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FRANCES RICHEY
Thursday, May 1 at 7:30 p.m.

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.

SEATTLE OPERA presents ASPECTS OF I PURITANI
Friday, May 2 at 7:30 p.m.
      ADMISSION CHARGE

Presented by SEATTLE OPERA. Seattle Opera's final production of the 2007-08 season series is Vincenzo Bellini's I Puritani. Please join us on the eve of the opening where, as is their custom on such nights, Seattle Opera General Director Speight Jenkins and Education Director Perry Lorenzo engagingly hold forth on various aspects of the opera, its time and milieu, and this production. I Puritani plays for eight performances between May 3 – 17 at McCaw Hall. $5 admission (no tickets), handled at the door by Seattle Opera. For more information, please see www.seattleopera.org or call (206) 389-7676.

CRISTINA GARCÍA
Saturday, May 3 at 7:30 p.m.

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.

ALEXANDER "SANDY" TAYLOR and CURBSTONE PRESS: A Celebrarion
Sunday, May 4 at 2 p.m.

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.

WILLY VLAUTIN
Monday, May 5 at 7:30 p.m.

Richmond Fontaine front man Willy Vlautin's first novel, Motel Life, won international acclaim last year, and also attention closer to home as one of The Oregonian's Top Ten Books from the Northwest. He's here tonight with his much-awaited follow-up, Northline (Harper Perennial), a novel in which a young woman trying to escape her skinhead boyfriend settles in Reno and lands a job as a waitress on the graveyard shift at the Cal Neva Top Deck Restaurant. "An unflinching look at people living on the edge in Vegas and Reno, Vlautin turns his frighteningly unsentimental eye on those drifting through life ... Vlautin's literary style either consciously or unconsciously echoes that of Hemingway ... Spare and strangely moving." – Kirkus Reviews.

MARC ACITO
Tuesday, May 6 at 6 p.m.

The "sexually confused and overly theatrical" New Jersey teen Edward Zanni, introduced in Marc Acito's comic novel, How I Paid for College, makes a triumphant return in a sequel, Attack of the Theater People (Broadway). Kicked out of drama school, Zanni finds work in New York City as a "party motivator" and, well, let's just say that he's a trouble magnet. Who else is stalked by a Bar Mitzvah client? "Attack of the Theater People is as sweet and nutty and irresistible as a bag of M & M's. Acito's deft hand with dialogue lends a curious believability to even his most preposterous scenarios." – Armistead Maupin.

ELLIOTT BAY BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, May 6 at 6:30 p.m.

Each month, the Elliott Bay Book Club reads and discusses the best in contemporary fiction with the occasional classic thrown in for good measure. This month we examine Gaétan Soucy's The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches. French Canadian writer Gaétan Soucy's novel was a finalist for France's prestigious Prix Renaudot. It is the story of two siblings that grow up isolated from the outside world. Le Monde said of the book that, "Soucy is a master of suspense...while the tale becomes more explicit as it progresses, it also becomes more bewitching, more mysteriously pulsating." and the Toronto Star wrote, "Takes a short time to read and a long time to forget."

ALEKSANDAR HEMON
Tuesday, May 6 at 8 p.m.

A writer whose place(s) in life have been dictated by war and upheaval, MacArthur Award-winning novelist Aleksandar Hemon has now lived in Chicago since 1992. He was there for a visit when war broke out in his home city of Sarajevo. He learned to write in English, was here for his extraordinary first book, The Question of Bruno, then was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for his second book, Nowhere Man. In his much-anticipated new novel, The Lazarus Project (Riverhead), he sets a powerful tale in Chicago, both one hundred years ago, and now, exactly. "A profoundly moving novel that finds striking parallels between the America of a hundred years ago and now, as an immigrant Bosnian author, straining to come to terms with his identity, returns to his troubled homeland ... A literary page-turner that combines narrative momentum with meditations on identity and mortality." – Kirkus Reviews.

LISA GARRIGUES
Wednesday, May 7 at 12 noon

Special Midday at Elliott Bay talk & signing. With Mother's Day imminent approach, this talk and signing visit by Lisa Garrigues is more than timely, as she is here with her book, Writing Motherhood: Tapping into Your Creativity as a Mother and Writer (Scribner). "In Writing Motherhood, Lisa Garrigues describes what my head and my heart and my hands have been doing since I became a mother. Her inspirations and invitations smooth the path to recording motherhood in real time, exactly how we wish our mothers and grandmothers for generations before us had done." – Melinda Roberts. For more on Lisa Garrigues and her work, please see www.writingmotherhood.com.

