For fifteen years, Rick Riordan taught English and history at public and private middle schools in the San Francisco Bay and in Texas. Today, he is a beloved novelist for young readers, with over 190 million copies of his books in print worldwide from the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, to the Trials of Apollo, and many more. In this SAL Presents event, Riordan returns to his first beloved epic series with Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Chalice of the Gods, to delight dedicated fans and entice new readers alike. All tickets, with the exception of a limited number of Pay What You Can tickets, include a copy of Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Chalice of the Gods, shipped to the ticket holder’s door by our partner bookstore, Elliott Bay Book Company. All books will be pre-signed, there will be no signing line after the event. Q&A with Donna Barba Higuera. Please note: This event has a 6:30 p.m. start time to better accommodate families.

Iconic poet Jane Hirshfield addresses the urgent immediacies of our time in her long-awaited The Asking, which assays the full ranges of our shared and borrowed lives: our bonds of eros and our responsibilities to the planet; the singing dictions and searchlight dimensions of perception; the willing plunge into an existence both perishing and beloved, recognized in these poems as dazzling, “even now, even here.” All Poetry Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscribers receive a copy of The Asking, shipped to their doors by our partner bookstore, Open Books. Please note: complimentary subscriptions and single tickets do not include the book.

In his first illustrated book created specifically with a wider audience in mind, the iconic Northern Irish artist Oliver Jeffers gives a very brief history of humanity, reviews our current position, and shares his dreams for where we go from here. All tickets, with the exception of a limited number of Pay What You Can tickets, include a copy of Begin Again: The Story of How We Got Here and Where We Might Go shipped to the ticket holder’s door by our partner bookstore, Queen Anne Book Company. Q&A with Julia Kuo.

Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Barbara Kingsolver is lauded as one of the most celebrated novelists of our time. With her latest novel, Demon Copperhead, Kingsolver takes on David Copperfield as her inspiration for a story following one boy through the mountains of Southern Appalachia. Reckoning with institutional poverty, opioid addiction, and class divides visible and unseen, Kingsolver’s voice resonates with the truth of loving a place others will hardly believe exists. Kingsolver will appear in conversation with Ruth Dickey, the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation. Single tickets and Create Your Own Series subscriptions, with the exception of a limited number of Pay What You Can tickets, include a copy of Demon Copperhead, shipped to the ticket holder’s door by our partner bookstore, University Book Store. Encore Series subscriptions do not include the book.

Landing in Spaces of Learning: Celebrating Literacy and Care in the Classroom and Introducing Place as a Foundational Element of Learning Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is Eastern Shawnee. Her first book, Tributaries, was published by the University of Arizona Press and won a 2016 American Book Award. Da’ has held residencies at the Richard Hugo House, Tin House, and Jack Straw. Her newest book, Instruments of the True Measure, is the winner of the Washington State Book Award. Da’ lives near Seattle with her husband and son. This professional development is designed to combine Indigenous literature and writing with land-based pedagogy. The intention for this training is to offer practical content and strategies that are suitable for all students and to encourage open discussion about how to meaningfully incorporate Indigenous literacy and tenants of land-based pedagogy in diverse learning settings.Educators will leave this class with a bundle of teaching resources including suggested readings, activities, thinking strategies, engagement techniques, and culturally responsive standards alignment. Additionally, each professional development will address one institutional challenge and pose thinking strategies to address it. This professional development workshop will include: Creative writing and thinking prompts to engage with place and season Classroom ready discussion strategy to encourage noticing and building on observations Classroom ready reading and writing strategy to encourage visual thinking Consideration of an institutional challenge: How to reframe decontextualized foundations of learning from outside the land to a place informed approach and alternatives to institutional hierarchies of worldview Connection to other content areas: SEL strategies Resources and places to learn more This two-hour workshop will fulfill OSPI’s Continuing Education clock hours (2) for all state educators, and meets the requirements for ongoing Racial Equity Training for teacher certification.

In her international bestseller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome. Now she shines her spotlight on the emperors who ruled the Roman empire, from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE). Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman (and our own) fantasies about what it was to be Roman, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before. All Literary Arts Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscribers receive a copy of Emperor of Rome, shipped to their doors by our partner bookstore, University Book Store. Please note: complimentary subscriptions and single tickets do not include the book.

With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life in A Man of Two Faces. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, Nguyen expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son. All Encore Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscribers receive a copy of A Man of Two Faces, shipped to their doors by our partner bookstore, Elliot Bay Book Company. Please note: complimentary subscriptions and single tickets do not include the book.

Join Trust for Public Land and SAL for a free community event with the Full Circle Everest Team, the first all-Black team to summit the highest mountain on earth. Full Circle lead Philip Henderson and mountaineer Demond “Dom” Mullins will join TPL’s Northwest Director, Mitsu Iwasaki, to amplify a national conversation about inclusion and equity in outdoor recreation.

David Brooks, one of the nation’s leading writers and commentators, delivers a practical, heartfelt guide in How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. In order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives, Brooks digs into the essential conversations and questions of any community or relationship: how do we feel seen? Q&A with award-winning author Timothy Egan. All tickets, with the exception of a limited number of Pay What You Can tickets, include a copy of How to Know a Person, shipped to the ticket holder’s door by our partner bookstore, University Book Store.

 As the host of NPR’s Morning Edition for almost two decades, Steve Inskeep has mastered the art of bridging divides and building constructive debate in interviews. In Differ We Must, his new nonfiction, he brings his skills to bear on a prior master, forming a fresh and compelling narrative of Abraham Lincoln’s life and expanding our understanding of a politician who held strong to his moral compass while navigating between corrosive political factions. All Literary Arts Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscribers receive a copy of Differ We Must, shipped to their doors by our partner bookstore, Secret Garden Books. Please note: complimentary subscriptions and single tickets do not include the book.

