The Elliott Bay Book Company

DAN RALEY
Sunday, August 1 at 2 p.m.

Part of the late Seattle Post-Intelligencer's post-existence diaspora, journalist Dan Raley is now newsroom editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. While the P-I existed, he was for three decades one of its key players in the sports department. He is out of the southern heat and back in the hometown for this visit, which includes appearing here to discuss the colorful history of SoDo—the area 'south of downtown,' and south of where the Kingdome once stood. His book, Tideflats to Tomorrow: The History of Seattle's SoDo (Fairgreens Publishing), examines the ongoing transformation of this core historically industrial area, once known for its Hooverville, and now, increasingly, for its sports stadiums, clubs, design firms, and corporate headquarters.

STASIA KATO & KEVIN BOZE
Sunday, August 1 at 7 p.m.

Comics artists Stasia Kato and Kevin Boze's Virgin Project, which began as part of the "Comic Biography Theatre" at Bumbershoot, and as a performance piece at the Seattle Erotic Comics Festival, is now a two-volume book project. The Virgin Project 2: More Real Stories from Real People (Fanny Press) collects more true stories about first sexual experiences—straight, queer, funny, unusual, and sometimes terrifying—illustrated by a variety of local comics artists. Kevin Boze, who received a Meritorious Service Medal for his comic, Corp. Kev, which ran in the European edition of Stars and Stripes, is also the creator of the online comics, Roll Call and Camille. Stasia Kato is a fine-art student and illustrator.

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Tuesday, August 3 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

Our twice-a-week Children's Storytimes, set for Tuesday and Saturday mornings each month, commence for August with this morning's reading from picture- and storybook favorites out of our children's section. One of our Elliott Bay bookfolk will do the reading and telling honors. Go to the castle in the children's section ... and the stories begin! Please join us.

MICHAEL BYERS
Tuesday, August 3 at 7 p.m.

Seattle native son Michael Byers, author of a much-praised first book of stories, The Coast of Good Intentions, and a terrific Seattle-set novel, Long for This World, is back in his hometown with a new novel, Percival's Planet (Henry Holt). "... a gloriously expansive view of Depression-era America, from the easy extravagance of the Boston Brahmins to hardscrabble rural life. At its core, this is the story of Clyde Tombaugh, an unassuming Kansas farm kid who achieves international fame for his discovery of Pluto ... Byers connects Clyde's story with a number of riveting and eventually interlinking subplots ... Between the faultless storytelling and the juicy historical hook, this looks like a hit." – Publishers Weekly. "Fascinating ... fresh and astonishing ... Brilliant observations about human nature—obsessiveness, laziness, duplicity, and violence, but also creativity, faithfulness, integrity, selflessness, and courage—are all illustrated by unique yet believable, likable characters ... This insightful, witty novel grabs the heart and tickles the mind." – Booklist.

RICK MOODY
Wednesday, August 4 at 7 p.m.

One of the foremost writers of his generation—or any—at work today, Rick Moody makes this welcome return to Elliott Bay. Author of novels (The Ice Storm, Purple America, The Diviners), novella and story collections (Demonology), and a memoir (The Black Veil), he is here tonight with a wild new novel, The Four Fingers of Death (Little, Brown). "A rollicking romp through deep space and Arizona alike, improbably and thoroughly entertaining, courtesy of master storyteller Moody. Mash up Isaac Asimov with Thomas Pynchon, with dashes of Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut, and you begin to approach Moody's madcap view of the world. His near-future tale opens in 2024 with a sad sack of a writer named Montese Crandall, who—shades of Twitterous tweets—has been perfecting the art of reducing an epic to a single line ... Moody brings in dozens of characters major and minor ... and not a one of them [is] wasted; as he gamely intertwines their destinies, he switches moods, voice, register and generally has a grand old time twitting the conventions of science fiction and literary narrative alike. It's a big goof, but punctuated by telling commentary about the direction society, the planet and literature are all going—which, suffice it to say, is not an ideal one. A smart, fun satire—Jonathan Swift in space, with twists befitting Vincent Price." – Kirkus Reviews.

COLETTE BROOKS
Thursday, August 5 at 7 p.m.

Another native of Seattle (following Michael Byers) who's moved away but makes visits back such as this is nonfiction prose writer Colette Brooks. She first read at Elliott Bay for her PEN-Jerard Fund Award-winning meditation on cities, In the City: Random Acts of Awareness. She's here now with a new book on another form of awareness, Lost in Wonder: Imagining Science and Other Mysteries (Counterpoint). This is a readerly and writerly bridge between the casually informed layperson and the 'expert'—the latter a category to which so much scientific weight in the culture has been assigned (or allowed)—as if others don't have a serious stake in participating and perceiving. Again, awareness, which includes wariness within it, along with much deep pleasure. Billy Collins comments for In the City seems apt for Lost in Wonder: "A lively mix of narrative, reportage, memoir, and meditative essay. This is an engaging book, so fraught with self-consciousness as to bring into question our notions of writing and literary structure."

