, data, and technology. Follow her on Twitter and learn more at sorayachemaly.com and WomensMediaCenter.com.

Carole Carmichael’s journalism career spans four decades, beginning as a reporter with United Press International in Omaha, Nebraska and rising to executive leadership as Assistant Managing Editor at the Seattle Times. Under her leadership, the Seattle Times team was recognized nationally for numerous awards including eight times by the Missouri School of Journalism for its lifestyle coverage. With a deep appreciation for good writing, Carmichael was instrumental in producing writing workshops with the Poynter Institute for her staff and Seattle’s writing community.

In 2016, she left the Seattle Times when she was awarded a Visiting Journalist Fellowship with the Russell Sage Foundation in New York to research her book on the scholarship awarded to her and her classmates upon the death of Martin Luther King Jr. In the fall of 2018, she was honored by New York University’s College of Arts and Sciences with the Alumni Achievement Award. With the encouragement of Hugo House writing coaches Theo Nestor and Ingrid Ricks, Carole is busy working on the completion of her manuscript.

Event Details

Benaroya Hall — Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall

200 University Street
Seattle, WA 98101

View directions.

Transportation & Parking

This event will be held in the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall. The Recital Hall is located on the upper level of Benaroya Hall, up the stairs to the left side of the Box Office. Benaroya Hall is located at 200 University Street, directly across Second Avenue from the Seattle Art Museum. The public entrance to Benaroya Hall is along Third Avenue.


By Car

  • From Southbound I-5
    Take the Union Street exit (#165B). Continue onto Union Street and proceed approximately five blocks to Second Avenue. Turn left onto Second Avenue. The Benaroya Hall parking garage will be on your immediate left. The garage entrance is on Second Avenue, just south of Union Street.
  • From Northbound I-5
    Exit left onto Seneca Street (exit #165). Proceed two blocks and turn right onto Fourth Avenue. Continue two blocks. Turn left onto Union Street. Continue two blocks. Turn left onto Second Avenue. The Benaroya Hall parking garage will be on your immediate left. The garage entrance is on Second Avenue, just south of Union Street.
  • From Northbound Highway 99 (Aurora Avenue)
    Take the Seneca Street exit and move into the left lane. Turn left onto First Avenue and proceed one block. Take the next right (at the Hammering Man sculpture) onto University Street. Continue up the hill two blocks to Third Avenue. Turn left onto Third Avenue. Continue to the next block and turn left onto Union Street. Make the next left onto Second Avenue. The Benaroya Hall parking garage will be on your immediate left. The garage entrance is on Second Avenue, just south of Union Street.
  • From Southbound Highway 99 (Aurora Avenue)
    Take the Denny Way/Downtown exit. Keep right and cross over Denny Way onto Wall Street. Proceed approximately five blocks and turn left onto Second Avenue. Continue south on Second Avenue approximately eight blocks. The Benaroya Hall parking garage will be on your left. The garage entrance is on Second Avenue, just south of Union Street.

By Public Transit (Bus & Light Rail)

Benaroya Hall is served by numerous bus routes. Digital reader boards along Third Avenue display real-time bus arrival information. For details and trip planning tools, call Metro Rider Information at 206.553.3000 (voice) or 206.684.1739 (TDD), or visit Metro online. The Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel, served by light rail, has a stop just below the Hall (University Street Station).

Parking
The 430-car underground garage at Benaroya Hall provides direct access from the enclosed parking area into the Hall via elevators leading to The Boeing Company Gallery. Enter the garage on Second Avenue, just south of Union Street. Maximum vehicle height is 6’8″. Blink charging stations are available for electric vehicles. Visit the Benaroya Hall website for event pricing.

Parking is also available at:

  • The Cobb Building (enter on University Street between Third and Fourth Avenues).
  • The Russell Investments Center (enter on Union Street between First and Second Avenues).
  • There are many other garages within a one-block radius of Benaroya Hall, along with numerous on-street parking options.

Accessibility

Open Captioning is an option for people who have hearing loss, where a captioning screen displaying the words that are spoken or sung is placed on stage. This option is present at every event at Benaroya Hall in our 2021/22 Season.

Closed Captioning is an option for people who have hearing loss, where captioning displays the words that are spoken or sung at the bottom of the video during an online event. Captioning is available for all online events; click the “CC” button to view captions during the event.

Assistive Listening Devices (ALDs) are devices that people with hearing loss use in conjunction with their hearing device (hearing aids or cochlear implants). Benaroya Hall has an infrared hearing system, which transmits sound by light beams. Headsets are available in The Boeing Company Gallery coat check and the Head Usher stations in both lobbies.

Sign Language Interpretation is available upon request for Deaf, DeafBlind, and hard of hearing individuals for both in-person and online events. To make a request for interpretation, please contact us at [email protected] or 206.621.2230×10, or select “Sign Language Interpretation” from the Accessibility section during your ticket checkout process and we will contact you to confirm details. Please note: we appreciate a two-week advance notice to allow us time to secure interpretation.

Wheelchair Accessible Seating and Accessible Restrooms are available in all sections at our venues, and our venues are fully accessible to ticket holders with physical mobility concerns. Among other features, Benaroya Hall has designated parking spaces adjacent to elevators in their parking garage. Elevators with Braille signage go to all levels within the Hall. To reserve seating for a specific mobility concern, you may select “Wheelchair Accessible or Alternative Seating Options” during ticket checkout, and we will contact you to confirm details. For more details on their accessibility features, click here.

Guide and service dogs are welcome.

Gender neutral restrooms are available.

We are pleased to offer these accessibility services at our venues, and they are provided at no additional cost to ticket holders. Please contact us with any questions and feedback about how we can be more accessible and inclusive. Our Patron Services Manager is available at [email protected], or Monday-Friday from 10:00am – 5:00pm at 206.621.2230×10.

For more accessibility information, please head to lectures.org/accessibility. If you would like to make accessibility arrangements you do not see listed here, please contact our box office or select “Other Accommodations” from the Accessibility section during your ticket checkout process, and we will contact you to confirm details.