DOMENIC STANSBERRY
Wednesday, May 7 at 7:30 p.m.

While he's a former resident and continued frequent visitor to the Northwest, we're pleased to welcome Edgar-winning mystery writer Domenic Stansberry to Elliott Bay as an author for the first time tonight, as he reads from his dark, delightful novel, The Ancient Rain (Minotaur). PI Dante Mancuso, introduced in Chasing the Dragon, is a North Beach native, and this novel is infused with the history of the Beats, and the revolutionary thinking of the time. "To all those mystery readers who believe that the classic detective story has played itself out, Stansberry delivers a bracing slap upside the head." – Booklist.

SIRI HUSTVEDT
Thursday, May 8 at 7:30 p.m.

Family mysteries start to come to light when a (grown) brother and sister go through their deceased father's papers in Siri Hustvedt's remarkable new novel, The Sorrows of an American (Henry Holt). We are delighted to welcome her back, the author of three previous novels (including What I Loved), poetry, and an essay collection (A Plea for Eros), from her Brooklyn home. "In her fourth novel, Hustvedt continues, with grace and aplomb, her exploration of family connectedness, loss, grief and art ... Hutsvedt gives great breaths of authenticity to [protagonist] Erik's counseling practice, life in Minnesota and Miranda's Jamaican heritage, and the anticlimax she creates is calming and justified." – Publishers Weekly.

ANDREW FOSTER ALTSCHUL
Friday, May 9 at 7:30 p.m.

One of the keenly anticipated fiction debuts by a U.S. writer this year is that by onetime alternative rock DJ Andrew Altschul with his bracing novel, Lady Lazarus (Harcourt). "These pages are lit by the most seditious literary cunning. This big, taunting, passionate, ambitious tale, told in a multiplicity of voices, skewers our culture's infatuation with surfaces and our habit of maiming or killing the objects of our collective infatuation: this is glittering wordplay whose bottom note is sorrow. Andrew Altschul maybe shinily modern—postmodern—in every other way, but he is also that ancient thing, a born storyteller capable of breaking your heart." - Elizabeth Tallent. "Altschul is one of our great young writers, and Lady Lazarus is the proof. A poetic satire of rock and roll, and a rock-and-roll ode to poetry, it mirrors its heroine: smart, gorgeous, and funny as hell." - Andrew Sean Greer.

EMILY R. TRANSUE
Saturday, May 10 at 2 p.m.

Seattle has a number of talented physician writers, including Emily Transue, who told the story of her internal medicine residency at the University of Washington in On Call: A Doctor's Days and Nights in Residency. In Patient by Patient: Lessons in Love, Loss, Hope and Healing from a Doctor's Practice (St. Martins). Dr. Transue shares both her professional journey from resident to attending physician and her personal journey as she deals with the illness and death not only of patients, but of her beloved father and grandmother. "Quiet, funny, and sad, the daily life of this fully alive physician becomes a model for the life of the fully alive self." - Rita Charon, M.D, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Medicine and Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University.

RAJ PATEL
Saturday, May 10 at 4:30 p.m.

Scholar/activist Raj Patel, a former policy analyst with Food First who has been on the frontlines of public protest (tear-gassed on four continents), is here with a vital, internationally-praised book on globalization and food, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (Melville House). This book looks at how there is obesity and hunger in the world, examines the many players involved. "One of the most dazzling books I have read in a very long time. The product of a brilliant mind and a gift to a world hungering for justice." - Naomi Klein. "Magisterial? The kind of book from which you emerge enlightened, surprised, angry and determined." - The Independent (London). For more information, please see www.stuffedandstarved.org.

SARAH KATHERINE LEWIS
Saturday, May 10 at 7:30 p.m.

Sarah Katherine Lewis, last here with Indecent, her memoir of her experiences in the sex trade, weighs in on her own favorite indulgences in Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Things That Are Very, Very Bad for Me (Seal). Recipes are included. "Hanging out with the insatiable Lewis will inspire you to keep eating, loving, and making a mess until you're truly full. That she's struggled to follow her own advice—'I haven't been laid in a month and I can't afford groceries,' she confesses in a concluding chapter—doesn't make this any less true." - Bookslut.