JALLEN RIX, Ed.D.
Friday, August 6 at 7 p.m.

What are the relationships between the ex-gay movement, so-called 'reparative therapy,' and religious abuse? Sexologist Jallen Rix, himself a survivor of ex-gay ministry, and author of Ex-Gay, No Way: Survival and Recovery from Religious Abuse (Findhorn Press), shares his own story and that of many others once caught in the soul-eroding effort to change sexual orientation through prayer, exorcism, sham marriages, and heterosexual artifice. He also links tactics used in ex-gay circles with those in other power-abusive religious organizations, identifying greater patterns of religious abuse.

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Saturday, August 7 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

Join us for this fun hour of readings from picture and storybooks ... Go to the castle in the children's section ... and the stories begin!

LISA TRACY
Saturday, August 7 at 2 p.m.

After over ten years of paying storage fees for their late mother's possessions, Lisa Tracy and her sister finally sat down to the task of preparing for an auction. The process of uncovering the history of objects as varied as mismatched cake plates, an old Chinese trunk, and a chair in which our first president might have rested, is the tale she tells in The Objects of Our Affection: Uncovering My Family's Past, One Chair, Pistol and Pickle Fork at a Time (Bantam). "Lisa Tracy's Objects of Our Affection is a lovely and loving book, revealing the life of her well-traveled military family not just through the furniture they chose to keep, but through what they lost and surrendered along the way. Moving from the heights of San Juan Hill to the courtyards of China's Forbidden City, this book shows us why the possessions of our ancestors exert a profound influence upon our modern lives." – Jeff Gammage. Lisa Tracy's previous books include Muddy Waters: The Legacy of Katrina and Rita and The Gradual Vegetarian.

CATHERINE LUTZ & ANNE LUTZ FERNANDEZ
Saturday, August 7 at 5 p.m.

Average American families spend over $14,000 per year on their cars. Adding this to rising gas prices, wars over oil, global warming, rising rates of asthma and obesity, and a yearly highway death toll exceeding 40,000, and the costs of maintaining our car-centric culture as it is looks unsustainable. Anthropologist Catherine Lutz and her sister, former investment banker Anne Lutz Fernandez, examine these issues and offer some personal and policy level solutions in Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile & Its Effect on Our Lives (Palgrave Macmillan). "Exceptionally well-researched and passionately, yet logically argued, Carjacked will make you rethink your relationship not only with your car, but with the entire economic and physical infrastructure that has built up around it." – Clay Paska. Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez will also speak at a program sponsored by the Seattle Department of Transportation on Friday, August 6 at 3 p.m. in the Bertha Landes Room of Seattle's City Hall.

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Tuesday, August 10 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

Join us for this fun hour of readings from picture and storybooks ... Go to the castle in the children's section ... and the stories begin!

ANDREW BACEVICH
Tuesday, August 10 at 7 p.m.

A now-retired career military officer who has moved on to teaching, as he is professor of history and international relations at Boston University, Andrew Bacevich has come to be known as an astute, perceptive analyst of U.S. military and political affairs. His first books, The Limits of Power and The New American Militarism, were each newsmaking books. He is here tonight with his newest work, Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (Metropolitan/Holt). "Bacevich offers an unsparing, cogent, and important critique of assumptions guiding American military policy. These central tenets, the 'Washington rules' ... have dominated national security policy since the start of the cold war and have condemned the U.S. to 'insolvency and perpetual war.' Bacevich argues that while the Washington rules found their most pernicious expression in the Bush doctrine of preventive war, Barack Obama's expansion of the Afghan War is also cause for pessissim: 'We should be grateful to him for making at least one thing unmistakably clear: to imagine that Washington will ever tolerate second thoughts about the Washington rules is to engage in willful self-deception. Washington has too much to lose.'" – Publishers Weekly.

PETER HELLER
Wednesday, August 11 at 7 p.m.

Journalist Peter Heller makes a stop here this evening on his barnstorming, Cesna-powered West Coast tour to talk about his discovery of surfing, and of falling in love again at midlife, both subjects of his memoir, Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Life, Love and the Perfect Wave (Free Press). "People admire surfers so much (says Peter Heller) because they have bowed to a force greater than themselves—the wave—and have transformed themselves into beings who can respond to such power with grace, humility, and beauty. By the end of this powerful memoir, Heller has learned that surfing is not simply about staying up on your board; it's about love: of a woman, of living, of the sea." – Publishers Weekly. Peter Heller's previous books include The Whale Warriors.

