Co-presented with THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY. A teenage with Aspergers is wrongly accused of the murder of his tutor in popular novelist Jodi Picoult's newest (18th!) book, House Rules (Atria). These bestselling novels, which pair compelling and timely stories with thoughtful, sympathetic characters, are favorites of many book groups—locally and around the country. "Picoult is at her razor-sharp best with House Rules. It's both a tender look at the depths of a mother's love and a searing examination of how we treat those who are different, and whether we expect them to play by the same rules." - BookPage. Free admission is on a first-come, first-serve basis. Special $5 parking coupons for the Central Library garage are available on a limited basis for those attending. The Microsoft Auditorium at the Seattle Public Central Library is at 1000 Fourth Avenue (between Madison and Spring). For more information, please call Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600, The Seattle Public Library at (206) 386-4636, or see www.spl.org.

Co-presented with the CENTRAL DISTRICT FORUM FOR ARTS & IDEAS and THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY. Dolen Perkins-Valdez' historically-set debut novel, Wench (Harper Amistad) is one of those books we've most wanted to share with readers this season. The chronicle of four slave women who are also their masters' mistresses, Wench is set in a popular Ohio resort where slaveholders (and mistresses) gather during the summer. Witness to the growing abolition movement with this Free State, these women must each decide whether to run or stay. Dolen Perkins-Valdez, who is bicoastally based in both Seattle and the Washington known as D.C., based this novel on research into the period and the actual Xenia, Ohio resort where this story is set. "Heart-wrenching, intriguing, original, and suspenseful, this novel showcases Perkins-Valdez' ability to bring the unfortunate past to life." - Publishers Weekly. Free admission. The Douglass-Truth Branch of the Seattle Public Library is at 2300 East Yesler. For more information on this evening, please call Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600, or see www.cdforum.org.

A writer whose work is popular in her home country of India, Indu Sundaresan has been doing that writing here in the Seattle area—and winning readers in the U.S. (and elsewhere), as well. She follows her recent book of present-day stories, In the Convent of Little Flowers, with a return to historically-set, Mughal-era novels that she is first known for. The Twentieth Wife, The Feast of Roses, and The Splendor of Silence, are now joined by her newest, Shadow Princess (Atria). "Sundaresan returns to 17th-century India in this romantic fictionalization of the life of Jahanara, the oldest child of the empress Mumtaz Mahal, Shah Jahan's cherished wife ... Simdaresan has a scholar's fascination with the period ..." - Publishers Weekly. Mumtaz Mahal was immortalized, in death, by the building of the Taj Mahal. This novel becomes the imagined story of the life of a princess who in history did play a part in governance, albeit with much intrigue and mystery. All the richer, hence, for the place of fiction—and this winning, wonderful new novel.

Wyoming is the story with this visit by two excellent writers who call the state home. Mark Spragg, who has been this way before with his award-winning memoir, Where Rivers Change Directions, and his novels The Fruit of Stone and An Unfinished Life, is here tonight with a new novel, Bone Fire (Knopf). A murder in a Wyoming town methlab sets certain things in motion, the unfolding of mysteries of a larger dimension. "A tribute to the human state and an outstanding work ... Not one word is out of place, and each and every character is well drawn and intensely believable ... This 'bone fire' is in fact the burning we call life, symbolizing our shared pain as human beings." - Henry Bankhead, Library Journal. From Cody, Wyoming, comes Laura Bell with a remarkable nonfiction debut, Claiming Ground: A Memoir (Knopf). "First, it is the language you notice: phrases, whole passages composed with the musical authority of psalms. Then it is the evocation of place, Wyoming rising from these pages as actual as a wild perfume. But, start to finish, it is her honesty that keeps you up in the night, wondering at the frailty of what it means to be human and glad and brave and, at times, broken." - Mark Spragg.

