This four-part reading series features acclaimed poets, writers, and comics artists who teach in SAL’s Writers in the Schools program. Each event is free and open to the public. Tonight’s program features Samar Abulhassan, Cassidy Dyce, Monique Franklin, and Putsata Reang! 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. Join us in this free event at Common Area Maintenance to celebrate the brilliance of the WITS writer cohort!

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. Funding has been provided by Humanities Washington and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the United We Stand Initiative.

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. Tonight’s program will feature Rasheena Fountain, Vivian Li, Clara Olivo, and Acca Warren! 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)

The SAL Gala will feature a lively reception and delicious multi-course dinner, an engaging program, and live and online silent auctions of irresistibly unique literary experiences and treasures. Cocktail attire. Forest glam encouraged!

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. Q&A with Jane Wong.

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. Q&A with Ruchika Tulshyan.

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. Q&A with Jodi-Ann Burey.

This four-part reading series features acclaimed poets, writers, and comics artists who teach in SAL’s Writers in the Schools program. Tonight’s program will feature Amy Hirayama, Nhatt Nichols, Ricard Ruiz, Ann Teplick, and Ankober Yewondwossen. 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.