SHAWNA YANG RYAN
Thursday, August 12 at 1 p.m.

Special midday at Elliott Bay reading. Originally published as Locke 1928 by a small California press—a story somewhat akin to Karl Marlantes and Matterhorn—Shawna Yang Ryan's debut novel, Water Ghosts (new in paper, Penguin) is a brilliant tale of three young Chinese immigrant women who take on life and some larger than life force in the Sacramento delta eighty years ago. "A beautiful debut, Water Ghosts opens up a page in history that sometimes is forgotten by both cultures that once coexisted in Locke, a Sacramento Chinese farming town. By mapping out the familiar and the strange territories of human passion and retelling the old myths, Shawna yang Ryan tells a story that, in the end, is about how America was truly made." – Yiyun Li. "Artfully woven, exquisitely modulated, walking a master's line between ancient, Chinese myth and the grit of immigrant life in the Sacramento delta, Water Ghosts tells the unforgettable story of a town brought to its knees by loneliness and longing. Complicated, compassionate, haunting, Shawna Yang Ryan's novel feels more like tapestry than words on paper, her prose less like sentences and more like song." – Pam Houston.

MAGED ZAHER
Thursday, August 12 at 7 p.m.
      POETRY

A marvelous, locally-based poet (and software ace) who is originally from Cairo, Maged Zaher gives this first full Elliott Bay reading as a kind of sendoff before a trip 'home' to see family and touch base. He is here with a recently published volume of poetry, Portrait of the Poet as an Engineer (Pressed Wafer), a book written in English, but dedicated to the Arabic language. "Maged Zaher is in my view the contemporary writer simultaneously the furthest inside and the most outside the English language as we know it. His texts are intensely casual and bathed in the language of Groupthink and Microsoft, yet deeply thought and rhythmically alluring, which is all the more impressive for the detrius they take on and challenge. Like his near contemporary, Linh Dinh, Zaher can fashion either sentence or line to the point where sublimity and absurdity make a viable erotic couple. If Frank O'Hara has been an Arab and a Coptic Christian living in late capitalist Seattle, he would have been called Maged Zaher." – Leonard Schwartz.

DICK WEISSMAN
Friday, August 13 at 7 p.m.

American culture and politics interwoven through popular music is the subject of Dick Weissman's book, Talkin' Bout a Revolution: Music and Social Change in America (Backbeat Books). From "Johnny Has Gone for a Solider," first heard during the Revolutionary War, through "Miss Destruction," written by the rappers Faithless during the Iraq War, Talkin' Bout a Revolution offers a comprehensive guide to the yearnings, frustrations, commitments, and hopes of many generations of American men and women, including Native Americans, Latinos, and African Americans. Portland-based music historian Dick Weissman, who was also a founding member of the folk trio the Journeymen, speaks, plays and sings some examples here today. This should be fun.

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Saturday, August 14 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

Join us for this fun hour of readings from picture and storybooks ... Go to the castle in the children's section ... and the stories begin!

APRIL WINCHELL
Saturday, August 14 at 2 p.m.

With the success of Etsy.com, the entrepreneurial crafter's online, one-stop shopping and selling source, wasn't Regretsy, which Salon has called, 'the hall of fame for artistic impulses gone oddly awry,' inevitable? The gold-embossed Cheerio on a chain, the pink leopard goat coat, and the soap that makes you smell like bacon, might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it takes real guts to try to sell all of these things online. It also takes a sense of humor to have your work featured on April Winchell's blog and in her book, Regretsy: Where DIY Meets WTF (Villard). Come and share your own regretsys. For more, see www.regretsy.com.

CONFERENCE OF CREATIVE ENTREPRENEURS Booksigning
Saturday, August 14 at 5:30 p.m.

This weekend, organizers of the popular Urban Craft Uprising and PlushYou! Show join forces with other veteran crafters for a Conference of Creative Entrepreneurs, a three-day, special event for those wanting to start or expand a creative business. As part of the conference (find more about it below), ten presenters will also participate in a free meet-and-greet, and booksigning here at Elliott Bay. Expected to participate in this convivial signing occasion are: Felting maven Moxie; Samantha Fisher of Sock Monkey & Friends Kit (Chronicle) fame; Schmancy's Kristin Rask, author of Button and Stitch (NorthLight Books); Faythe Levine with Handmade Nation (Princeton Architectural Review); Grace Dobush, author of Crafty Superstar (NorthLight Books); Garth Johnson, author of 1000 Ideas for Creative ReUse (Quarry); Jenny Hart, author of Embroidered Effects (Chronicle); Susan Beal, Bead Simple (Taunton); and Diane Gilleland, Kanzashi in Bloom. For more about the August 13 – 15 Conference of Creative Entrepreneus, held at Richard Hugo House and the Century Ballroom, please see creativeconferencewest.eventbrite.com. The booksigning at Elliott Bay is free (attendance), open and welcome to all.

