A Conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates

Gabriella Demczuk

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SAL Presents

A Conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates

Tuesday, February 18, 2025 7:30 pm PST

02/18/2025 7:30 pm 02/18/2025 America/Los_Angeles A Conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates https://lectures.org/event/ta-nehisi-coates/ Benaroya Hall — S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium

At Benaroya Hall — S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium

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In Person & Online

Cost: $7 – $146

From the bestselling author of Between the World and Me comes a new collection of visionary essays, The Message. Follow Ta-Nehisi Coates as he journeys to three resonant sites of conflict in the world to explore how the stories we tell—and the ones we don’t—shape our realities.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.

All tickets, with the exception of a limited number of Pay What You Can tickets, include a copy of The Message.

The first of the book’s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist—and named for Nubian pharaoh—Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the “steampunk” city of “old traditions and new machinery,” meeting with strangers and dining with local writers who quiz him in French about African American politics. But everywhere he goes he feels as if he’s in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind, the pan-African homeland he was raised to believe was the origin and destiny for all black people. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and touches the ocean that carried his ancestors away in chains—and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.

Back in the USA he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he explores a different mythology, this one enforced on its subjects by the state. He enters the world of the teacher whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates’s own books and discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed and even radicalized by the stories they discovered in the “racial reckoning” of 2020o. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths and stories of the community—a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over the its public squares.

In Palestine, the longest of the essays, he discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we’ve accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians–the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him–and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful StruggleWe Were Eight Years in PowerThe Water Dancer, and Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Ta-Nehisi lives in New York City with his wife and son.

Event Details

Benaroya Hall — S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium

200 University Street
Seattle, WA 98101

View directions.

Know Before You Go

Can't find your tickets?

Most tickets have been emailed for this event, so be sure to check your inbox for an email from boxoffice@lectures.org. Email or call us at 206-621-2230 x10 if you can’t find them.

For in-person attendance: Your e-tickets have been emailed unless you selected “Will Call” as your ticket delivery upon checkout. Will Call tickets will be available to pick up at the SAL Box Office starting at 6 p.m. the night of your event.

For online attendance: If you purchased a streaming pass, SAL will send a pre-event reminder email with instructions to log in and access the online stream on the day of the event. The night of your event, return to lectures.org/event/ta-nehisi-coates and enter the password where prompted. The program begins at 7:30 p.m. (PT) and will be available for viewing for a week after the event. If you have opted out of receiving SAL emails, you will miss this important information—please email us at boxoffice@lectures.org and we will assist you.

Seating in the Hall

For the in-person event, the lobby doors and SAL Box Office open at 5:30 p.m. (PT). The auditorium doors will open at approximately 6:30 p.m. (PT) for seating.

All seating is General Admission by section with the exception of Grand Patron seats, which are reserved.

Late seating is permitted at SAL events. However, your seat is not guaranteed after the program has begun.

Have a question for the speaker?

Want to ask our speaker something? We invite you to submit questions for our Q&A. Check your pre-event email for a link!

Books

All tickets, with the exception of a limited number of Pay What You Can tickets, include a copy of The Message.

Our partner bookstore, Elliott Bay Book Company, will have additional books available for sale at their table in the lobby and on their website.

There will be no book signing after the event.

Patrons & Grand Patrons, Have a Drink on SAL!

Patron & Grand Patron seating includes a pre-event drink ticket! Check your pre-event email for details.

Need an exchange?

Please note: in-person tickets do not include digital access. (Curious to learn why? Check out our FAQ.) If you need to exchange your in-person ticket for a digital pass, SAL kindly asks that you please contact the box office before noon on the day of your event.

Tickets and subscriptions are non-refundable.

Transportation & Parking

This event will be held in the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium, the largest event space at Benaroya Hall. 

Benaroya Hall is located at 200 University Street, directly across Second Avenue from the Seattle Art Museum.

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 I-5 via Westbound I-90
    Take the 2C exit for I-5 North. Follow signs for Madison Street/Convention Place and merge right onto Seventh Avenue. Turn left onto Madison Street. Proceed three blocks and turn right onto Fourth Avenue. Continue four 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.

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 (Symphony 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″. ChargePoint 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 boxoffice@lectures.org 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 boxoffice@lectures.org, or Tuesday-Friday, from 12 noon–5 p.m., 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.

Sponsors

Magnum Opus Sponsor
Microsoft
Novella Sponsor
Pivotal Ventures
Essay Sponsor
Media Sponsor