Video On Demand of past Elliott Bay events on Seattle Channel

Video On Demand of past Elliott Bay events on TVW

KATE CHRISTENSEN
Wednesday, July 1 at 7:30 p.m.

Making a welcome return back—relatively soon—with a terrific new novel is Kate Christensen. She was last here for her widely acclaimed novel, The Great Man, which received the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award. She is here tonight with her newest, Trouble (Random House). "Christensen follows up the award-winning The Great Man with this tale of girlfriends on a wild adventure. Manhattan psychotherapist Josie realizes that she must step out of her staid, platonic marriage. The same week Josie tells her husband that she's leaving, her famous rock musician girlfriend Raquel, gets caught in a scandal. The two flee to Mexico, where Josie, after so many years of being a good wife and mother, really lets loose ... Christensen's spare, clean writing style captures the scintillating Mexican night life, an one can almost taste the greasy streets tacos and mescal. The compelling plot will keep readers turning pages, even as clouds of tension and despair drift ever closer." - Library Journal.

MARY LOU SANELLI
Thursday, July 2 at 7:30 p.m.

Port Townsend-based writer and poet Mary Lou Sanelli is down and across the waters, back to Elliott Bay to read from a new book of essays on friendship. She is here tonight with Among Friends (Aequitas Books/Pleasure Boat Studio), excerpts of which have appeared in Crosscut, City Living, as well as on KSER radio, and NPR's Weekend Edition. "Mary Lou Sanelli says things that matter to me ... and when she says them, they sing." - Judith Ryan Hendricks. Mary Lou Sanelli's previous books include Falling Awake, Craving Water, and Small Talk. Staged readings of her poetry collection, Immigrant's Table, have been performed all over the U.S.

REBECCA BROWN & LIDIA YUKNAVITCH
Monday, July 6 at 7:30 p.m.

From Seattle, with Rebecca Brown, and Portland, with Lidia Yuknavitch, we welcome back two terrific writers for this joint reading. Rebecca Brown's work has been praised in The New York Times, Utne Reader, and The Sunday Times (London). Her writing has appeared everywhere from The Stranger to The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. Her newest book, American Romances (City Light), includes essays on such diverse topics as faith, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Beach Boys. She's tracking three centuries of the American "impulse to tell our worst to a bunch of strangers." And yes, Gertrude Stein (a favorite writer) makes an appearance. Rebecca Brown's books include The Last Time I Saw You, The Gifts of the Body, and The Haunted House (recently reissued by City Lights). She is one of a few writers who has read here for over twenty years now. "Everything and nothing is sacred in Rebecca Brown's essays. Tongue, word, thought, and intellect all conspire in a free language love of living history, divination, sex, solitude, and amusement. She is America's only real rock 'n' roll schoolteacher." - Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth. Joining her tonight is Lidia Yuknavitch. She—with Rebecca Brown, Lynne Tillman, Kevin Killian, and others—is a contributor to the anthology Life as We Show It: Writing on Film (City Lights). Lidia Yuknavitch is also the author of three collections of short fiction (including Reel to Real), has been co-editor of Northwest Edge: Deviant Fictions, and currently edits two girls review.

ELLIOTT BAY BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, July 7 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. Our selection this month is Steven Galloway's The Cellist of Sarajevo. In a city ravaged by war, a defiant young musician decides to play his cello at the site of a mortar attack for twenty-two days, in memory of his fallen friends and neighbors. Drawn into the orbit of his music are three strangers, each living like fugitives in their homeland: a bakery worker, a young father, and finally, a woman—a sniper—who holds the fate of the cellist in her hands, even as her own fate becomes just as changeable with each passing day. The Chicago Sun-Times called the book, " A moving portrayal of the survival of the human spirit in times of conflict. [The cellist's] gesture ties the different strands to the book, involving three people who come to recognize both the futility of war and the insidious ways in which it threatens our shared humanity...Galloway gives us valulable insights into how compassion can blossom, unexpectedly, during mindless atrocities. The Cellist of Sarajevo is an accomplished, important work."