JENNIFER JORDAN
Monday, August 16 at 7 p.m.
--RESCHEDULED TO SEPTEMBER 14!--

Award-winning author, filmmaker, and screenwriter, most known for her book, Savage Summits, Jennifer Jordan visits this evening with her new tale of Himalayan adventures in days of yore (1939), The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2 (W.W. Norton). "The Last Man on the Mountain is a page-turning account of one of mountaineering's most intriguing mysteries: what happened to Dudley Wolfe and the three Sherpas sent to rescue him on K2 in 1939? Jennifer Jordan has great respect for the legend and the lives she examines; she also has a novelist's eye for character and for the telling detail. What emerges in this wonderful book is a story of ego, hubris, and the price of passion in the world's highest arena." – Greg Mortenson. "The Last Man on the Mountain will finds its place in the adventure canon of man versus the mountains, when wool, hemp, and hobnails ruled, and class and national differences roiled beneath the surface ... Jordan has done a great job." – Peter Porterfield.

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Tuesday, August 17 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

Join us for this fun hour of readings from picture and storybooks ... Go to the castle in the children's section ... and the stories begin!

ELLIOTT BAY YOUNG ADULT BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, August 17 at 4 p.m.

Please join us for this monthly, hosted book discussion group, featuring a selected title for good and lively talk. On tap for this month is M.T. Anderson's YA novel, The Game of Sunken Places (Scholastic). Two young boys visit an eccentric uncle at his isolated mansion in the Vermont woods and soon find themselves drawn into a riddle-filled game full of twists, turns and the kinds of extraordinary characters only MT Anderson can dream up. This should be fun for all...

SPECULATIONS - ELLIOTT BAY SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, August 17 at 6:30 p.m.

As the literature of ideas and imagination, Science Fiction and Fantasy simply demands discussion. Our August selection is the Nebula award-winning novel, The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi. Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko. Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe. What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution?

JULIE SHEEHAN & LINDA BIERDS
Tuesday, August 17 at 7 p.m.
      POETRY

This evening's pair of poets3one visiting, one from hereabouts—could each easily hold an evening on her own. Lucky for those here tonight that they are paired for this. With Julie Sheehan, here from her Long Island home, where she teaches at Stony Brook, Southampton, it could also well be at one of our neighborhood's fine (and many) watering holes. Her third collection, Bar Book: Poems and Otherwise (W.W. Norton), is very much a bar- and drink-set book. And an exceedingly accomplished one. "When Julie Sheehan takes the lyric poem out for a few drinks, everyone winds up talking fast and loose. The lush, agreeably-out-of-style cocktails who take the stage in Bar Book tell their stories in voices comic, cracked, and aching, and along the way a narrative of lost love—the story behind every solitary monologue over drinks, in one way or another—unfolds, pulling the reader through this artful, wry, and unlikely book's tale of hearts on the rocks and hearts surviving." – Mark Doty. With poet and University of Washington professor Linda Bierds, over from her Bainbridge Island home, we are talking one of the most honored and awarded poets at work in the U.S. today: two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships; Guggenheim, Wolfers-O'Neill, Ingram Merrill, Rockefeller, and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation fellowships; the PEN West Poetry Award; and four Pushcart Prizes. Flight: New and Selected Poems (Marian Wood/G.P. Putnam's Sons) is her most recent of eight poetry collections. "Bierds's poems, with their constantly surprising delicacy and their language rich with insight and a sensuous music, radiate real power and authority and animal presence. Her true originality has no need of quirkiness to emphasize it, and the range of her interests, empathy, knowledge, and imagination is imposing." – W.S. Merwin.

HOWARD NORMAN
Wednesday, August 18 at 7 p.m.

A most welcome Elliott Bay return is made this evening by novelist Howard Norman. Author of such longstanding reader and critical favorites as The Bird Artist, The Northern Lights, The Museum Guard, and In Fond Remembrance of Me, he is back with a terrific new novel, What is Left the Daughter (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). "Back" also includes the return of northern, Nova Scotia landscapes that have served as setting for some of his most resonant, memorable works. "What is Left the Daughter, Hoard Norman's 10th book, is an epistolary novel about death, survival, and legacy ... Reminiscent of a classic Robert Frank black-and-white photograph, this candid, everyday portrait discloses intricate webs of wistfulness and resignation. Norman raises absorbing moral quandaries, particularly about the possibilities of forgiveness ... The epistolary form of this novel is a cri de coeur from an author faithful to the printed word in a time of promiscuous texting, friending, and tweeting ... The reflective, personal storytelling in What is Left the Daughter reminds us of the potential beauty, intimacy and wisdom offered by two endangered genres—the letter and the novel." – Valerie Miner, The Los Angeles Times.