KERRY REICHS
Sunday, May 11 at 2 p.m.

Co-presented with HEDGEBROOK. Lawyer-turned-novelist Kerry Reichs, who honed some of her writing skills up at Hedgebrook, the renowned women writers' retreat on Whidbey Island, returns to the Northwest to read from her charming, romantic debut novel, The Best Day of Someone Else's Life (Avon). "Reichs is the daughter of bestselling thriller writer Kathy Reichs [yes, it's Mother's Day, we celebrate ...], and her cute romantic comedy debut makes BDOYL syndrome—imagining your wedding day as the 'Best Day of Your Life'—scarily palpable. A 20-something Washington, D.C. wine buyer, 'Vi' Connelly (née Kevin—her parents expected a boy) embarks on an excruciating, crushingly expensive odyssey: she attends more weddings than you can count on two hands in less than two years, all the while searching for the love of her life, and mooning over her lost first love Caleb Carter." - Publishers Weekly.

TARAS GRESCOE
Monday, May 12 at 7:30 p.m.

Montreal-based journalist Taras Grescoe's book, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood (Bloomsbury), based on a nine-month investigation of the aquaculture industry, is both illuminating and frightening. Climate change, pollution, and unregulated practices of fishing and fish farming industries could all have dire consequences for seafood and those who consume it. Taras Grescoe shares the details and presents alternatives for those who want to continue to eat safely and sustainably. Taras Grescoe's other books include The End of Elsewhere, Sacre Blues, and The Devil's Picnic.

ELLIOTT BAY GLOBAL ISSUES & ETHICS BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, May 8 at 6:30 p.m.

Our Global Issues & Ethics Book Group is devoted to discussing books that cover the most relevant topics of our everyday lives. William T. Vollmann visited towns and cities around the world and asked one basic question: "Why are you poor?" His book, Poor People explores the fundamental questions of poverty by engaging the very people who are abjectly poor. The San Francisco Chronicle says of Vollmann and his book, "Few writing today can handle writing about the underclasses of the world like Vollmann...a writer who writes not only beautifully but also responsibly and morally." The Seattle Times said, "Vollmann has written a book of enormous power—one that honors the magnitude of each story it records and allows them to say in their own words why life has laid them so low."

KENNY MAYNE
Tuesday, May 13 at 7:30 p.m.

Known primarily for his humorously wry take on sports at ESPN, but also for his work on a wide variety of other kinds of television shows, from Martha Stewart to 'reality tv,' Kenny Mayne is back in his home state and doing the very live and in-person thing of being at Elliott Bay to discuss his newly published book, An Incomplete and Inaccurate History of Sport (Crown). Yes, sports one has heard, and sports (games) one hasn't: this book (and this evening) is an excursion through the passions and pleasures of a funny man. This, too, should be fun. Please join us.

JOHN GIERACH
Thursday, May 15 at 6 p.m.

John Gierach, a most popular and prolific author of fish tales, spins his way here for what should be another delightful, engaging reading appearance. He visits with his newest, Fool's Paradise (Simon & Schuster). "This addition to Gierach's long list of fishing books is ... definitely a keeper. Gierach gets back to the basics of fishing in a collection of personal essays in which he contends that fishing is as much about being outdoors with a few friends who share the same passion as it is about catching fish ... With the simple grace and native wisdom he is known for, Gierach always gets back around to fishing and pays special attention to the fish themselves, sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of North American fish, their feeding habits and their exquisite colorings." - Publishers Weekly.

WILL DURST
Thursday, May 15 at 8 p.m.

If it isn't the longest election 'year' in history, it certainly feels like it. Hence, perfect timing for a visit by Will Durst, the standup comic dubbed a "new wave hysterical hybrid of Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Osgood" by the Chicago Tribune. Will Durst's new book, The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing: Confessions of a Raging Moderate (Ulysses), skewers those on both sides of the aisle, just when it's most needed. A 5-time Emmy nominee, Will Durst was also described as "the best political satirist working in the country today" by The New York Times. For more from Will Durst himself, including his 50 suggestions for 'John McCain's Vice Presidential Shortlist, please see www.willdurst.com.