ANNE MICHAELS
Tuesday, July 7 at 7:30 p.m.
--THIS EVENT CANCELLED!--

More than a dozen years after her debut novel, Fugitive Pieces—one of those rare books that truly mark one's reading life—esteemed poet and novelist Anne Michaels is back with a much-awaited second novel, The Winter Vault (Knopf). Published in her home country of Canada last fall and in the U.S. this spring to high acclaim, this book, like its predecessor, changes the rhythms by which language is perceived, the heart beats, breath is taken. Dams are built on the St. Lawrence River, then the Nile. Places and the histories of those places, their people, are soon removed from existence. Love is found, lost, found again. "Every bit as ambitious, original and startling as its predecessor, which won prizes and international acclaim of the highest order ... The novel's wildly divergent settings and momentous events should make for a lack of cohesion, but they do not, not the way Michaels weaves them together, inside and out ... At heart, The Winter Vault is a love story ... The landscape [is] detailed with stunning clarity by Michaels, whose research is exhaustive and scrupulous ... The Winter Vault is sumptuous writing, the way the morning sun on a garden is sumptuous, luminously, timelessly ... Its spiritual sweep is magnificent ... The characters [are] transcendent ... The Winter Vault's real achievement, the fact that it makes poetry—in the purest, most powerful sense of the words—of the novel form it inhabits ... In clumsier hands, such boldness of vision could be disastrous. In the hands of Anne Michaels, it is sublime ... Moving and utterly engaging." - The Ottawa Citizen.

MARY GUTERSON
Wednesday, July 8 at 7:30 p.m.

Four years after a memorable Elliott Bay evening at which she read from her debut novel, We Are All Fine Here, Bainbridge Island's Mary Guterson makes this very welcome Elliott Bay for her second novel, Gone to the Dogs (St. Martin's). "The sharp wit and keen observations of Gone to the Dogs had me compulsively turning pages. If Saul Bellow and Lucille Ball produced a love child, she would write like Mary Guterson." - Randy Sue Coburn. "This fine novel offers a funny yet heartfelt answer to the question, What happened to the one that got away? ... With Julia as the first-person narrator, readers can hear her innermost thoughts, and the comedy inherent in the situation comes through." - Library Journal.

ISIS AQUARIAN
Thursday, July 9 at 7:30 p.m.

In The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13 and The Source Family (Process), Source Family archivist Isis Aquarian chronicles the life and times of one of the more renowned commune groups to emerge in the 1970s. Vividly illustrated, this book—with photos, documents, articles—tells the story of a charismatic founder and the people who found him - the times then, the times since. "... Father Yod and the Source Family are enjoying a new era of notoriety, inspiring indie-folk musicians like Devendra Banhart and mega-producers like Rick Rubin. Aquarian's book has become a style bible of sorts, with its dreamy images of the comely cult." - Adam Fisher, The New York Times. "Usually, accounts of communal spiritual movements are sensationalistic 'exposes' ... The Source is something else. The participants in this story seem uniformly intelligent, straightforward and better off for their brush with the infinite." - Doug Harvey, LA Weekly.

MATTHEW C. WHITAKER
Friday, July 10 at 5:30 p.m.

Along with Jeremy I. Levitt, Arizona State University professor Matthew C. Whitaker edited, and contributed to Hurricane Katrina: America's Unnatural Disaster (University of Nebraska Press), a vital anthology of voices critiquing the response to the hurricane and its impact, especially with African Americans there. "This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the relevance of race, class, and gender, an the consequences of entrenched poverty an governmental ineptitude." - Darlene Clark Hine. "Professors Levitt and Whitaker have produced the book on Katrina we've been waiting for. Don't miss it!" - Cornel West. Dr. Whitaker's other books include Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West and African American Icons of Sports.