CALEB BARBER
Thursday, August 19 at 7 p.m.

Down from Bellingham, where he works at an aerospace machine shop, is Caleb Barber with his fine debut collection of poems, Beasts and Violins (Red Hen Press). "Caleb Barber is a large talent without any time for language that doesn't strike and haunt. With his raw, bleak voice, Barber resuscitates the American narrative poem—a species dying into the anecdotal—so that it stands up again and sings." – Katie Ford. "Caleb Barber's fortuitous debut onto the American poetry scene strikes me as every bit as consequential and clarifying as those of his recognizable mentors—Spicer, Hugo, Wright, and Carver. Having absorbed them, he's done what no one could have taught him: given honest and singular voice to the painful extremities of being both beast and violin, brutish and fragile, mired in the flesh, yet bent on not being entirely at its mercy." – Tess Gallagher.

STACEY LEVINE & FRIENDS
Friday, August 20 at 7 p.m.

This evening has a celebratory air to it as esteemed Seattle writer Stacey Levine and others launch a new edition of her superb novel, Frances Johnson (Verse Chorus Press). Originally published by Matthew Stadler and Rich Jensen's brainchild, Clear Cut Press, in 2005, this book, a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, has been out of print for some time. The new edition was revised by the author, re-typeset, and printed in a 5" by 8" trade format with a striking new cover. This evening's gathering will highlight work by some of Seattle's hard-working arts practitioners, with brief readings by Stacey Levine, and local poets Rebecca Hoggs, Johnny Horton, and others, with music by cellist Lori Goldston (Spectratone International Earth). Plus a special musical guest and refreshments. Stacey Levin received The Stranger Genius Award in 2009. "Stacey Levine ignores lyricism as an evolutionary dead end. Life is fractious and dire, her prose style says; let fiction serve as razor and torch. It's not that Levine isn't funny or that she doesn't forge phrases and sentences of throat-clutching beauty. It's just that her effort to dissect humankind's propensity for neuroses, fallacies, and other inanities requires measured drollery and surgical concision." – Donna Seaman, Bookforum.

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Saturday, August 21 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

Join us for this fun hour of readings from picture and storybooks ... Go to the castle in the children's section ... and the stories begin!

DR. SHANHONG LU, MD, PhD
Saturday, August 21 at 11 a.m.
--LATE BREAKING ADDITION!--
      DONATIONS WELCOME

Co-presented by ELLIOTT BAY CAFÉ and MT. SHASTA INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE. Dr. Shanhong Lu, MD, PhD, a fellow Breast Cancer Fund "Climb Against the Odds" teammate from Mt. Shasta, CA is presenting a fundraising lecture about Pure Prevention and the Age of Toxins. Growing up in Beijing, China with aspirations to become a ballerina, artist, or concert pianist, Dr. Lu reluctantly realized that medicine was in her genes. Her grandmother, a traditional Chinese healer, and her mother, a world-renown female cardiologist and the first ever female physician in China, provided her with deep insight into their respective fields and philosophies. As a result of this influence, Dr. Lu today instinctively blends eastern and western approaches towards healing. She completed her MD at Beijing Medical University, becoming a third-generation physician. Having been exposed throughout her life to both traditional Chinese as well as western medicine, Dr. Lu never released her belief in holistic and spiritual healing. After completing her PhD, Dr. Lu chose to pursue patient treatment rather than research, recognizing the value of connecting directly with human beings. She embraces all paths of healing and rejuvenation with a passion for improving quality of life and proactive approaches toward aging. $10 suggested donation for tickets, all proceeds benefit the Breast Cancer Fund's groundbreaking work to identify and eliminate the environmental causes of cancer. Tamara Murphy is generously providing bites from Elliott Bay Café. To secure your spot, go to www.brownpapertickets.com. Please join us in what is sure to be a very informative morning.

LAURIE FRANKEL
Saturday, August 21 at 4 p.m.

A Seattle writer who teaches at the University of Puget Sound, Laurie Frankel is here with her just-published debut novel, The Atlas of Love (St. Martin's Press). Set in Seattle, this is the story of a woman who finds herself pregnant (and single) at an inopportune time. How she navigates grad school and raises her child in an unconventional (to most eyes) manner—tri-parenting, tri-schooling, tri-habitating—is at the core of this delightful book. "Packed full of hilarious and insightful observations on life, love, and literature, The Atlas of Love deftly explores the boundaries of friendship and family, and the true meaning of motherhood." –J. Courtney Sullivan. "An engaging and funny novel ... on the power and limits of female friendship." – Tom Perotta.

VINCENT KOVAR & FRIENDS
Saturday, August 21 at 7 p.m.

