After School & Beyond. This hosted, after-school book discussion group has Sherman Alexie's National Book Award-winning novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown), as its pick for this month. Based on the authors own experiences, this first young adult novel by bestselling author Alexie features poignant drawings by acclaimed artist Ellen Forney that reflect the characters art as it chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy attempting to break away from the life he was destined to live. This should be fun. Please join us.

Co-presented with the WASHINGTON CENTER FOR THE BOOK AT THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY. The author of such major works as Ceremony, Storyteller, and Almanac of the Dead, along with other works of fiction, prose, and poems, Leslie Marmon Silko has long been one of the vital, essential literary voices at work in this country. For this much-awaited evening, marked by the publication of The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir (Viking), her first book in a decade, and her first book of extended nonfiction prose, she will be joined by Sherman Alexie—who showed himself quite adept in the role of moderator and conversant last spring with visiting novelists Tommy Wieringa and Christos Tsoulkas, and poet Sherwin Bitsui. The Turquoise Ledge is a mix of memoir—family stories—and informed rumination and observations on the power of landscape and the natural world. "Novelist, essayist, and poet Silko finds in her deeply meditative memoir-cum-journal an exquisite harmony between the native ways of her ancestors and the cycle of nature that unfolds in the high desert of Arizona where she has lived for 30 years ... Stories of her reflections living among the companionable rattlers, macaws, pack rats, and grasshoppers ... The bulk of her beautifully composed memoir takes place at her Tucson ranch, where she records the rhythms of drought and rain, and recognizes the visitations of animals and spirits she calls 'Star Beings' a fluid and delicate life's balance between human and nature." - Publishers Weekly. We acknowledge and thank Sherman Alexie for his part in this evening. His most recent books are the collection of poems, Face, and the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning collection of stories, War Dances (newly in paper, Grove). Free admission is on a first-come, first serve basis. The Microsoft Auditorium of the Seattle Public Central Library is at 1000 Fourth Avenue (between Madison & 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.