RABIH ALAMEDDINE
Friday, May 16 at 7:30 p.m.

Co-presented with the ARAB CENTER OF WASHINGTON. This is one many have been waiting for. Junot Diaz ("Here is absolute beauty. One of the finest novels I've read in years"), Amy Tan, Aleksandar Hemon, Robert Olen Butler, Dorothy Allison, and Jonathan Safran Foer are among those voicing ardent praise for Beirut-born novelist Rabih Alameddine and his spell-binding novel, The Hakawati (Knopf). "Stories descend from stories as families descend from families in the magical third novel from Alameddine, telling tales of contemporary Lebanon that converge, ingeniously, with timeless Arabic fables. With his father dying in a Beirut hospital, Osama al-Khattar, a Los Angeles software engineer, returns in 2003 for the feast of Eid al-Hada. As he keeps watch with his sister, Lina, and extended family, Osama narrates the family history, going back to his great-grandparents, and including his grandfather, a hakawati, or storyteller ... Alameddine's own storytelling ingenuity seems infinite: out of it he has fashioned a novel on a royal scale, as reflective of past empires as present." - Publishers Weekly. "Here it comes, the book of the year, on its own magic carpet. No book this bewitching ever felt so important; no book this important has ever been so lovingly enchanted. It is a snapshot of our current crisis, and a story for the ages." - Andrew Sean Greer. This is one not to be missed.

PHILIP TERMAN
Saturday, May 17 at 2 p.m.

Poet Philip Terman travels to the Northwest from Pennsylvania, where he teaches in the English Department at Clarion. He reads today from his fifth poetry collection, Rabbis of the Air (Autumn House). As the title suggests, many of the poems here have Jewish identity as a theme. "Persona experience acquires the monumentality of mythology ... Here is a resolution that shifts between history and modernity, between old and new conceptions of Judaism, binding the generations." - Jehanne Dubrow, Prairie Schooner. Philip Terman has also recently served as poet-in-resident at Franklin Pierce College, and is co-director of the Chatauqua Institute's annual writers festival.

EMIRA MEARS & LAUREN BACON
Saturday, May 17 at 4:30 p.m.

The founders of Raised Eyebrow Web Studios, Inc. and editors of the webzine Soapboxgirls present savvy advice on business basics drawn from the wisdom of young female entrepreneurs. Emira Mears and Lauren Bacon, also co-authors of The Boss of You: Everything a Woman Needs to Know to Start, Run and Maintain Her Own Business (Seal), will be here to share stories and advice, and will be joined by one of the entrepreneurs featured in the book, Seattle's Meagan Reardon, proprietor of The Organized Knitter (www.organizedknitter.com).

CORY DOCTOROW
Sunday, May 17 at 7:30 p.m.

Three-time Locus Award-winner and Hugo and Nebula Award nominee Cory Doctorow makes this special Elliott Bay appearance with a young adult novel, Little Brother (Tor), which we suspect will be well received by readers of all ages. As this novel begins, a seventeen-year-old and his friends are arrested and interrogated in a secret prison after a terrorist attack in San Francisco. Their troubles really begin after their release, as the city has become a police state, everyone now under surveillance. "A worthy younger sibling to Orwell's 1984, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother is lively, precocious, and most important, a little scary." - Brian K. Vaughan. The author of many books, including Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Overclocked, Cory Doctorow is also co-editor of Boing Boing and former director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

ReAct Theatre presents RABBIT HOLE
Sunday, May 18 at 2 p.m.
--LATE BREAKING ADDITION--
      PERFORMANCE
      ADMISSION CHARGE

Co-presented with ReAct Theatre. Our 2008 Staged play reading series kicks off with the special first staged reading of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama winner, Rabbit Hole, a marvelous new play about what comes after tragedy. A story of loss, heartbreak and forgiveness—told through daily moments and emotional hurdles—as a family moves on after the accidental death of their 4-year-old son. After a critically acclaimed recent Broadway premiere, Rabbit Hole has been hailed as an artistic breakthrough for the highly regarded Lindsay-Abaire. Please join us at this special offsite event. Suggested donation ($5) at the door. Reservations encouraged, and more information online at www.reacttheatre.org. Special thanks to SIS Production, in residency at Richard Hugo House.