STACEY LYNN BROWN & ADRIAN MATEJKA
Friday, July 10 at 7:30 p.m.
      POETRY

A duo of visiting poets read from work informed by the incongruities of race, racism, bigotry, prejudice, and love. Stacey Lynn Brown, recently profiled in the National Book Critics Circle blog, Critical Mass, reads from Cradle Song (C&R Press). "Here's a cycle of poems that feels perfectly timed for our current American moment, as conversations and memories grow more interesting again and we imagine rising up into a better shared story. These are poems that wrap right around you, carrying a reader into a richly textured world of voices and scenes, gritty and cozy memories pressed up side-by-side, in delicious readerly resonance." - Naomi Shihab Nye. Traveling with her is her husband, Arian Matejka, author of Mixology (Penguin), a 2008 National Poetry Series selection. "Adrian Matejka provides a profound and powerful cocktail of personal history, hip-hop elegy, and inventive language, measuring a clash of emotions and cultures with fat bass lines and sharp wit. A post-soul tour de force that places pop culture in a blender." - Kevin Young.

SEATTLE NOIR vs. PORTLAND NOIR
Saturday, July 11 at 7:30 p.m.

Akashic Press' internationally-ranging "Noir" anthology series has taken readers into the darkest corners of New York, Havana, Brooklyn, London, Delhi, and many other shady cities. This summer, two iconic Northwest cities have joined the lineup, and response to the volumes has been enthusiastic. This fun pairing brings together editor and contributors to Seattle Noir, Curt Colbert and Bharti Kircher, together with the same from Portland Noir, Kevin Sampsell and Chris A. Bolton. Part of the evening's pleasure should be from the talk of working on the books, and exploration of the question: which is the more noir city?

HEATHER BARBIERI
Monday, July 13 at 7:30 p.m.

Seattle novelist Heather Barbieri goes to Ireland as setting for much of her newly published second novel, The Lace Makers of Glenmara (Harper). A young woman hit hard by loss is encouraged by her mother to go back to their ancestral village and try to reclaim herself. This she does, and more, thanks in part to a circle of older women—lace makers—whose company she is drawn into. "The Lace Makers of Glenmara is richly peopled and beguilingly charming, but what ultimately makes it so moving is Heather Barbieri's deep understanding that no life is immune from sorrow and difficulty. I read this wonderful novel with enormous pleasure." - Margot Livesey.

ELLIOTT BAY GLOBAL ISSUES & ETHICS BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, July 14 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. Our selection for July is Earth:The Sequel by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn. The forecasts are grim and time is running out, but that's not the end of the story. In this book, Fred Krupp, longtime president of Environmental Defense Fund, brings a stirring and hopeful call to arms: We can solve global warming. And in doing so, we will build the new industries, jobs, and fortunes of the twenty-first century.
In these pages readers will encounter the bold innovators and investors who are reinventing energy and the ways we use it. These entrepreneurs are poised to remake the world's biggest business and save the planet—if America's political leaders give them a fair chance to compete. Harvard Business Review said, "If you're worried that the world is heading toward climatic catastrophe, here's a book to lift your spirits...If only one-quarter of the projects were to reach commercial scale, the planet would have a bright future."

CECILIA HAE-JIN LEE
Tuesday, July 14 at 7:30 p.m.

Co-presented with HEDGEBROOK. Travel writer and cookbook author Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee visits this evening to discuss her new book Quick & Easy Korean Cooking (Chronicle), which is both a great introduction to the food of the region, and a sourcebook for those wanting to expand their knowledge of comfort food from home. Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee is also the author of Frommers South Korea, and her illustrated talk tonight will also include information about traveling to Korea, and Korean culture. This should be quite entertaining. Quick & Easy Korean Cooking was a Gourmet Cook Book Club selection.

JONATHAN MELBER
Wednesday, July 15 at 7:30 p.m.

Along with New York City gallery director and curator Heather Darcy Bhandari, attorney Jonathan Melber has written a handy, informative book for individual artists and how to go about the business of their career. Art/Work - Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career (Free Press) is a wide-ranging book that draws not only on the authors' individual experiences and backgrounds, but also from interviews with curators, dealers, and other visual arts professionals around the U.S.