Editor Vincent Kovar and Gay City's deputy director Peter Jabin are joined by a number of writer/artist contributors this evening to celebrate the publication of Gay City, Volume 3: Re-Pulped (Gay City Health Project). A collection of photographs, comics, stories, essays, and poetry, this anthology also includes selections from contemporary artists and queer pioneers, all working across genres to redefine what gay was, is, and might be. Seattle's Gay City Health Project is a multicultural gay men's health organization working to promote the health of gay and bisexual men, and to prevent HIV transmission by building community. For more information on this vital group and its work, please see www.gaycity.org—and be here at Elliott Bay this evening.

DANIEL BURTON-ROSE
Monday, August 23 at 7 p.m.

During the 1970s, Seattle's Pioneer Square, Capitol Hill, and Central District were the organizing and base grounds for the George Jackson Brigade, a group of black and white men and women, both queer and straight, whose three-year campaign against 'corporate and state institutions' resulted in fifteen attempted bombings, a jailbreak, and, for some, prison terms. Historian Daniel Burton-Rose's fascinating research on the era and its people brings to light many of the economic, cultural, and political realities of the time. He's here this evening to speak about his book, Guerilla USA: The George Jackson Brigade and the Anticapitalist Underground of the 1970's (University of California Press). We welcome others from "back in the day" to join in the conversation, and those who've come along since, wanting to know more the story of times not so long distant. "Guerilla USA is an engaged and engaging work, an intimate account of a buried piece of American history. Daniel Burton-Rose combines exhaustive scholarship with passionate partisanship to create an excruciatingly honest portrait." – Bill Ayers. Daniel Burton-Rose is also editor of Creating a Movement with Teeth: A Documentary History of the George Jackson Brigade, and co-editor, with Dan Pens and Paul Wright, of The Ceiling of America: An Inside Look at the US Prison Industry.

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Tuesday, August 24 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

Join us for this fun hour of readings from picture and storybooks ... Go to the castle in the children's section ... and the stories begin!

STAGES - ELLIOTT BAY DRAMA BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, August 24 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 for August is the newest Pulitzer Prize-winner Next to Normal by Brian Yorkey, newly published in book form. "No show on Broadway right now makes as a direct grab for the heart—or wrings it as thoroughly—as Next to Normal does. . . . [It] focuses squarely on the pain that cripples the members of a suburban family, and never for a minute does it let you escape the anguish at the core of their lives. Next to Normal does not, in other words, qualify as your standard feel-good musical. Instead this portrait of a manic-depressive mother and the people she loves and damages is something much more: a feel-everything musical, which asks you, with operatic force, to discover the liberation in knowing where it hurts." - Ben Brantley, The New York Times. Please join us for this evening's lively discussion.

ALDONA JONAITIS
Tuesday, August 24 at 7 p.m.

One of the foremost scholars at work on Northwest Coast native art, Aldona Jonaitis is now director emerita of the Alaska Museum of the North, but is still more than active as professor (University of Alaska Fairbanks) and author. She is here with a sumptuous, major new work, The Totem Pole: An Intercultural History (University of Washington Press). Co-authored with Aaron Glass, and featuring sidebar contributions from Robert Davidson, Susan Point, Richard Hunt, Bill Holm, and others. Smart, scholarly, and with a sense of humor—cartoons and ads featuring totem poles are included—and a feast for the eye, this may be the fullest, most accessible book on totem poles yet published. It may also be the most essential, delving as it does into history, and into the diaspora of totem poles off to other parts of the world. Aldona Jonaitis' other books include Art of the Northwest Coast and Looking North: Art from the University of Alaska Museum, among many.

JULIA HOLMES
Wednesday, August 25 at 7 p.m.

Summer is always a good time to find the work of new writers, and this season, we've been looking forward to meeting (and hosting) Julia Holmes, author of Meeks, newly released by one of our favorite independent literary houses, Small Beer Press. "A highly imaginative debut finds a stark Darwinian logic in a rigidly Darwinian society. In Holmes's unnamed dystopia, everyone is ascribed a place strictly enforced by the police, with the young Bachelors bearing the responsibility of finding a wife, an accomplishment that will secure them a place in society ... Holmes has fashioned a terrifying and utterly convincing world in which the perfect human being is one stripped of all illusions." – Publishers Weekly.

GEORGIA PELLEGRINI
Thursday, August 26 at 7 p.m.