CONVERSATIONS WITH PACIFIC NORTHWEST BALLET presents The Sailors of Fancy Free
Sunday, May 18 at 2 p.m.

Presented by PACIFIC NORTHWEST BALLET. Pacific Northwest Ballet's popular education series concludes with another entertaining, accessible, free Sunday program facilitated by PNB Education programs manager Doug Fullington. Today, PNB dancers Casey Herd, Kiyon Gaines, and Josh Spellow talk about their roles as dancers in the Bernstein/Robbins ballet, Fancy Free, which PNB will present as part of its "All Robbins" program. For more information on PNB productions, including Fancy Free, please see www.pnb.org or call (206) 441-9411.

BOB EKBLAD
Sunday, May 18 at 4:30 p.m.

Activist Bob Ekblad of the Tierra Nueva ministry and the People's Seminary in Burlington returns to Seattle to speak about the ministry's work with marginalized people, both at home and internationally, a commitment he addresses in his new book, A New Christian Manifesto: Pledging Allegiance to the Kingdom of God (Westminster/John Knox). Bob Ekblad is also the author of Reading the Bible with the Damned.

PREETA SAMARASAN
Monday, May 19 at 7:30 p.m.

Co-presented with CHAYA and the JACKSON SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON. We're delighted a welcome a second Malaysian author in less than a week, Preeta Samarasan, who is here with one of the most anticipated debuts of the year, the capacious novel Evening is the Whole Day (Houghton Mifflin). "Set on the outskirts of Ipoh in Malaysia, Samarasan's impressive debut chronicles another bad year in the Big House on Kingfisher Lane ... Skillfully jumping from one consciousness to another, Samarasan moves back in time to reveal the secrets that have led to the family's unraveling ... the language bursts with energy, and Samarasan has a sure hand juggling so many distinct characters." - Publishers Weekly. "A magical, exuberant, tragicomic vision of post-colonial Malaysia reminiscent of Rushdie and Roy. The debut of a significant and thrilling new talent." - Peter Ho Davies. En route to the novel's publication, Preeta Samarasan received honors, including the prestigious Hopwood Novel Award.

SPECULATIONS - ELLIOTT BAY SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, May 20 at 6:30 p.m.

As the literature of ideas and imagination, Science Fiction and Fantasy simply demands discussion. Our choice this month is The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. A hilarious and surreal mystery set in an alternative Great Britain, 1985, where the Crimean War has dragged on for over 130 years, England's Third Most Wanted criminal is abducting characters from some of the country's most cherished literature, and Special Operations Network has (luckily!) a Literary Division. Join us to discuss this clever and unique mystery.

SUSAN HUBBARD
Tuesday, May 20 at 7:30 p.m.

Picking up where her bestselling, critically-acclaimed vampire thriller, The Society of S, left off, Susan Hubbard visits with her newest, The Year of Disappearances. (Simon & Schuster). "Fourteen-year-old Ariella 'Ari' Montero, who's half human and half vampire, wants to know why bees are vanishing as well as humans in Hubbard's smooth supernatural thriller ... Hubbard's intriguing tale poses a tantalizing question: will humans or vampires ultimately inherit Earth?" – Publishers Weekly. "A triumph of modern gothic storytelling." - Carolyn Parkhurst.

ANDREW SEAN GREER
Wednesday, May 21 at 7:30 p.m.

Another in a nice run of welcome returns to Seattle and Elliott Bay is made this evening by nationally acclaimed fiction writer Andrew Sean Greer. Author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli, How It Was for Me, and The Path of Minor Planets, he is up from his San Francisco home for his much-anticipated new novel, The Story of a Marriage (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). "As he demonstrated in the imaginative The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Greer can spin a touching narrative based on an intriguing premise. Even a diligent reader will be surprised by the revelations twisting through this novel and will probably turn back to the beginning pages to find the oblique hints hidden in Greer's crystalline prose ... This is a sensitive exploration of the secrets hidden even in intimate relationships, a poignant account of people helpless in the throes of passion and an affirmation of the strength of the human spirit." - Publishers Weekly. "This is a haunting book of breathtaking beauty and restraint. Greer's tone-perfect prose conjures an unforgettable woman who exists both within and somehow above the stifling class, racial, and sexual constraints of 1950s America—and who must unravel the great mystery of her place within it." - Dave Eggers.