SAMUEL LIGON with A.J. RATHBUN & AMY SCHRADER
Thursday, July 16 at 7:30 p.m.

The stories in Samuel Ligon's new collection, Drift and Swerve (winner of Autumn House's 2008 fiction prize), explore connection and fracture, isolation and intimacy, violence and revenge. "Darkly funny and surprisingly moving, these tales of collision and escape feature unforgettable characters ... who careen through the book's hard America with a ferocious, incurable case of hope." - Jess Walter. Samuel Ligon, who teaches at Eastern Washington University's Inland Northwest Center for Writers, also edits the superb literary journal, Willow Spring. Joining him tonight are two recent contributors, A.J. Rathbun and Amy Schrader, who will also read from their work.

DAVID NEIWERT
Friday, July 17 at 7:30 p.m.

Seattle journalist-turned author/historian David Neiwert is here this evening with his timely new book, The Eliminationists: Hate Talk and the Radical Right (PoliPoint). "Neiwert, founder of the political blog Orcinus, links the proliferation of radical conservative ideas in the political mainstream to the looming specter of 'eliminationism,' an ideology rejecting dialogue and debate 'in favor of the pursuit of the outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile and eviction, or extermination' ... In these efforts, the author discerns a nascent American fascism ... Rich in historical and journalistic detail, the book offers a fine overview of the uglier strains in American politics." - Publishers Weekly. David Neiwert's other books include In God's Country, Death on the Fourth of July, and Strawberry Days.

DAVID B. WILLIAMS: A Walking and Talking Tour
Saturday, July 18 at 10:30 a.m.

A special 'good morning' presentation. David B. Williams' essential guidebook, The Seattle Street-Smart Naturalist, encouraged urban residents to seek out the hidden streams, bogs, and wildlife right here in our neighborhoods. He's now back with a new book, which draws even more on the urban environment. Stories in Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology (Walker) takes readers right into the city core to examine the stone that makes up buildings and monuments in cities all over the U.S. This morning, he'll begin with a short talk in our readings room (handily adjacent to the Elliott Bay Caf&3acute;), then will venture out with all accompanying him to look at downtown Seattle and some of its stonework. This should be educational and entertaining.

JUDITH SKILLMAN & MICHAEL SPENCE
Saturday, July 18 at 7:30 p.m.
      POETRY

Two fine locally-based poets read here together from their work this Saturday evening. Judith Skillman is here from over the lake with her tenth (by our count) collection of poems, Prisoner of the Swifts (Ahadada Books). "The vivid imagistic precision of Judith Skillman's Prisoner of the Swifts encompasses the full emotive spectrum ... in poems that traverse the range of experience from pleasure in newborn life to 'the greatest wealth of pain' from which that life emerges ... Skillman watches the aerial acrobatics of never-alighting swifts beyond her 'Victorian walls,' and discovers in them the strength to confront her own frailty and to celebrate a life ... These poems 'render in iridescence' the mortal lives, with their windows into eternity, of us all." - Carolyne Wright. Seattle poet Michael Spence's new collection is Crush Depth (Truman State University Press). "For years I've admired Michael Spence's technical expertise, his preoccupation with prosody, with sound, with old forms, and here, in his third book, he combines both skill and maturity to give us more than just a random collection; this is as whole a work as I've seen in a long time ... These are the poems of a man gone bravely back to re-live the experience of military service and discover the larger truths beneath the tale, the ones at 'crushing depth' ... These are poems we can all swim toward. Beautifully made, beautifully true, they will hold us all." - Samuel Green.

BRENDA PETERSON & Friends
Sunday, July 19 at 2 p.m.

