Seattle Literary Examiner

Question for readers: should I weed out some of the less "literary" events? For example, do readers of this page care about books about planning weddings? Or do you want all of the bookish events I can track down? My temptation is to include only events that pertain to either fiction or poetry, but then that leaves out all the memoir-type stuff and some good non-fiction as well. What are your thoughts?

Also, if you're a part of Seattle's lit scene and you know of events that aren't being covered here, shoot me an email at dclapper@smokelong.com, and I'll add them to future calendars. I'm still playing with format, too. Right now, I'm pretty much copying and pasting (with a little tweaking to make all events follow a similar format). If there's a particular event that I have a little more insight into, I'll make sure to include that.

Monday, April 28

4:00pm
Gates Law School, Room 133
Do the law's narrow definitions of "marriage" and "family" really work in a society where untraditional households are more common than ever? Not at all says law professor Nancy Polikoff, whose new book Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law (BEACON) looks through more than just the lens of the gay, lesbian, and transgender communities to the country at large.

6:00pm
Ravenna's Varsity Restaurant, 2300 NE 65th Street
Nick's Book Club with Nick DiMartino
Join University Bookstore's resident writer, Nick DiMartino, for a lively discussion of this month's selection, Animal's People (SIMON & SCHUSTER) by Indra Sinha. Read Nick's review.

7:00pm
Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Avenue, Seattle
Fantastic Fiction Workshop Series presents Elizabeth Hand
Elizabeth Hand is the author of nine novels, including Generation Loss, a 2007 Washington Post Notable Book, and the World Fantasy Award-winning Bibliomancy. Her fiction has received two Nebulas, two World Fantasy Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, the James M. Tiptree Jr. Award, and the Mythopoeic Society Award, as well as an Individual Artist's Fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission/NEA. Sponsored by NW MediaArts, Hugo House and UBS. Suggested donation of $5/door.

7:30pm
Elliott Bay Book Company
LIJIA ZHANG
We are delighted to welcome, from her Beijing home, noted journalist Lijia Zhang. She is here with a lively, eye-opening autobiographical account, "Socialism is Great!" A Worker's Memoir of the New China (Atlas & Co.). "If David Copperfield has been a Chinese girl in the 1980s, in the city of Nanjing, he might have ended up on the assembly line at Liming Machinery Factory, under the authority of the Ministry of Aerospace Industry, making missiles capable of reaching North America. In "Socialism is Great!" Lijia Zhang has written a beautiful memoir of this important period, when China began to recover from its political traumas and open to the outside world. Our current China literature is heavy with victim memoirs, but this is a true tale of aspiration, a young woman coming of age in a nation desperately trying to do the same." - Peter Hessler. "This affecting record of individual striving and fulfillment reminds us, with humor and insight, how the growth of sensibility in unfavorable circumstances remains one of our most pleasant literary experiences. Set against China's recent breathless transformation, it also offers a rare and intimate glimpse of a country and culture that are now reshaping the world." - Pankaj Mishra.

7:30pm
Town Hall Seattle, Downstairs, 1119 8th Avenue
Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift
We imagine that you, like us, are loyal listeners to American Public Media's hour of culinary power, The Splendid Table. We also imagine that you, like us, are always looking for some dinnertime ideas. Put those two things together, and you get Lynne Rossetto Kasper's delectable new book on weeknight cooking, The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories, and Opinions from Public Radio's Award-Winning Food Show (CLARKSON POTTER)—a guide that, like the show, goes beyond the recipe to tell stories about food and the people who make it. Bon appétit, admission is free—with purchase of How to Eat Supper from University Book Store; otherwise tickets are $5. Books and tickets available April 8. Sponsored in part by KUOW-FM. 

Tuesday, April 29

5:30pm
Elliott Bay Book Company
V.V. GANESHANANTHAN
We are delighted to welcome journalist and debut novelist V.V. Ganeshananthan here for a reading from her much-praised novel set in Sri Lanka, Love Marriage (Random House). This extraordinary tale is the story of a young woman, a daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants, who becomes more and more drawn to the upheavals going on in her ancestral country, at the same time certain decisive moments about the course of her personal life are at the threshold. "A complex, moving evocation of love and war—two ideas which overlap more often, and more dramatically, than we often care to recognize. Love Marriage is an impressive debut." – Daniel AlarcÓn. "Love Marriage is a beautiful first novel that explores the secrets of a country's history and a family's past. With tenderness and wisdom, V.V. Ganeshananthan presents a world both mysterious and familiar to readers. This intricately woven tale, with its universal themes of love and estrangement, presents an exciting new voice in American literature." – Yiyun Li. V.V. Ganenshanthan, who this fall will be writer-in-residence at Skidmore College, is presently vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association, and has had her work in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, Wall Street Journal, Sepia Mutiny, and The American Prospect.