RICK BRAGG
Thursday, May 22 at 6 p.m.

As a journalist based in Atlanta, Rick Bragg had received widespread praise and attention. Yet it was with the publication of his memoir, All Over But the Shoutin', that his work really found readers across the country. That family account was followed in time by Ava's Man, and now concludes with the newly published The Prince of Frogtown (Knopf). "With this wrenching story of fathers and sons, Pulitzer Prize winner Bragg completes the personal saga he began ... After 40 years of self-proclaimed bachelorhood, Bragg finds himself in the uncomfortable and challenging role of becoming a stepfather. Learning to have a son brings to light the chasm separating Bragg from his own father ... Here, Bragg continues in the vein of his legendary storytelling, breathing life into a father he barely knew while learning to love a son." - Library Journal.

BILL CARTER
Thursday, May 22 at 8 p.m.

After each of four summers of salmon fishing in Alaskan waters, Bill Carter vowed not to return, yet each time he would answer his captain's call. His remarkable memoir, Red Summer: The Danger, Madness and Exaltation of Salmon Fishing in a Remote Alaskan Village (Scribner), sheds light not only on the culture of the people who fish, but also the salmon, and the wildlife who depend on it. "Red Summer is a wonderful book about a rare subject, the mysterious pleasure of brutally hard work. In this case it is the salmon run in Alaska and Bill Carter proves again he is a first-rate writer in the fascinating tradition of Junger and Krakauer." - Jim Harrison.

DAVID GILMOUR with JESSIE GILMOUR
Friday, May 23 at 7:30 p.m.

At a time of year when both the annual Seattle International Film Festival and Father's Day are in the air, what night more appropriate than this father-and-son visit for David Gilmour's engaging memoir, The Film Club (12). A noted novelist who worked for years for the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival, David Gilmour felt himself clueless at a point in the raising of his teenage son. Their bond became an agreement—seeing and discussing films. It changed both their lives—in surprising ways. "David Gilmour is a very unlikely moral guidance counselor: he's broke, more or less unemployed, and has two children by different women. Yet when it looks as though his teenage son is about to go off the rails, he reaches out to him through the only subject he knows anything about: the movies. The result is an object lesson in how fathers should talk to their sons." - Toby Young. "If all sons had dads like David Gilmour, then Oedipus would be a forgotten legend and Father's Day would be a worldwide film festival." - Sean Wilsey.

JOSEPH GOLDBERG with REGINA HACKETT
Saturday, May 24 at 2 p.m.

Acclaimed Washington painter Joseph Goldberg visits to talk about his work with Seattle Post-Intelligencer art critic Regina Hackett, and sign copies of Jeweled Earth (University of Washington Press), the glowing book that depicts over four decades of work. An essay by New York poet Nathan Kernan is included in the book, as is an earlier interview with the artist by Regina Hackett. "This book reveals Goldberg to be a peripatetic artist, circling back from time to time to meaningful images and painterly issues that fascinate him. At the same time it shows the inquisitive nature peculiar to the best of artists." - Greg Kucera, from the Preface.

ADAM LEITH GOLLNER
Tuesday, May 27 at 5:30 p.m.

Noted food write Adam Gollner, a contributor to Gourmet and Bon Appetit, visits with his delicious new book, The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession (Scribner). Journalist Gollner's debut is a rollicking account of the world of fruit and fruit fanatics. He's traveled to many countries in search of exotic fruits, and he describes in sensuous detail some of the hundreds of varieties he's sampled ... Equally intriguing are some of the characters he's encountered ... Gollner's passion for fruit is infectious, and his fascinating book is a testament to the fact that there is much more to the world of fruit than the bland varieties on our supermarket shelves." - Publishers Weekly.

STAGES - ELLIOTT BAY DRAMA BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, May 27 at 6:30 p.m.

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. In The Overwhelming, J.T. Rogers has written a play that is both a brilliantly crafted piece of writing and a tense, suspenseful exploration of one of the great human tragedies of our time. A middle-aged academic leaps at the chance to go to Rwanda to write about an old college classmate, who has in the intervening years has specialized in treating Tutsi children stricken by AIDS. But when he arrives with his family in Kigali in the fall of 1994, they slowly, then urgently, become enmeshed in the tension and terror, the professional risks and personal betrayals, that ultimately mark the start of a genocidal war—a horror that they can sense but cannot comprehend or control.