The stories of sixteen artisanal food devotees—all foragers, harvesters, growers, or farmers—are told by food blogger Georgia Pellegrini in hew new book, Food Heroes; Sixteen Culinary Artisans Preserving Tradition (Stewart, Tabori & Chang). Here for the International Food Bloggers' Conference this weekend, Georgia Pellegrini will share her own love of ingredients "anchored to season and place," a passion nurtured within her during her own childhood in the Hudson Valley, and her days working at farm-to-table restaurants. One of the larger-than-life food advocates she profiles is Seattle 'fish missionary' Jon Rowley. Please join us. For more about the International Food Bloggers' Conference (August 27 – 29), please see www.foodista.com/ifbc2010/. Georgia Pellegrini's website is www.georgiapellegrini.com.

ALEX COHEN & JENNIFER BARBEE
Friday, August 27 at 7 p.m.

L.A. Derby Dolls skaters Alex "Axles of Fun" Cohen and Jennifer "Kasey Bomber" Barbee's Down and Derby: The Insider's Guide to Roller Derby (Seal Press) is both a history and a how-to for this generation's skaters and fans. More than 400 leagues strong, roller derby's heroes (villains), music, films, colorful aliases and good times are all part of the fascinating story these two skater/authors tell. "Required reading for anyone who's searching for more ways to be fearless." – Carrie Brownstein, Sleater-Kinney. For this evening, we're also expecting some representatives of our local Rat City Rollergirls, Seattle's all-female, premier flat track roller derby league. For more information, please see www.ratcityrollergirls.com.

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Saturday, August 28 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

Join us for this fun hour of readings from picture and storybooks ... Go to the castle in the children's section ... and the stories begin!

JOHN A. HARRISON
Saturday, August 28 at 2 p.m.

Our recent move to Capitol Hill has inspired us to host a series of talks having to do with our new (to us) neighborhood's history, beginning with this story of the man who built and briefly inhabited the "Sam Hill House" located on north Capitol Hill, near the St. Mark's greenbelt. Sam Hill was one of the great railway magnates of his day and an entrepreneur whose more well-known hilltop mansion is Maryhill, located 200-some miles southeast of Seattle's Capitol Hill. Sam Hill built both Maryhill and its famous, nearby Stonehenge replica for his lover Mona Bell. A Woman Alone: Mona Bell, Sam Hill and the Mansion on Bonneville Rock (Frank Amato) is John A. Harrison's account of both Mona Bell and Sam Hill, and of the former's court battle to retain title to her home. More programs on Capitol Hill (most a little more germane to Capitol Hill) to come. This meanwhile, sheds new light on an intriguing Northwest story.

ROBERTA GREGORY & BRUCE B. TAYLOR
Saturday, August 28 at 7 p.m.

Comic book artist Roberta Gregory and her partner Bruce Taylor have been longtime fixtures at literary fairs at Bumbershoot, Hugo House, and elsewhere throughout the region. Tonight we welcome them both to Elliott Bay to read from and talk about new work published by Landis Review Press. Bruce Taylor, sometimes known as "Mr. Magical Realism," reads from Mountains of the Night, in which he explores living with a chronic illness through the metaphor of hiking through a wilderness. Roberta Gregory, creator of Bitchy Bitch, speaks about her new collection, Follow Your Art: Roberta's Comic Trips, which includes pieces on her residency at Hedgebrook, a cross-country Amtrak trip, and some entertaining stories about budget book tours.

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Tuesday, August 31 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

Join us for this fun hour of readings from picture and storybooks ... Go to the castle in the children's section ... and the stories begin!

ALSO TO NOTE:

• Richard Hugo House. Along with various writer workshop programs in August, our very near neighbors at Hugo House host an anthology group reading, Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days on Aug. 19. See www.hugohouse.org for that and information on more.
• 5th Annual Bike-In. Cal Anderson plays host to this annual bicycle event on Aug. 28. See www.capitolhillseattle.com for information on that (and much other great news on the hill). The VERA Project, 2020 Cycle, The Bikery, Northwest Film Forum, and others co-present.
• Pilot Books. Always worth seeing and supporting, at 219 Broadway E. (upstairs), Pilot Books, dedicated solely to the small and independent in book and 'zine publishing. August readings include: STEVE CRESON, Aug. 9; JOSH WAGNER & THEO ELLSWORTH, Aug. 10; FRAGMENTS, Aug. 14; L@S QUIXOTES, Aug. 15; & AARON PECK, Aug. 28. See www.pilotbooksseattle.com for details & information.
• Naked Girls Reading. Not here (Elliott Bay), but very near: West Hall upstairs in the Oddfellows Building on Aug. 1, Naked Girls Reading Seattle and The Academy of Burlesque, present another in an ongoing series. See www.nakedgirls.com for more information.
• Northwest African American Museum. NAAM in August hosts ALVIN SINGH on Hudie William Ledbetter aka Lead Belly, on Aug. 5. There are music programs with CARMEL LATTÉ, Aug. 15, and 4 BEATS TO THE BAR, Aug. 26. There will also be an Elliott Bay co-presented evening at NAAM with author ISABEL WILKERSON and her much-awaited book, The Warmth of Other Suns: America's Greatest Epic Migration, Sept. 24 at 7 p.m. For more, please see www.naamnw.org.
• Night School, Sorrento Hotel. Night School's big August evening is "121212 writers musicians conversations," a fundraiser for 826seattle, Aug. 2 at 7 p.m. The writers featured include RYAN BOUDINOT, STACEY LEVINE, MATTHEW STADLER, JOHN RODERICK, STORME WEBBER, ANNE FOCKE, GREG LUNDGREN, DAVID SCHMADER, LESLEY HAZLETON, RACHEL KESSLER, EMILY WHITE + "one surprise guest." Presented in collaboration with Bumbershoot. Email kerri@hotelsorrento.com to reserve. Suggested donation is $15 - $30. See www.hotelsorrento.com for more information.
• ReAct Theatre. Our friends at ReAct Theatre present the world premiere of Seattle playwright MAGGIE LEE's charming new modern romantic ghost story Kindred Spirits, playing July 16 - August 8 at Richard Hugo House just up and around the corner from Elliott Bay. Directed by our very own bookseller, David Hsieh. For tickets and information, please see www.reacttheatre.org or call (206) 364-3283.

