TESS GALLAGHER
Saturday, April 19 at 2 p.m.

A writer and poet who first read here 23 years ago—with Raymond Carver (speaking of, above)—Tess Gallagher is over from her Port Angeles home for this welcome Elliott Bay return. Last here for her splendid 2006 collection of poetry, Dear Ghosts (Graywolf, newly in paper), she is here today with a beautiful new collaborative book of stories, Barnacle Soup and Other Stories from the West of Ireland (Eastern Washington University). Co-created with Ireland's own Josie Gray, and, with original linocuts by Anne M. Anderson, this is a beautiful book to behold—as well as to be told from. "Reading Barnacle Soup, I was seized with the delightful and simultaneous impulse to clutch this book tightly to my chest, and yet also to share it with everyone I know. I'm so grateful to Josie Gray and Tess Gallagher for these intensely place-based stories of bright-burning souls." - Rick Bass. "This is a most unordinary kind of book. Josie Gray can tell stories. When he speaks about a dog, I would like to touch that dog. When he writes about a song, I would like to sing that song. This is what I call a good story." - Haruki Murakami. Also from Eastern Washington, speaking of beautiful gatherings of words, is the 'unfolding' (literally) conversation between Tess Gallagher and Japanese novelist/Buddhist nun Jakucho Setouchi that is Distant Rain.

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