"Writing Your Life: Memoirists at Work." Whether you've secretly wanted to write a memoir, or have questions for those who have written theirs, consider spending part of this Sunday afternoon as part of a lively discussion. To celebrate the new memoir anthology, Memoirs in the Light of Day (Lamberson-Corona Press), six contributors discuss the art and practice of making memoir. Writing teacher and acclaimed author Brenda Peterson—whose own new memoir, I Want to Be Left Behind, is due out later this year—moderates. Come join the discussion.

BIBI GASTON
Monday, July 20 at 7:30 p.m.

A highly regarded landscape architect who maintains home and work places in both New York and the Columbia River Gorge, Bibi Gaston has made a moving memoir out of her grandmother's diaries. That grandmother, Rosamond Pinchot, was, in her short life, part of a prominent family, and prominent in her own right as an actress and sportswoman. The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries, and Her Granddaughter's Search for Home (HarperPerennial) is Bibi Gaston's evocative chronicle of this all. "The Loveliest Woman in America is a story for all women who strive and struggle to lead meaningful and purposeful lives. In moving prose, the author weaves her grandmother Rosamond Pinchot's deep connection to nature with that of her own. That connection becomes the constantly redeeming thread, weaving its ways through the generations of a remarkable, passionate family whose legacy of service to the landscape and the environment are the DNA of today's conservation efforts." - Sara Cedar Miller.

SPECULATIONS - ELLIOTT BAY SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, July 21 at 6:30 p.m.

As the literature of ideas and imagination, Science Fiction and Fantasy simply demands discussion. Our selection for July is The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand—despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away. A reluctant conscript drafted into an elite military unit, Private William Mandella, has been propelled through space and time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties and do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But "home" may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time dilation caused by space travel, Mandella is aging months while the Earth he left behind is aging centuries... Jonathan Letham says, "There are a handful of moments when an American science fiction novel has abruptly and seemingly effortlessly satisfied every possible expectation conveyed not only by the genre's ambitions, but by the whole literary landscape with which it was contemporary: Sturgeon's More than Human, Dick's The Man in the High Castle, LeGuin's The Dispossessed, and Gibson's Neuromancer. The Forever War is one such book, and like those others, still carries with it that air of recognition and possibility."

RANDY SUE COBURN
Tuesday, July 21 at 7:30 p.m.

Co-presented with Hedgebrook. From a memoir written by a landscape architect one night (Bibi Gaston), we go to a novel written about one the next, with this welcome return by Seattle novelist Randy Sue Coburn with her newest, A Better View of Paradise (Ballantine). This is a coming-to-terms story of a daughter and her father—an adult daughter and her aging father—with life's twists and turns playing its parts, is engaging and insightful. "Randy Sue Coburn writes with a rare combination of crisp intelligence and lush sensuality." - Stephanie Kallos. "Coburn's moving tale reminds us that sometimes we need to jump in and give ourselves to love, even when the past has taught that love can be a terrifying thing." - Garth Stein.

JEROME GOLD
Wednesday, July 22 at 7:30 p.m.

All the while Jerry Gold has been known hereabouts and beyond as the founder/publisher of Black Heron Press, he has also been carving out a niche for himself as an excellent author. He is here this evening with a powerful memoir of his years of work as a rehabilitation counselor for young offenders in a Washington state prison. Paranoia & Heartbreak: Fifteen Years in a Juvenile Facility (Seven Stories Press) tells stories, and offers perspectives that rarely get aired in larger circles. "Paranoia & Heartbreak digs deeper—Jerry Gold mines the gold of these kids' emotions, exposes the broken system, shares the kids' grief and pain and hurt and loves. He doesn't judge these words of the state, he understands them, he takes their voiceless lives and makes them palpable." - Jimmy Santiago Baca.

MAHBOD SERAJI
Thursday, July 23 at 7:30 p.m.