7:00pm
Microsoft Auditorium, Seattle Public Library, 1000 Fourth Avenue
ALICE HOFFMAN
Co-presented by Elliott Bay Book Company and the WASHINGTON CENTER FOR THE BOOK AT THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY. The author of over twenty-five works of fiction, Alice Hoffman has long been a favorite of readers and critics alike. She makes this welcome Seattle return for her newest novel, The Third Angel (Shaye Areheart). "In this elegant and stunning novel, Hoffman examines the lives of three women at different crossroads in their lives, tying their London-centered stories together in devastating retrospect ... Hoffman interweaves the three stories, gazing unerringly into forces that cause some people to self-destruct and others to find inner strength to last a lifetime." - Publishers Weekly. "Alice Hoffman is my favorite writer." - Jodi Picoult. Free admission is on a first-come, first-serve basis. The Seattle Public Central Library is at 1000 Fourth Avenue (between Madison and Spring). Special $5 coupons for the Central Library garage are available on a limited basis to those attending. For more information, please see www.spl.org or call (206) 386-4636 (SPL) or (206) 624-6600 (Elliott Bay).

7:00pm
University Bookstore
Jen Sorensen
Jen Sorensen's weekly comic strip Slowpoke appears in alternative newspapers all around the country, and has caught the eye of many a lover of sharp political humor and smart satire of contemporary culture. In the last few years, it's created quite a buzz with other cartoonists, too, from Alison Bechdel to Bill Griffith. David Rees, the creator of Get Your War On, says: "I want to live in an America where Slowpoke is published in every newspaper."

7:00pm
Third Place Books
Read and Rock Night with various authors
Audrey Wait! by Robin Benway, Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty by Jody Gehrman, Enthusiasm by Polly Schulman, and Rock/Neo-soul/ Alternative group Shotty. What if your breakup became a hit song? As in “Audrey, Wait!” And the three “Bettys” who work at the Triple Shot Betty coffee shack have a Much Ado About Nothing-like summer. A romantic comedy ala Pride and Prejudice awaits friends when their Enthusiasm gets them in trouble. Meet all three authors and hear the Northwest Band Shotty—together on the Third Place Stage.

7:30pm
Elliott Bay Book Company
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Co-presented with HEDGEBROOK. Here again, following a memorable evening here last fall, is one of our very favorite people (and authors) in all of this, Ursula K. Le Guin. The recipient of countless honors, awards, and distinctions, she makes this visit from her Portland home as she has many times since 1985 (when we had just started presenting writers), for all manner and kinds of books. She is here tonight with her newest novel, Lavinia (Harcourt), a luminous fictional re-addressing of several of the books of Vergil's epic poem, The Aeneid. "Le Guin is famous for creating alternative worlds (as in Left Hand of Darkness), and she approaches Lavinia's world, from which Western civilization took its course, as unique and strange as any fantasy. It's a novel that deserves to be ranked with Robert Graves's I, Claudius." - Publishers Weekly. "Le Guin has researched this ancient world assiduously, and her measured, understated prose captures with equal skill the permutations of established ritual and ceremony and the sensations of the battlefield ... Arguably her best novel, and an altogether worthy companion to one of the Western world's greatest stories." - Kirkus Reviews.

7:30pm
Town Hall Seattle, 1119 Eighth Avenue
HOWARD FINEMAN
Co-presented by Elliott Bay Book Company and the TOWN HALL CENTER FOR CIVIC LIFE. Out this way from 'the other Washington,' where he is Newsweek's senior Washington, D.C. correspondent and columnist, and a regular contributor to Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, among other programs, is Howard Fineman. He visits with his fine new book, The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country (Random House). "A perfect antidote to the old horse-race political journalism—a timely (and timeless) reminder of what's really at stake in the race for the presidency." - Jeffrey Toobin. "Howard Fineman proves that few things are as compelling as a well-argued debate. This book offers a thought-provoking way to look at America, its history, and our evolving public discourse." - Arianna Huffington. $5 at the door (no advance tickets), with preferred seating for Town Hall members. Town Hall Seattle is located at 1119 Eighth Avenue (entry on Seneca Street). For more information, please see www.townhallseattle.org, or call (206) 652-4255 (Town Hall), or Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600.

