Local Voices presents a unique opportunity to eavesdrop on the works of SAL’s Writers in the Schools resident writers.

Min Jin Lee is the author of Pachinko, a sweeping, four-generation epic celebrated as the first novel written for an adult audience in English that focuses on Japanese-Korean culture. A finalist for the 2017 National Book Award in fiction, Pachinko is “a beautifully crafted story of love, loss, determination, luck, and perseverance” (Library Journal).

Rick Barot is the award-winning author of Chord, Want, and The Darker Fall. His latest book of poems, The Galleons (2020), is in part about the centuries-long colonial structure that sustained Spanish control over Latin and South America, the Caribbean, and the Philippines.

Join us for a night of joyful celebration! As SAL’s most important fundraising event of the year, Words Matter raises more than $350,000 to inspire readers and writers of all generations and backgrounds.

Carol Anderson is one of the premier scholars of black American history. Anderson’s viral op-ed for the Washington Post explored the concept of “white rage” after Ferguson, Missouri erupted in 2014. Her subsequent book, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, won the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Her latest book, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy (2018), is a history of voter suppression in America.

Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Sixth Extinction, has traveled from Alaska to Greenland, visiting top scientists to get to the heart of the debate over global warming. Join us on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day for Kolbert’s exploration of environmental journalism.

Local Voices presents a unique opportunity to eavesdrop on the works of SAL’s Writers in the Schools resident writers.

The illustrator, author, and designer behind The Principles of Uncertainty, And the Pursuit of Happiness, and many a New Yorker illustration, Maira Kalman’s multi-faceted projects are filled with a sense of wonder, humor, and beauty.

Natalie Diaz is the author of two poetry collections: When My Brother Was an Aztec, which centers on her brother’s addiction to crystal meth, and Postcolonial Love Poem, forthcoming in 2020. Adrian Matejka calls When My Brother Was an Aztec “a spacious, sophisticated collection, one that puts in work addressing the author’s divergent experiences—whether it be family, skin politics, hoops, code switching, or government commodities.”

Each Moth Mainstage features simple, old-fashioned storytelling, by five wildly divergent raconteurs who develop and shape their stories with The Moth’s directors. Theme and storytellers to be announced in Spring 2020.

Hailed by NPR as a “master storyteller with a rock and roll heart,” Luis Alberto Urrea is a prolific and acclaimed best-selling poet, novelist, and essayist who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss, and triumph.

Join us for an extraordinary evening of literary talent with the Pulitzer Prize-winning voices of the future! Student writers from schools throughout the Puget Sound region and Seattle Children’s Hospital will share original poems, short stories, and memoirs created during their residencies with the Writers in the Schools (WITS) program in the 2019/20 Season.

Join us for an extraordinary evening of literary talent with the Pulitzer Prize-winning voices of the future! Student writers from schools throughout the Puget Sound region and Seattle Children’s Hospital will share original poems, short stories, and memoirs created during their residencies with the Writers in the Schools (WITS) program in the 2019/20 Season.