Born and raised in Iran, and in the U.S. since the mid-70s, Bay Area based consultant Mahbod Seraji tells a coming-of-age story in his debut novel, Rooftops of Tehran (New American Library). "Rooftops of Tehran evoked many memories, along with tears and smiles, of starry nights on rooftops, long-lost loves, and intense, passionate feelings of anger at the injustices and the absurd excesses of the Pahlavi regime." - Nahid Mozaffari. "Rooftops of Tehran is a richly rendered first novel about courage, sacrifice, and the bonds of friendship and love. In clear, vivid detail, Mahbod Seraji opens the door to the fascinating world of Iran and provides a revealing glimpse into the life and customs of a country on the verge of revolution. A captivating read." - Gail Tsukiyama.

LAURA MAMO
Sunday, July 26 at 2 p.m.

University of Maryland sociology professor Laura Mamo has, with Jennifer Fosket, founded Social Green—a non-profit organization that engages in environmental-related research and education. They've also collaborated on a new book, Living Green: Communities That Sustain (New Society), which looks at actual communities that take on social, environmental, and sustainability issues and succeed. "This is the book I've been waiting for, and the book that will become mandatory reading for anyone interested in understanding or creating quality communities." - Robert Berkabile. "The key word in the title is 'communities.' It's an idea we've let languish too long, and it's inspiring to read these accounts of its comeback." - Bill McKibben.

SASHA ABRAMSKY
Monday, July 27 at 7:30 p.m.
--THIS EVENT RESCHEDULED TO AUGUST--

Demos Institute fellow Sasha Abramsky speaks this evening about "hidden" hunger among the working poor, the subject of his new book, Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It (PoliPoint). Squeezed even further by the collapse of the housing market, by rising health care and energy costs, low-wage workers are now "the face of modern poverty," he writes, and are ever more visible in food bank lines. "Abramsky writes in the best tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich, Studs Terkel, and John Steinbeck. The fruit of his patient and compassionate research, Breadline USA is required reading for all of us concerned to banish, forever, the long hidden legacy of hunger in America." - Raj Patel. Sasha Abramsky's books include American Furies, Hard Times Blues, and Conned.

STAGES - ELLIOTT BAY DRAMA BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, July 28 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. Our selection this month is Life After God by Michael Lewis MacLennan, adapted from the story by Douglas Coupland. This play is a lively, penetrating look at the first generation raised without religion. The play centers on the eccentric, sensitive Scout and six friends who went to school together, and how their lives unravel fifteen years later as they face the challenges and disillusionment of adulthood.

RICK BASS
Tuesday, July 28 at 7:30 p.m.

A welcome return is made to one of this country's most eloquent and esteemed authors—one who has long made writing about place a keystone, be his writing fiction or non-fiction. Rick Bass is back from his Yaak Valley, Montana home with his newest book, The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). "Classic in form, the journal of a year in an old loved place, The Wild Marsh is a lovingly wrought chronicle from a writerly soul that has found its spot in the world: the one-of-a-kind Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana. Sure-footed in his approach, whether the topic is a forest fire in his front yard or the excitement of the first tiny, cheerful glacier lilies in spring, Rick Bass is a stirring companion on the trail that leads west from the Walden Pond of Henry David Thoreau and the Sand County of Aldo Leopold." - Ivan Doig. Amen.

ADAM SCHELL
Wednesday, July 29 at 7:30 p.m.

With a background that includes having been a college football linebacker, an award-winning (short) filmmaker, a screenwriter, cook, yoga teacher, and picker of grapes and olives in Tuscany, it only follows that Adam Schell would write fiction. Early word on his novel, Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Lust, Love and Forbidden Fruit (Delacorte), is that he may have found a trade he will want to stick with (readers will). "If only every debut novel arrived with such spirit, Adam Schell's Tomato Rhapsody is set in the 16th century of a Tuscan village filled with eccentrics, some of whom speak in rhyme. It's a love story between an Ebreo (Hebrew) tomato farmer and a Catholic girl. The village comes alive when their romance is discovered. Blame the Ebrei and their tomatoes. 'They had planted their fields with a strange red fruit that the old padre derisively referred to as Love Apples straight from the Garden of Eden,' Schell writes. As we all know, forbidden fruit is the most delicious—and dangerous." - Craig Wilson, USA Today.