Melissa Febos co-curates and hosts New York City's Mixer Reading and Music series, has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence, and teaches at both SUNY Purchase and the Gotham Writers' Workshop. En route to all of this, she spent much of her younger adult life as a sex worker. She tells the story of her years as a drug addict and dominatrix ("one of the few high-paid acting gigs in the city") in Whip Smart (Thomas Dunne Books). "Febos' candid, hard-slugging debut about her four years working as a dominatrix at a midtown Manhattan dungeon cuts a sharp line between prurience and feminist manifesto." - Publishers Weekly. "Melissa Febos masterfully brings us into these unexpected, unsettling places, the least of which are the dungeons she so vividly—briefly—occupies. Whip Smart is a wild, bright-eyed ride home." - Nick Flynn.

Co-presented with support from REACT THEATRE and ABRAMS ARTISTS AGENCY. Elliott Bay's Eleventh Annual Staged Play Reading Series continues with a second reading this month as we bid a fond farewell to our venue for over a decade. Today's featured play will be the exciting new drama set in Illinois in 1861, Mrs. Packard by Emily Mann. Without proof of insanity, Elizabeth Packard is committed by her husband to an asylum. Based on historical events, Mann's play tells of one woman's courageous struggle to right a system gone wrong in this winner of the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award. You won't want to miss this engaging, significant and passionate play. Please join us for this unique blend of theatrical staging and the spoken word. Free Admission, ($5 suggested donation at the door.) Reservations encouraged. For additional information visit www.reacttheatre.org.

Co-presented with SEATTLE ARTS & LECTURES. We are delighted and honored to again help present one of the most vital, arresting writers at work in the world today, Arundhati Roy. The Booker Prize-winning author of the 1997 novel, The God of Small Things, and the author, since, of a series of compelling, political non-fiction books, it is with the most recent of these, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers (Haymarket Books), that she visits Seattle this evening. "After so much celebratory salesmanship about India the 'emerging market,' Roy draws us into India the actual country, peeling away the gloss until we are confronted with perhaps the most challenging question of our time: who and what are we willing to sacrifice in the name of development? Roy is one of the most confident and original thinkers of our time." - Naomi Klein. "Arundhati Roy, the direct descendant of Antigone, resists and denounces all tyrannies, pleads for their victims, and unflinchingly questions the tragic. Reflect with her on the questions she receives from the political world today." - John Berger. Tickets ($15 general/$30 patron) and information are available via Seattle Arts & Lectures at www.lectures.org or (206) 621-2230. Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca).

Renowned Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, whose credits include Robocop, Basic Instinct, and The Black Book, is probably less well-known for his religious interests and pursuits. He is one of a very few non-theologians admitted into the Jesus Seminar, a group of eminent scholars working in theology, linguistics, philosophy, and biblical history, whose ranks include Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, among others. Paul Verhoeven's book, Jesus of Nazareth (Seven Stories, translated by Susan Massotty), aspires to reveal the humanity of Jesus, "a true radical who brought humanity a few steps closer to an enlightened view of ourselves." "Paul Verhoeven breaks out of the box of scholarly orthodoxy with this thoughtful and daring reassemblage of the evidence—old and new—for the life of Jesus ... The result is a revelation for scholar and casual reader alike." - Chris Shea. Paul will be interviewed onstage by Professor Doug Thorpe of Seattle Pacific University.

     And yes, this looks to be the last such evening we will present at 101 South Main Street—25-1/2 years after Lewis Hyde held forth in July 1984, addressing both his then-recent book, The Gift and this work-in-progress on the trickster—we conclude here, due to resume matters in-house come mid-April at the new place, 1521 Tenth Avenue. Meanwhile, writers we present, and co-present, will be found here and there, which is not something entirely new.

Co-presented with RICHARD HUGO HOUSE. As Elliott Bay begins its migration to Capitol Hill—closing at 6 p.m. at 101 South Main on March 31—we both end a month, signify our move uphill, and, significantly, help welcome a wonderful new book in the world with this celebratory evening for the publication of The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs: Revisiting the Northwest Towns of Richard Hugo (University of Washington Press). Both author Frances McCue, who was Hugo House's founding director, and renowned photographer Mary Randlett will be on hand. A little more information on the book is in the listing for April 4. Free admission. Richard Hugo House is at 1634 Eleventh Avenue—a block-and-a-half from Elliott Bay's new location. For more information, please see www.hugohouse.org or call (206) 322-7030. Frances McCue and Mary Randlett will also be reading on Sunday, April 4th at 2 p.m. at Seattle Public Central Library.