MARY TILLMAN
Tuesday, May 27 at 7:30 p.m.

The untimely death of Pat Tillman, a star NFL player who gave up the sport and enlisted in the U.S. Army in the wake of 9/11, in conflict in Afghanistan, was first portrayed by the Army as the result of an ambush but later revealed to be the result of friendly fire. Boots on the Ground By Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman (Rodale, co-authored by Narda Zacchino) is his mother Mary Tillman's account of her ongoing quest for the truth about her son's death and the ensuing coverup, which even after a series of inquiries, investigations, and two congressional hearings leaves many questions unanswered. " ... The chilling results yielded by the Tillman family's unflagging efforts indicate that Pat's death was, at best, a result of gross negligence and incompetence on the part of the U.S. Army, and, at worst, a sinister coverup by high-ranking officials willing to lie to a soldier's family and hoodwink the public in exchange for higher approval ratings. Moving, powerful and overwhelmingly distressing." - Kirkus Reviews.

STEVEN GALLOWAY
Wednesday, May 28 at 7:30 p.m.

A musician witnesses the deaths of twenty-two friends in a mortar attack and, in an act of defiance, decides to play his cello at the attack site for 22 days in their memory. This, and more, takes place in Steven Galloway's arresting novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo (Riverhead). This novel has already been warmly received in the author's native Canada, elsewhere in the U.S., and by many here at Elliott Bay, as we anticipate this visit. "Four people struggle to stay alive in war-torn Sarajevo, remembering the simple pleasures of their old routines as they settle into horrifying, desperate new ones ... Indelible imagery and heartbreaking characters give authority to this chilling story and make human a crisis overlooked in literature." - Kirkus Reviews.

NAN MOONEY
Thursday, May 29 at 7:30 p.m.

Seattle journalist Nan Mooney, whose award-winning books have covered the ground from workplace (I Can't Believe She Did That: Why Women Betray Other Women at Work) and to racetrack (My Racing Heart), is here for the publication of her newest book, (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class (Beacon). "If you're wondering why, in our age of plenty, the financial treadmill keeps moving faster and faster for America's increasingly educated—and increasingly insecure—middle class, you owe it to yourself to read this book. It's all here: the big trends, the compelling portraits, the ideas for personal and political change, and the call to arms we so desperately need." - Jacob S. Hacker. "What happens when the center cannot hold? With great empathy and infectious alarm, Nan Mooney charts the travails of America's middle class in this important book." - Anya Kamenetz.

ALLAN J. HAMILTON
Friday, May 30 at 7:30 p.m.

Also joining us this month (following Emily Transue, May 10) is a second acclaimed physician/writer, Allan J. Hamilton, who, after beginning his working life as a janitor, attended Harvard Medical School and became the chief of neurosurgery and chair of the department of surgery at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center. His memoir, Scalpel and the Soul: Encounters with Surgery, the Supernatural, and the Healing Power of Hope (Tarcher), based on over thirty years in practice, is a frank look at unexplainable phenomena that must be taken seriously is healing is to take place. "There are moments in this spiritual memoir when readers will wish he were their personal guide for the scariest of surgeries. In many ways, this is a story about 'real' doctors as Hamilton understands them—people with exemplary bedside manners who not only make life-and-death decisions for the most vulnerable of the sick, but who have the vision (sometimes literally) to sit and listen as long as it takes." - Publishers Weekly. Dr. Hamilton lives in Tucson, and serves as a script consultant in neurosurgery for the television series Grey's Anatomy.

LOU URENECK
Saturday, May 31 at 2 p.m.

A father/son fishing trip in the Alaska wilderness provides an opportunity for reconciliation between a man and his teenaged son in Lou Ureneck's winning memoir, Backcast: Fatherhood, Flyfishing, and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska (St. Martins). "This is simply a fabulous book, as deep and true as the Alaskan waters that serve as its backdrop. It is an exciting adventure story. It is a profound story of the heart. It is warm and beautiful and so sweetly honest, a father fighting for his son, to know him, to regain him, in a way that will stay and linger long after the final page is turned." - H.G. Bissinger.

