Events
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Start: 11:30 am
Join us for this fun round of readings from picture and storybooks ... Go to the castle in the children's section ... and the stories begin!
Start: 6:30 pm
Elliott Bay's Drama Book Group, Stages, meets once a month to read, enjoy and discuss great plays and dramatic works, contemporary and classic, from the U.S. and around the world. Our selection for February is the 2011 Pulitzer Finalist A Free Man of Color by John Guare. This panoramic, raucous, and astonishing play is set in boisterous New Orleans prior to the historic Lousiana Purchase. Before law and order took hold and class, political, and racial lines were drawn, New Orleans was a carnival of beautiful women, flowing wine, and pleasure for the taking. At the center of this Dionysian world is the mulatto Jacques Cornet, who commands men, seduces women, and preens like a peacock. But the map of the city is about to be redrawn as American rule brings racial segregation to Cornet's colorful and chaotic world and all he represents ... turning the tables on freedom and liberty. Please join us for a rousing discussion of this new dramatic masterpiece.
Start: 7:00 pm
One of the most keenly anticipated fiction debuts of the year is noted this evening with Tupelo Hassman here for her raucous novel, Girlchild (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). "This first novel is not like anything you or I have ever read. Something between a shocking exposé, a defiant treatise, a prose poem, and an exuberant Girl Scout manual, always formally inventive and bursting with energy, Girlchild will do nothing to disabuse you of the notion that lowdown trailer parks like this one outside Reno jack up the birthrate and invite the sexual abuse of young girls if the innocents are left alone for even twenty minutes while an otherwise endearing grandma goes to play the slots. Yes, this is an insider's report, confirming the worst you ever allowed yourself to think. And yet somehow Tupelo Hassman's book is also a testament to joy and beauty, and to the saving power of language wherever it gets a foothold." – Jaimy Gordon.
Start: 7:30 pm
Co-presented with the TOWN HALL CENTER FOR CIVIC LIFE. New York Times foreign policy editorialist David Unger looks at the various costs—hidden and manifest—that have gone into the creation of this country's 'security state' in his new book, The Emergency State: America's Pursuit of Absolute National Security at All Costs (Penguin Press). "Unger ... surveys 70 years of American security policy in this provocative jeremiad. The author contends that modern defense policy ... is not only unconstitutional but also obsolete and counterproductive ... Unger further argues that the emergency state has trampled civil liberties, contributed to the deindustrialization of America, alienated the rest of the world, and prevented action on problems like global warming ... Unger's broad indictment of defense policy—bipartisan if not nonpartisan—is sure to spark considerable and worthy debate." – Publishers Weekly. $5 tickets are available at the door starting at 6:30 p.m., or in advance via www.brownpapertickets.com (1-800-838-3006). Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca). Preferred seating for Town Hall members. For more information on this evening, please call Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600, Town Hall at (206) 652-4255, or see www.townhallseattle.org.
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