7:30pm
University Bookstore
Seattle Arts and Lectures presents Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer has referred to himself as a "global village on two legs." His incisive observations on the emerging global culture brought us Video NIght in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East; The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto; The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home; and Abandon. His forthcoming book is The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. For ticketing information please visit www.lectures.org.

Wednesday, April 30

10:00am
Third Place Books
Margaret Peterson Haddix
With Found, Margaret Peterson Haddix begins a new series every bit as suspenseful as her Shadow Children -- and proves her to be a master of the young readers’ page-turner. (Teachers, call 206-366-3333 to reserve space for field trips.)

12:00pm
Westin Hotel, 1900 Fifth Avenue
KEVIN PHILLIPS
Presented by SEATTLE CITYCLUB. As part of a busy Seattle visit, Kevin Phillips makes this special appearance at CityClub for a program on the current state of the economy. Kevin Phillips has been prescient for decades, first widely known for chronicling the voting and demographic shift of the U.S. South from going Democratic to Republican in the late 1960s. In recent books such as American Theocracy, American Dynasty, and Wealth and Democracy, he has written compellingly of some of the unholy alliances of money, religion, and aristocracy—corporate, political, and familial. His newest book seems unbelievably timely: Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (Viking). Registration for this program, which includes lunch, is $35/CityClub members, $40/Guests and members of co-presenting organizations, and $45/General public. For registration and information, please see www.seattlecityclub,org or call (206) 682-7395. The Westin Hotel is at 1900 Fifth Avenue.

6:00pm
Elliott Bay Book Company
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
A New York Times journalist who has received numerous honors in over forty years of work, including the Pulitzer Prize and the George Polk Award, David Cay Johnston is here with his newest book, Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (Portfolio). "If you're concerned about congressional earmarks, stock options (especially backdated options), hedge fun tax breaks, abuse of eminent domain, subsidies to sports teams, K Street lobbyists, the state of our health-care system, to say nothing of the cavernous gap between rich and poor, you'll read this fine book—as I did—with a growing sense of outrage. Free Lunch makes it clear that it's high time for 'We the People' to stand up and be counter." - John C. Bogle. David Cay Johnston is also the author of the much-acclaimed Perfectly Legal.

7:00pm
University Bookstore
Ursula K. Le Guin
Lavinia, second wife of Aeneas, has only a line or two in Virgil's Aeneid. Ursula K. LeGuin has decided to give Lavinia a voice of her own in her new novel Lavinia (HARCOURT), which will sit comfortably on the shelf next to your copies of the Earthsea books and Robert Grave's I, Claudius. Watch Lavinia grow from a childhood of ease and freedom into the tumultuous world of empire-building.

7:00pm
University Bookstore (Mill Creek)
Jeff Stone
In Stone's Eagle: The Five Ancestors, Book 5 (RANDOM HOUSE FOR YOUNG READERS), Martial arts student Ying resented his younger brothers because they were his master's favorites. And he resented his master for not letting him train as a Dragon. But his attempt to take revenge by burning down his temple left the brothers alive, and when he was imprisoned, it was his younger sister who rescued him. Perhaps his family members aren't the enemies he thinks they are...

7:00pm
Third Place Books
Alice Hoffman
Testimonials to Alice Hoffman’s writing come from our favorite authors: Jodi Picoult, Amy Tan, Elizabeth Berg......plus legions of readers of her more than 25 works of fiction. In Third Angel, a magical novel weaving three star-crossed love stories, all linked to a haunted London hotel, Hoffman again brings us what Booklist calls her unique “heartbreak fairy tale” style.