Co-presented with the WASHINGTON CENTER FOR THE BOOK AT THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY. It was a few Seattle visits ago, the most recent time Walter Mosley read at Central Library: concern ran through the audience as the last of the Easy Rawlins novels to appear, Blonde Faith, ended on a note that was not good—and left readers uncertain where Easy's author might go. The irrepressible, singular Mr. Mosley can and has gone several directions since. A year ago, at the Northwest African American Museum, he showcased his boldest, and newest entry into the annals of memorable detective characters by introducing New York City detective Leonid McGill in his hit novel, The Long Fall. It's an honor and delight to welcome Walter Mosley and Leonid McGill back for the just-released second installment, Known to Evil (Riverhead). "Bestseller Mosley scores a clean knockout in his excellent second mystery featuring New York City PI Leonid McGill. Still striving to atone for some of the lives he's ruined, the 54-year-old McGill laments that there are 'no straight lines in the life or labors of the private detective.' Instead, crises crowd him at every turn ... in this contemporary noir gem." – Publishers Weekly. Free admission is on a first-come, first-serve basis. Special $5 coupons for parking in the Central Library garage are available on a limited basis for those attending. Seattle Public Central Library is at 1000 Fourth Avenue (between Madison & Spring). For more information, please call the Seattle Public Library at (206) 386-4636 or see www.spl.org.

Co-presented with the WASHINGTON CENTER FOR THE BOOK AT THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY. After the inaugural launch in March at Richard Hugo House, those involved venture to the Seattle Public Central Library for more celebrating of this extraordinary, brand-new (from the bindery) book about Richard Hugo and his beloved Northwest haunts. Please join us as author Frances McCue, also Hugo House's founding director, and esteemed photographer Mary Randlett tell stories and show images about road trips now immortalized in The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs: Revisiting the Northwest Towns of Richard Hugo (University of Washington Press). This is a splendid way to see this part of the country (its "triggering towns"), from La Push to Red Lodge, with White Center there at the start, and the singular, soulful vision of one of its great poets, the late Richard Hugo. Free admission is on a first-come, first-serve basis. $5 parking coupons are available on a limited basis for those attending. The Seattle Public Central Library is at 1000 Fourth Avenue (between Madison & Spring). For more information, please see www.spl.org or call (206) 386-4636. Frances McCue and Mary Randlett also read at Richard Hugo House on Wednesday, March 31st at 7:30 p.m.

Co-presented with the WASHINGTON CENTER FOR THE BOOK AT THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY. In The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War (Harper), Seattle writer David Laskin looks at the United States that entered World War I in 1917—a country that had one-third of its population either born overseas, or having a parent who was an immigrant. In the military, one in five U.S. soldiers was born out of the country. David Laskin has written numerous acclaimed books on aspects of history, literature, and place, The Children's Blizzard, Rains All the Time, Braving the Elements, and Partisans among them. "The Long Way Home is a riveting remembrance of the Great War by a master writer ... Deeply compelling." – David Brinkley. "Moving, revealing, and lovingly researched, this book is a must read, and a great read, for any of us whose forebears came from overseas—meaning just about all of us." – Erik Larson. Free admission is on a first-come, first-serve basis. Special $5 coupons for parking in the Central Library garage are available on a limited basis for those attending. Seattle Public Central Library is at 1000 Fourth Avenue (between Madison & Spring). For more information on this evening, please call (206) 386-4636 or see www.spl.org.