CHRISTOPHER R. BEHA & JAMES FUERST
Thursday, July 30 at 7:30 p.m.

Christopher Beha reads and eventually 'revives' the Harvard Classics, Charles Eliot's liberal arts education in (51-volume) book form in The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else (Grove Press). Once a cultural landmark (enjoyed by Augie March and Malcolm X, debated in the movie High Society), this long-running series had become obscure until Beha, a young New Yorker recovering from lymphoma decided it was time to read—and write—about it. "Beha is a clear-sighted writer who has accomplished exactly what Eliot would have wanted: He found repose and strength of mind in those who express things more eloquently than we in our Twittering, blog-filled age, ever can." - Bookforum. Fellow New York writer James Fuerst will read from his debut novel, Huge (Three Rivers Press), which features Eugene Smalls, a diminutive sixth grader and Philip Marlowe fan whose grandmother hires him to solve a crime. "Credible and engaging, [with] a hero who assumes the most eye-catching characteristics of Holden Caulfield, Philip Marlowe and Nick Twisp ... Fuerst pulls off the same trick as the 2005 film Brick in making his protagonist's suburban surroundings and mundane foes seem as hard-boiled and corrupt as those in the Chandler novels Huge treasures." - Kirkus Reviews.

LYANDA LYNN HAUPT
Friday, July 31 at 7:30 p.m.

We conclude this month with an invitation to explore the natural world within the city tonight as another Seattle naturalist makes a most welcome Elliott Bay return. "We practice wonder by resisting the temptation to hurry past things worth seeing," writes Lyanda Lynn Haupt, in her new book, Crow Planet: Finding Our Place in the Zoopolis (Little, Brown). While partly a meditation on the relationship between humans and crows (one crow, in particular), Crow Planet tells a much larger story about the ecosystems within our city and how to open our eyes to them. "This book will remind you to open your eyes to the mundane—it will make the city a far richer place for you." - Bill McKibben. "A fresh take on conscious living in the everyday world." - Kirkus Reviews.

ALSO TO NOTE:

Port Townsend Writers Conference. The annual Port Townsend Writers Conference takes place July 12 - 19 at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend. Readings and craft lectures by the teaching faculty are scheduled—and open—during that time. CHRIS ABANI, KIM BARNES, ADRIAN CASTRO, DENISE CHÁVEZ, TONY COHAN, MARK DOTY, PETER OMER, LILIANA VALENZUELA, & ROBERT WRIGLEY are among those on tap and slated to read/talk/teach. Please see www.centrum.org for information.
Pacific Northwest Writers Conference. The 54th annual Pacific Northwest Writers Conference—the region's largest gathering of agents, editors, and other book trade pros—takes place July 30 - Aug. 2 at the Seattle Airport Hilton and Conference Center. TERRY BROOKS is the keynote. Please see www.pnwa.org for information.
Richard Hugo House. Among its various classes, workshops, and other programs, Hugo House in July plays host to a reading by MIDGE RAYMOND and JANNA CAWRSE ESAREY on July 23. Please see www.hugohouse.org for more information.

AUGUST OCCASIONS

August Occasions. Among those due here as the blackberries ripen are: JACK STRAW GROUP READING, Aug 3; KEVIN CANTY, Aug 4; JOHN HESS, Aug 5; DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, Aug. 6 at The Seattle Public Central Library; "Aspects of Wagner's Ring," presented by SEATTLE OPERA, Aug. 8; BLACK HERON PRESS Anniversary Group Reading, Aug. 10; STEVEN APFELBAUM, Aug. 12; ELISABETH HYDE, Aug. 13; DAVID EAGLEMAN, Aug. 17; CHERYL KLEIN, Aug. 18; MOLLY MELLOY, Aug 21; DAVID MAS MASUMOTO, Aug. 25. 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 July and/or see our August newsletter for more current and detailed information forthcoming. Thanks.

BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY is the title of NALINI NADKARNI's book. (See July 3).