7:30pm
Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Avenue
Kevin Phillips
In his last book, American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips wrote about the perilous interaction of debt, financial recklessness, and the increasing cost and scarcity of oil. Now with the current crisis in housing and mortgage infecting the whole structure of credit and banking, Phillips sees harbingers of a national economic crisis that American leaders and opinion makers are reluctant to face. In Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (PENGUIN), Philips presents an historical and global context of the over-speculative global capitalism that he believes exceeds terrorism as the Achilles heel of U.S. national security. Presented by the Town Hall Center for Civic Life with University Book Store. Tickets are $5 at the door. Town Hall members receive priority seating.

8:00pm
Elliott Bay Book Company
KEITH GESSEN
Here a few months ago in his guise as founding editor of the noteworthy literary journal n+1, Russia-born translator (Voices from Chernobyl, the forthcoming Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmila Petrushevskaya) and critic Keith Gessen is here with a much-praised first novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men (Viking). "A debut novel ... that skewers the literary and romantic ambitions of three well-educated, tightly-wound young men. This black-comedy-in-stories alternates among three protagonists .. who have little contact with one another but who have in common age, bafflement and hunger for literary fame ... Gessen strikes a marvelous balance between pitilessness and affection toward these young men, and manages the impressive feat of being simultaneously savage and tender. A fiercely intelligent, darkly funny first novel." - Kirkus Reviews.

Thursday, May 1

3:30pm
UW Hogness Auditorium (A-420 Health Sciences)
Stephen Stewart Gloyd Endowed Lecture presents: David Cay Johnston
Author and New York Times Reporter David Cay Johnston will speak on "Inequality, the Vast Majority, and Health." Johnston's latest book is titled Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill). He also wrote the 2004 bestseller, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich—and Cheat Everybody Else. Sponsored by the School of Public Health. Free and open to the public.

6:30pm
UW Kane Hall, Room 120, Seattle
Peter & Rosemary Grant
A Walker Ames Lecture Series presents: "Evolution of Darwin's Finches"
In this lecture Peter and Rosemary Grant will discuss the findings from long-term research into the biology of populations of Darwin's finches on the Galápagos Islands. Hosted by University Book Store and the Graduate School. Admission is free and open to the public. Visit www.grad.washington.edu for more details.

7:00pm
Richard Hugo House
MARGOT CASE
Rodeo fan Margot Case, also Richard Hugo House's youth programs manager, celebrates the launch of her first book, Horses That Buck: The Story of Champion Bronc Rider Bill Smith (University of Oklahoma). The story of the legendary Bill Smith, a three-time world champion saddle bronc rider inducted into two pro rodeo Halls of Fame, Horses That Buck also discusses the rise of rodeo as a major sports enterprise. Free, no tickets necessary. Richard Hugo House is located at 1634 11th Avenue (just north of Pine). For more information, please call (206) 322-7030 or see www.hugohouse.org.

7:00pm
University Bookstore
William Dietrich
The Rosetta Key (HARPERCOLLINS) is a historical thriller full of danger, deception, and derring-do from the author of The Scourge of God. Ethan Gage arrives in the Holy Land to search for an ancient scroll that Napoleon Bonaparte is also pursuing—in hopes that its powerful magic will help him conquer the world.

7:00pm
Third Place Books
Larry Cheek
Lawrence W. Cheek decided that he had to build a boat. Not just any boat, but a beautiful, wooden sailboat. The Year of the Boat: Small Craft Advisories from a Builder's Garage is a memoir about what went on in that suburban garage -- a roiling process of measuring, cutting, gluing and sanding that was punctuated with supreme satisfaction, utter frustration, and plain bewilderment. From figuring out how to actually read a set of marine blueprints to learning the fine art of applying epoxy to getting the mast to stand up straight, this is a captivating adventure into the wilderness of DIY. The author touches on such topics as the invention of the retractable keel, the esteemed tradition of garage enterprises, the Platonic ideal sailboat, and more. It does not fully explain how to build a boat, but rather explores how one becomes unafraid of building a boat -- or undertaking any challenge.