He is the author of twenty-one books in twenty-three years, one of those 'books' being a seven-volume work on violence. Most of the other books are 'big' books, big in every way—subject matter, ambition, passion, scope, imagination, intelligence, size. William T. Vollmann has won a National Book Award (for Europe Central) and numerous other honors and awards. He makes this welcome return visit for his newest book this evening, the non-fiction work Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater with Some Thoughts on Muses (especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries, and Venus Figurines (Ecco). "Vollmann, who has tackled an astonishing array of subjects in fiction and nonfiction, here explores female beauty—its creation and consumption—with a spotlight on highly stylized traditional Japanese Noh theater. Because male actors wearing strictly codified masks perform all Noh roles, men, ironically, are both the creators and purveyors of female beauty. From Noh, Vollmann explores other far-flung performances of feminine beauty, including revered geisha, L.A. transvestites, a porn model, Andrew Wyeth's Helga paintings, and legendary Norse women, and even dons his own cross-gendered mask with the help of a makeup artist." – Terry Hong, Library Journal. Free admission. The Northwest African American Museum is at 2300 South Massachusetts Street (www.naamnw.org). Our special thanks to NAAM for aiding and abetting while we are in transition (moving) mode.

A second program this month hosted by our friends and neighbors at Trinity Lutheran features Sig Hansen, the Seattle fisherman who is now internationally known as the Captain of the Northwestern, and star of the Discovery Channel's Emmy-winning program, Deadliest Catch. A Norwegian American whose father and grandfather pioneered opilio crab fishing in Alaska year-round, Sig Hansen began fishing at age 14, and, with his brothers, continues to make his living on the sea. In North by Northwestern: A Seafaring Family on Deadly Alaskan Waters (Thomas Dunne Books, co-written with Mark Sundeen), he tells the story of over two decades of crabbing, and of the deadly shipwreck of his father's boat, the F/V Foremost. Free admission. Trinity Lutheran Church is at 1200 Tenth Avenue East (at Highland, on north Capitol Hill).

Presented by HEDGEBROOK. Two terrific poets and writers take to the Town Hall stage this spring evening as Hedgebrook presents Staceyann Chin and Mayda del Valle. Jamaica-born Staceyann Chin, who gave a great reading at Elliott Bay a year ago for her marvelous memoir, The Other Side of Paradise (Scribner), will have a new book of essays on race, gender, sexual preference and more, Crossfire (Alyson), out in a few months. Like Staceyann Chin, Mayda del Valle has performed (starred) in Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam. She is also a National Poetry Slam champion performer. This night should be a major delight. Tickets ($15 general/$10 students) and information are available at www.hedgebrook.org. Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca).

Co-presented with THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION. Hit men, double-dealing, arsonists, and intrigue are all part of the story of the illicit trade in ... geoducks. Yes, these clams are so valuable that they've been traded for heroin. Seattle Times environmental reporter and Nieman Foundation Award-winner Craig Welch covered this story extensively, now more developed and in the form of his new book, Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature's Bounty (William Morrow). "Writing with the sizzle of a mystery novelist, Welch portrays a complex, driven, and irresistible cast of real-life characters, from fish cops Ed Volz and Kevin Harrington to Doug Tobin, a larger-than-life Native American fisherman ... Replete with sting operations, hit men, boat chases in fog and rain, the nefarious dealings of a famous restauranteur and Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and clever, tenacious, unsung heroes, Welch's utterly compelling true tale of black-market trade in endangered ocean wildlife is astounding and infuriating." – Booklist. Free admission. $5 parking coupons for the Central Library garage are available on a limited basis. The Seattle Public Central Library is at 1000 Fourth Avenue (between Madison & Spring). For more information on this evening, please see www.spl.org, or call (206) 386-4636.