ALSO TO NOTE:

Seattle Arts & Lectures. By May the 2007-08 Literary Lecture Series will have concluded, though word should be out on the 2008-09 season's many gems, regular season and special events. Speaking of special, June 3 brings filmmaker JOHN WATERS to Benaroya Hall. Please see www.lectures.org or call (206) 621-2230 for tickets/information.
Counterbalance Poetry. Poet MARIE HOWE reads on May 6 at 7:30 pm at the Good Shepherd Center, 4th floor Chapel, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N. For information, please see www.counterbalancearts.org or call (206) 282-2677.
Nextbook. SUSAN STAMBERG does a program on "Jewish Mothers" at Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall on May 20. Please see www.nextbook.org for tickets/information. That should be a Mother's Day program to remember.
Central District Forum for Art & Ideas. The CD Forum stages "The Creation Project Showcase" on May 16 - 17 at Broadway Performance Hall. Please see www.cdforum.org or call (206) 323-4032 for tickets/information.
Richard Hugo House. Richard Hugo House. Besides leading off May (May 1) with MARGOT CASE (see above), Hugo House's May offerings include a reading with NICOLA GRIFFITH & CORINNA WYCOFF, May 6; Poet JESSY RANDALL, May 15; and "Cheap Wine & Poetry," with many implicated, May 29. See www.hugohouse.org for information on these and more.
ReAct Theatre. Featuring the directing work of Elliott Bay's own DAVID HSIEH, our friends at ReAct Theatre continue their 15th Anniversary Season with the Northwest Premiere of the critically-acclaimed new show Well written by award-winning lesbian performance artist Lisa Kron, at Richard Hugo House playing from May 2nd through June 1st. For more information please visit www.reacttheatre.org or call (206) 364-3283.
Book-It Repertory. Book-It's staging of JIM LYNCH's The Highest Tide should run to May 10 at Seattle Center House Theatre. See www.book-it.org for information/tickets.
Copper Canyon Press. Copper Canyon Press brings acclaimed poet C.D. WRIGHT to Seattle Public Central Library on June 4 at 7 p.m. for a free reading. Please see www.spl.org for information.
Other good programs. Besides big film festivals and folk musical festivals afoot, some other good literary/book-related programs take place on a regular basis at Town Hall Seattle (www.townhallseattle.org), The Seattle Public Library (www.spl.org), and the Seattle Art Museum (www.seattleartmuseum.org). Yes, we are often there ourselves with programs as part of it all.

SOON FOR JUNE

Soon for June. We'll see if summer is really spring, the way the spring has started. That's on the weather front. Things continue to bloom and blossom on the author front as June is expected to bring to/near our doorway, among others: ELLIE MATTHEWS, June 1; DIANA BUTLER BASS, June 2; TIM WINTON, June 3; NAM LE, June 4; MICHAEL KINSLEY, June 4 at Town Hall; TONY HORWITZ, June 5; THOMAS CAMPANELLA, June 5 at the Seattle Asian Art Museum; DAVID GUTERSON, June 6 at Seattle Public Central Library; BARBARA JOHNS, June 7 at Seattle Public Central Library; SETH KANTNER, June 7; RUSSELL BANKS, June 9 at Seattle Public Central Library; DALIA SOFER, June 9; JEN SOOKFONG LEE, June 10; ROBERT THURMAN, June 10 at Seattle Public Central Library; RICHARD BAUSCH, June 11; GEORGE LAKOFF, June 11 at Town Hall; SALMAN RUSHDIE, June 12 at 12 noon; DAVID SIROTA, June 12; ED PARK, June 16; AHMED RASHID, June 16 at Town Hall; SASA STANISIĆ, June 18; JEREMY SCAHILL, June 18 at Town Hall; ERIC ETHERIDGE, June 19; SUSAN LINN, June 21; DAVID SEDARIS (instore, details to come),June 23; PHILIP PAN, June 24 at Town Hall Seattle; GARTH STEIN, June 26; ANDRE DUBUS III, June 26 at Town Hall; JONATHAN MILES, June 26; ERIC LYLE, June 29; CAROL CASSELLA, June 30. All of the above are subject to change and others will be added as well. Please check back on our website at the end of May and/or see our June newsletter for more current and detailed information forthcoming. Thanks.

THE GIFT OF RAIN is the title of Malaysian novelist TAN TWAN ENG's wonderful debut novel (see May 13).