This four-part reading series features acclaimed poets, writers, and comics artists who teach in SAL’s Writers in the Schools program. These resident writers come together to read from their own works-in-progress, inspiring the same craft and performance skills they teach in the classroom. Free (no RSVP necessary; just come)

This four-part reading series features acclaimed poets, writers, and comics artists who teach in SAL’s Writers in the Schools program. These resident writers come together to read from their own works-in-progress, inspiring the same craft and performance skills they teach in the classroom. Free (no RSVP necessary; just come)

Deb Perelman is the self-taught home cook and photographer and the creator of the award-winning blog SmittenKitchen.com. The author of three cookbooks, most recently Smitten Kitchen Keepers, Perelman is hailed as one of the original food bloggers and beloved for her endlessly comforting, faithfully tested recipes. She will be joined in conversation by J. Kenji López-Alt, our Community Curated Series director.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds, novelist Kristin Hannah presents a tantalizing new novel spun with sisterhood, commitment, and the idea of home. Delving into the story of one woman gone to war, The Women shines a light on the story of all women who put themselves in harm’s way to help others and whose sacrifices have all too often been forgotten.

Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022, the first Native American to receive the honor, and she is the winner of Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry. Harjo has written ten books of poetry, including the highly acclaimed, Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years, several plays and children’s books, and two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior.

Join us for a double-feature with two stunning poets! Roger Reeves is the author of Best Barbarian, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Anastacia-Reneé, a Seattle literary legend, is a queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, podcaster, and the author of Sidenotes from the Archivist. All Poetry Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscribers receive a copy of Best Barbarian, shipped to their doors by our partner bookstore, Open Books. Please note: complimentary subscriptions and single tickets do not include the book.

Root Systems: Forest Canopies, Understories, and Floors of Language Learning Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is Eastern Shawnee. Her first book, Tributaries, was published by the University of Arizona Press and won a 2016 American Book Award. Da’ has held residencies at the Richard Hugo House, Tin House, and Jack Straw. Her newest book, Instruments of the True Measure, is the winner of the Washington State Book Award. Da’ lives near Seattle with her husband and son

Join J. Kenji López-Alt and New York Times staff writer and essayist, Eric Kim. Kim is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home, and he has amassed a devoted following with his NYT Cooking videos and Food52 column.

This four-part reading series features acclaimed poets, writers, and comics artists who teach in SAL’s Writers in the Schools program. These resident writers come together to read from their own works-in-progress, inspiring the same craft and performance skills they teach in the classroom. Free (no RSVP necessary; just come)

In his landmark book, Poverty, By America, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem—and also helps us imagine solutions. In his follow up to Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Desmond investigates why the United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?

Victoria Chang has garnered acclaim with her collection Obit and her nonfiction exploration Dear Memory. Her new collection of poetry, With My Back to the World, is inspired by the work of Agnes Martin, exploring topics of feminism, art, depression, and grief with Chang’s signature taut language and brilliant imagery.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Hailed as a “tour de force” by Ron Charles of the Washington Post, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow has found both critical and commercial success, named one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, TIME, GoodReads, and Oprah Daily.

So to Speak, a powerful, timely, dazzling new collection of poems from Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award–winning author of Lighthead, reminds us of the strange and lyrical grammar of thinking and feeling.  On the one hand, these fabulous fables, American sonnets, quarantine quatrains, and ekphrastic do-it-yourself sestinas animate what Toni Morrison called “the writerly imagination of a black author who is at some level always conscious of representing one’s own race.” On the other hand, these urgent, personal poems contemplate fatherhood, history, and longing with remarkable openness and humanity. So To Speak is the mature, restless work of one of contemporary poetry’s leading voices.

Join Cordon Bleu-trained chef Pailin Chongchitnant for an evening of Thai cooking discussion with J. Kenji López-Alt! In addition to hosting the sensational Youtube channel Pailin’s Kitchen with 1.7 million subscribers, Chongchitnant is the author of two definitive Thai cookbooks, Hot Thai Kitchen and Sabai: 100 Simple Thai Recipes for Any Day of the Week.

Hailed by NPR as a “literary badass” and a “master storyteller with a rock and roll heart,” Luis Alberto Urrea is a prolific and acclaimed writer who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph. Urrea’s newest book, Good Night, Irene, takes as inspiration his mother’s own Red Cross service.

This four-part reading series features acclaimed poets, writers, and comics artists who teach in SAL’s Writers in the Schools program. These resident writers come together to read from their own works-in-progress, inspiring the same craft and performance skills they teach in the classroom. Free (no RSVP necessary; just come)

Bring a listening ear and a joyful spirit to the WITS Year-End Reading & Celebration! Every year, WITS culminates in a program-wide reading and celebration of student work that features student readers from approximately 30 schools and Seattle Children’s Hospital. This year, elementary and middle school students will read on Wednesday, May 29, and middle and high school students read on Thursday, May 30. This event is free and open to the public.

Bring a listening ear and a joyful spirit to the WITS Year-End Reading & Celebration! Every year, WITS culminates in a program-wide reading and celebration of student work that features student readers from approximately 30 schools and Seattle Children’s Hospital. This year, elementary and middle school students will read on Wednesday, May 29, and middle and high school students read on Thursday, May 30. This event is free and open to the public.

From National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honoree, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s hotly anticipated debut novel Chain-Gang All-Stars has swept the bestseller charts. In this explosive novel, two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own. From the New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black, Adjei-Brenyah paints a dystopian world blazingly close to our own.