Co-presented with the TOWN HALL CENTER FOR CIVIC LIFE. Formerly a lead Wall Street Journal financial journalist who now has a column with Bloomberg, Roger Lowenstein has also written some key books on that terrain, notably When Genius Failed. He is here tonight with his newest, The End of Wall Street (Penguin Press). "Lowenstein offers an overview of the causes and consequences of the financial crisis that rises above the glut of similarly themed books with its juicy behind-the-scenes detail and thoughtful analysis ... The insider knowledge lends flavor and context to many of these stories—a ranting Jim Cramer, Ben Bernanke's loss of confidence, and Alan Greenspan's astonishing 2008 testimony to Congress. Lowenstein's strong knowledge of the source material and flair for the dramatic should draw readers who still wonder what went wrong and how." – Publishers Weekly. $5 tickets are available at the door starting at 6:30 p.m., or in advance via www.brownpapertickets.com (or 1-800-838-3006). Preferred seating for Town Hall members. Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca). For more information on this evening, please call Town Hall at (206) 652-4255 or see www.townhallseattle.org.

Co-presented with the TOWN HALL CENTER FOR CIVIC LIFE. It's the second week of baseball season, the second day of the home season for the nearby Mariners. University of San Francisco professor Robert Elias is here pitching The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad (The New Press), his eye-opening new book. "The Empire Strikes Out is a rare and wonderful combination of splendid scholarship and lively writing. Robert Elias's affection for baseball illuminates its pages even when he is unearthing episodes of organized baseball's racism, jingoism, unbridled militarism, and insensitivities to other cultures. Simultaneously, and gracefully, the book describes the development of baseball and its impact overseas as a sort of quasi instrument of American foreign policy. The recent internationalization of major-league rosters make the books particularly timely. A truly fine work. Highly recommended." – Rogert Kahn. $5 tickets are available at the door starting at 6:30 p.m., or in advance at www.brownpapertickets.com (or 1-800-838-3006). Preferred seating for Town Hall members. Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca). For more information on this evening, please call (206) 652-4255, or see www.townhallseattle.org.

Sponsored by the CAPITOL HILL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. As part of setting up shop in our new home, we are delighted and grateful to be welcomed, along with our new, next-door neighbor Everyday Music, to the block and neighborhood. The Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce, along with many of our new neighbors (cited below), is staging these welcoming festivities. For this round of celebratory doing, it's expected our block of Tenth Avenue (between Pike and Pine) will be closed off in Block Partty manner, and that there will be some remark-making by City officials and neighbors, music (performed by the Seattle band LET'S GET LOST), food, and libations. As more develops with this, we will continue to try and get updates posted on our website. Of course, we also look forward to getting to put books in people's hands that day—and to be hosting returning author Anchee Min (at 7:30 the evening of the block party). It's all getting closer now.


Special thanks to many individuals, the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce and the following for making this celebration possible: Caffe Vita, Cal Anderson Park Alliance, Capitol Hill Housing, CK Graphics, Clean Scapes, Creature, Cupcake Royale, Havana, Hedges Wine Cellar, Hunters Capital, Gary Manuel Aveda Institute, Molly Moons Ice Cream, Neumos, New Belgium, NuBe Green, Odd Fellow Building, Odd Fellows Cafe, Pike Street Fish Fry, Quinn's, and Via Tribunali.

-from all of us at Elliott Bay Book Company & Elliott Bay Café

As this goes to press, we believe that Anchee Min's reading for her new novel, Pearl of China (Bloomsbury USA), will be the very first in our new Capitol Hill home. Though it is a matter of how the scheduling worked out more than anything, it is also apt that she is a first author to read here as she has read at Elliott Bay for each of her books. Anchee Min's debut book, the 1994 memoir Red Azalea, is still a reader favorite. Red Azalea was followed by another autobiographical work, Katherine, and then the novels Becoming Madame Mao, Wild Ginger, Empress Orchid, and The Last Empress. Pearl of China begins in the late 19th-century, in the southern Chinese town of Ching-kiang, and from there tells the story of a young girl, the daughter of fervent Christian missionaries, who would grow up to be Nobel Prize-winning novelist Pearl S. Buck. Her story is linked with that of a young village girl. "[Anchee] Min, a prime example of an indomitable Chinese woman, has made it her mission to reveal the truth about the lives of women in China, including Madame Mao, Empress Tzu Hsi, and now Buck ... Ardently detailed, dramatic, and encompassing, Min's fresh and penetrating interpretation of Pearl S. Buck's extraordinary life delivers profound psychological, spiritual, and historical insights within an unforgettable cross-cultural story of a quest for veracity, compassion, and justice." – Booklist.