7:30pm
Elliott Bay Book Company
FRANCES RICHEY
Co-presented with HEDGEBROOK. The month of May encompasses Memorial Day. At both ends of the month (also see Mary Tillman, May 27), we present authors who are mothers of children who, as soldiers, died in the conflicts going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Frances Richey is an established poet (a 2004 collection, The Burning Point, received the White Pine Poetry Prize) who has used the form to powerful ends in her compelling new book, The Warrior (A Mother's Story of a Son at War) (Viking). "War and propaganda generalize. Love and poetry specify. In the specific ways this poet-mother refuses to lose touch with a warrior son, there is a lifeline across a deadly chasm for every reader." – Gloria Steinem. "No one feels war's jumbled pride and anguish like the mothers and wives of the warriors. We'd find a way to make peace if Frances Richey and Lysistrata were calling the shots. The Warrior is a lyrical, moving collection, full of insight and devoid of easy answers." – Nathaniel Fick.

7:30pm
Town Hall Seattle, 1119 Eighth Avenue
JARED BERNSTEIN
Co-presented by Elliott Bay Book Company and the TOWN HALL CENTER FOR CIVIC LIFE. What is a living wage? Is Social Security really going bust? Does hiring immigrant workers really undercut native-born workers? Jared Bernstein, director of the Living Standards program at the Economic Policy Institute, answers these questions, and more, in Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries) (Berrett-Koehler). "Crunch is an accessible explanation of economic principles presented with equal parts of insight, humor, and stimulation. In the process, Bernstein explains how we got to where we are, what to do to fix it, and why fighting for a fair society is so important." – John Edwards. $5 at the door (no advance tickets), with preferred seating for Town Hall members. Town Hall Seattle is located at 1119 Eighth Avenue (entry downstairs on Seneca). For more information, please see www.townhallseattle.org, or call Town Hall at (206) 652-4255, or Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600.

Friday, May 2

6:30pm
Third Place Books
Jane Kotapish
In Salvage, Kotapish introduces readers to an unnamed thirty-something woman who flees New York City after witnessing a horrific incident inside a subway station. Returning to her hometown in rural Virginia, she buys a rambling old Victorian and attempts to reconnect with her mother—an eccentric woman dating a series of men suspiciously resembling various Catholic saints. Trying to both forget her experience in the subway and erase some traumatic memories stemming from her childhood, the narrator spends her days wandering through her untamed garden and her nights drinking in solitude by the fire. But as her mother indulges in increasingly bizarre behavior, the ghost of her dead sister reappears in her life, and a charming new neighbor slowly penetrates her carefully guarded privacy, she discovers the impossibility of hiding from life’s tangled realities.

7:00pm
University Bookstore
Matthew Stearns
Sonic Youth's seminal album, Daydream Nation, goes under the Continuum Books 33 1/3 microscope. In Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation (33 1/3) (CONTINUUM), Seattle writer Matthew Stearns is joined by Seattle band Secret Highways to pay tribute to a record that online music magazine Pitchfork called the #1 album of the '80s.

Saturday, May 3

7:30pm
Elliott Bay Book Company
CRISTINA GARCÍA
Disappointment a year ago that acclaimed Havana-born novelist Cristina García wasn't getting back to Seattle for her then-new novel is mitigated now by this welcome Elliott Bay return to read for the paperback release of A Handbook to Luck (Vintage Contemporaries). Three people from very different circumstances and places (Cuba, El Salvador, Iran) find lives and fates converge and link over a twenty-year period. "In this compelling, vivid, sophisticated, and highly original love story, three lives intertwine in a tale suffused with magic, sacrifice, passion, and an exquisite elegiac music. Cristina García has created a beautiful and stunning book." – Chris Abani.

Sunday, May 4

2:00pm
Elliott Bay Book Company
ALEXANDER "SANDY" TAYLOR and CURBSTONE PRESS: A Celebration
This afternoon's gathering brings area authors, poets, and friends together to celebrate the life of esteemed, pioneering independent press publisher Sandy Taylor (1931 – 2007), and his work as co-founder and co-director of Curbstone Press. His passing on December 21, 2007, marked a major loss in the publishing and advocacy of politically engaged literature—but literature, always—by a wide array of authors, domestic and international. His work does continue—through the hands of co-founder/co-director Judith Doyle, and others (see www.curbstone.org). This afternoon's gathering should include Curbstone authors Anna Balint and Marisela Rizik, along with Kathleen Alcalá, Margarita Donnelly, Felicia Gonzales, Kip Greenthal, Michael Hureaux, Nancy Rawles, Judith Roche, and Carletta Carrington Wilson, along with other possible special guests. Please join us. For more information, please contact Anna Balint at (206) 720-9846.