Celebrating 10 years of Summer Book Bingo, our free reading program in partnership with The Seattle Public Library! Join SAL and friends at the Volunteer Park Amphitheater on Saturday, August 3, for a silent reading picnic. Bring your books, blankets, chairs, and snacks, and get ready to relax and read. Book Bingo cards for adults, teens, and kids will be available onsite.   This event is free and open to the public.

In a sharp, witty, and definitive memoir like no other, iconic trailblazer and legendary journalist Connie Chung delves into her storied career as the first Asian woman to break into an overwhelmingly white, male-dominated television news industry. All tickets, with the exception of a limited number of Pay What You Can tickets, include a copy of Connie.

Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith’s powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. Bluff is a kind of manifesto about artistic resilience, even when time and will can seem fleeting, when the places we most love—those given and made—are burning. In this soaring collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage, and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.

Acclaimed by critics and beloved by readers of all ages, Sandra Cisneros is a writer, performer, and artist who is celebrating the 40th anniversary of The House on Mango Street, the essential coming-of-age novel about Esperanza Cordero and her Chicago barrio, and one of the most cherished contemporary novels. Forty years after its publication, Sandra Cisneros remains a force in the literary community.

Twenty-five years after the publication of his groundbreaking first book, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a brand new volume that reframes the lessons of The Tipping Point in a startling and revealing light. Revenge of the Tipping Point is another intellectual adventure, both rigorous and page-turning, from a writer at the top of his game. Literary Arts Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscriptions, as well as single tickets—with the exception of a limited number of Pay What You Can tickets—include a copy of Revenge of the Tipping Point.

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 Book of Love showcases Kelly Link at the height of her powers, channeling potent magic and attuned to all varieties of love—from friendship to romance to abiding family ties—with her trademark compassion, wit, and literary derring-do. Readers will find joy (and a little terror) and an affirmation that love goes on, even when we cannot. Q&A with Community Curated Series director Ted Chiang.

Casey McQuiston—the bestselling author of Red, White and Royal Blue and One Last Stop—returns with the wildly anticipated romantic comedy The Pairing, in which two bisexual exes accidentally book the same European food and wine tour—but they’re totally over each other, right? Costumes, literary and otherwise, strongly encouraged at this special Halloween event! All tickets, with the exception of a limited number of Pay What You Can tickets, include a copy of The Pairing.

The newest book from Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water, reminds audiences of why he is hailed as one of the modern era’s greatest epic novelists. At once a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, this story is a humbling testament to generational connection and a shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself. Literary Arts Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscriptions include a paperback copy of The Covenant of Water. Books may be added on to single ticket purchases—to purchase a book, select a ticketing level that includes “Book.”

Known for her poetry, her essays, and the way she lights up the world, Aimee Nezhukumatathil restores our astonishment again and again. Explore the vast undersea world in her poetry collection Oceanic, or taste your way through the way food and drink evoke our associations and remembrances in her latest essay collection Bite by Bite—a lyrical book of short essays about food, offering a banquet of tastes, smells, memories, associations, and marvelous curiosities from nature.

Author of the sensational Braiding Sweetgrass—a book that forever changed nature writing—Robin Wall Kimmerer returns with The Serviceberry. A bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world, The Serviceberry is an antidote to the broken relationships and misguided goals of our times, and a reminder that “hoarding won’t save us; all flourishing is mutual.” All tickets, with the exception of a limited number of Pay What You Can and complimentary tickets, include a copy of The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. Books will be mailed by our bookstore partner to the ticket holder’s address.

Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Percival Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James—his powerful retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

For decades, Michele Norris has been at the heart of American journalism, with her role as host for NPR’s flagship radio show All Things Considered from 2002-2011, and her other work at multiple outlets through the years. She was the first African American female host at NPR, and she has won multiple awards for her journalistic contributions. In 2010, Norris began the Race Card Project, in which she invited people to share their thoughts about race. It is this ground-breaking endeavor that made her book, Our Hidden Conversations, possible.

Naomi Shihab Nye has spent more than forty years as a self-described “wandering poet,”  traveling the country and the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Beloved by generations of readers and writers, Nye uses her writing with themes of love, family, and resilience to attest to our shared humanity.

 Described as one of the “ten greatest Taiwanese computing personalities,” and the former Digital Minister of Taiwan, Audrey Tang has made it her mission to align technology with democracy, and to counteract the polarization, inequality, loneliness, and fear that digital technology has catalyzed. Q&A with Community Curated Series director Ted Chiang.

Maggie Smith is the author of the instant bestseller You Could Make This Place Beautiful, a bittersweet recollection of the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself, as well as stunning collections of poetry such as Good Bones, and essays like the ones in Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change.

Natasha Lyonne continues to push boundaries as an Emmy- and Golden Globe nominated producer, actor, writer and director with more than three decades in the industry to her name. Known for co-creating the acclaimed series Russian Doll and her pivotal roles in Orange is the New Black and Poker Face, Lyonne’s work is traced with golden stars. Q&A with Community Curated Series director Ted Chiang.

Emma Donoghue, the “soul-stirring” (Oprah Daily) nationally bestselling author of Room, returns with a sweeping historical novel about an infamous 1895 disaster at the Paris Montparnasse train station. From an author whose “writing is superb alchemy” (Audrey Niffenegger), The Paris Express is an evocative masterpiece that effortlessly captures the politics, glamour, chaos, and speed that marked the end of the nineteenth century. Create Your Own Series and Super SAL subscriptions include a copy of The Paris Express.

Abby Jimenez, “full of fierce humor and fiercer heart,” (Casey McQuiston) is the bestselling author of seven wildly popular, laugh-out-loud, pull-at-your-heartstrings romantic novels, including Just for the Summer, The Friend Zone, The Happy Ever After Playlist, and more. Her latest is a sharp and scintillating summer novel that will make readers laugh out loud and cry happy tears.

Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball growing up in Columbus, Ohio, one which inspired the writing in his memoir, There’s Always This Year—a triumph, which is brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen focus—whether it’s basketball, or music, or performance—Hanif Abdurraqib’s exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.

C Pam Zhang has stunned audiences with her rapturous and revelatory storytelling in her acclaimed bestselling novel Land of Milk and Honey. Sensuous and surprising, Zhang’s prose lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world even as it remains a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.

A plant scientist, microbiologist, and ecologist, Merlin Sheldrake has dedicated his scientific career to the relationship between humans and “more-than-human” organisms. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, has been recognized by BBC, TIME Magazine, and more, and has been heralded as dazzling, eye-opening, inspiring, and a ground-breaking account of the extraordinarily strange world of mushrooms.

From Kevin Kwan, the iconic internationally bestselling author of the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy, comes Lies and Weddings—a new outrageous, thrillingly plotted comedy of manners in which a forbidden affair erupts volcanically amid a decadent tropical wedding. Meet Cute Series, Create Your Own Series, Super SAL subscriptions, and single tickets, with the exception of a limited number of Pay What You Can tickets, include a paperback copy of Lies and Weddings.