Co-presented with the TOWN HALL SEATTLE SCIENCE SERIES. Rebecca Skloot first heard about Henrietta Lacks—the woman from whom the "HeLa" cell line was taken, cultured, and used in research on cancer, polio, in-vitro fertilization, gene mapping, and scores of other types of studies—in an undergraduate science class. Her interest stirred and grew into over a decade's worth of research devoted to uncovering the life of Henrietta Lacks and her descendants, of inequities in health care still suffered by many, concerns about bioethics, the vulnerability of unwitting research participants, and more in Rebecca Skloot's much-praised book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown). "Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about 'faith, science, journalism and grace ... a rich, resonant tale of modern science, the wonders it can perform, and how easily it can exploit society's most vulnerable people." – Publishers Weekly. $5 tickets are available at the door starting at 6:30 p.m., or in advance via www.brownpapertickets.com (or 1-800-838-3006). Preferred seating for Town Hall members. Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (entry on Seneca). For more information, please call Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600, Town Hall at (206) 652-4255, or see www.townhallseattle.org.

New York City-based poet Jorn Ake visits with his Blue Lynx Prize-winning new collection, Boys Whistling Like Canaries (Eastern Washington University Press). "Boys Whistling Like Canaries is a collection haunted by the grim history of the 20th century, and by how its legacy continues to so troublesomely endure. Ake tackles the most vexing subjects—among them our current wars, the Holocaust, and Cold War totalitarianism—yet he reckons with them without resorting to bromides, polemics, or the benumbing timidity with so often afflicts the work of American poets when they seek to confront injustice. In his rangy and querulous approach, Ake recalls the work of two of our finest poets of social justice, George Oppen and Thomas McGrath. To be linked with them is no small accomplishment." – David Wojahn. Jorn Ake's 2001 debut, Asleep in the Lightning Fields, received the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize.

Co-presented with the WASHINGTON CENTER FOR THE BOOK AT THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY and the CANADIAN STUDIES CENTRE, JACKSON SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON. Nine years after captivating readers everywhere with his Man Booker Prize-winning novel, Life of Pi, Spanish-born Canadian author Yann Martel visits with a much-anticipated new novel, Beatrice and Virgil (Spiegel and Grau). As with its predecessor, Yann Martel takes what seems like a fragment, a slice of incident, and makes it into a story that opens wider and deeper than one might expect. No one is at sea here, but the surprises that unfold with the opening of an envelope, a story told of a 'Beatrice' and 'Virgil,' should win readers as Life of Pi has. Free admission is on a first-come, first-serve basis. Special $5 parking coupons for the Central Library garage are available on a limited basis for those attending. Seattle Public Central Library is at 1000 Fourth Avenue (between Madison & Spring). For more information on this evening, please call Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600, The Seattle Public Library at (206) 386-4636, or see www.spl.org.

Co-presented with SEATTLE ARTS & LECTURES. Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Remnick, author of Lenin's Tomb and an acclaimed life and times account of Muhammad Ali, Champion of the World, and currently well-known for his work as editor of The New Yorker, makes this appearance for his first new book in years. The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (Knopf) figures to be the most in-depth, realized biography of our 44th president. He has conducted hundreds of interviews from rivals, teachers, family members, mentors, and President Obama himself. This evening is expected to consist of an onstage conversation with University of Washington professor David S. Domke, who is chair of the UW Department of Communication and co-author of The God Strategy (Oxford University Press), followed by a booksigning. Tickets ($15/$30 patrons) are available via www.brownpapertickets.com or 1-800-838-3006. Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca). For those with Patron tickets, there is a 6 p.m. pre-program reception at the nearby Sorrento Hotel, 900 Madison Street. For more information on this evening, please www.lectures.org or call Seattle Arts & Lectures at (206) 621-2230.