• Seattle Arts & Lectures. SAL's 2010-11 Literary Lecture Series starts with JONATHAN FRANZEN on Sept. 14; and continues with SARA PARETSKY, Oct. 19; DANIEL HANDLER, Nov. 9; JOHN RICHARDSON, Dec. 8; ELIZABETH STROUT, Jan. 24; JOYCE CAROL OATES, Apr. 28; and RICHARD FORD, May 10. SAL's 2010-11 Poetry Series includes ROBERT PINSKY, Oct. 15; ROBERT HASS, Oct. 28; BILLY COLLINS, Nov. 11; LUCIA PERILLO, Jan. 20; PATRICIA SMITH, Feb. 15; MARIE HOWE, March 15; MAJOR JACKSON, SUSAN RICH & BRIAN TURNER, Apr. 14 and WENDELL BERRY, May 24. And Special Events are set, so far, with T.R. REID, Oct. 5; NELL PAINTER IRVIN, Feb. 8; and TRACY KIDDER, March 2. All the above are presently scheduled for Benaroya Hall. Please see www.lectures.org for tickets/information on these, and other possible (likely) added programs.

SEPTEMBER SET

September Set. Among those due through or nearby for Elliott Bay in September: JUDITH ARMATTA, Sept. 1, New Poets of the American West group reading, Sept. 2; JOHN BRANDON, Sept. 8; CAROL CASSELLA, Sept. 9; MELANIE THERNSTROM, Sept. 10; JAMES GREER & JOSEPH MATTSON, Sept. 11; MIRYAM KABAKOV, Sept. 12 at 2; STEVEN T. MURRAY (aka "Reg Keeland") & TIINA NUNNALLY, back in Seattle, on translating STIEG LARSSON and others, Sept. 12 at 5; ERIC PUCHNER, Sept. 13; PETER LEWIS, Sept. 15; DAVID PLOUFFE, Sept. 15 at Town Hall Seattle (Tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com); MARK OLDHAM, Sept. 16; MARK HASKELL SMITH, Sept. 17 at 6; RICK BASS, Sept. 17 at 8; LINDA McDONALD LEWIS, Sept. 17 at Lake City Presbyterian Church & Sept. 19 at Sorrento Hotel; SETH BERG, Sept. 18; JULIA GLASS, Sept. 18; THEA COOPER, Sept. 18; Conversations with Pacific Northwest Ballet, Sept. 19 at 2; KIMBERLY FAY, Sept. 19; JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER, daytime program TBA, Sept. 20; MAE NGAI, Sept. 20; JUDITH SIMON PRAGER, Sept. 20 at Town Hall Seattle; TOM McCARTHY, Sept. 21; JOHN VAILLIANT, Sept. 22; CHARLES YU, Sept. 22 at 9 pm at locale TBA; JASMINE ALINDER, Sept. 23, co-presented with Densho; TERRY McMILLAN, Sept. 23 at Town Hall Seattle at 7:30 p.m., co-presented with the Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas (www.cdforum.org); ISABEL WILKERSON, Sept. 24 at the Northwest African American Museum at 7 p.m., co-presented with NAAM (www.naamnw.org); STEVEN ROBY & BRAD SCHREIBER with Becoming Jimi Hendrix, Jan. 25 at 7; TAO LIN, Sept. 26; SARA GRUEN, Sept. 27 at Seattle Public Central Library; DANIEL KEHLMAN, Sept. 27; ANNABEL LYON, Sept. 28; EMMA DONOGHUE, Sept. 29; MARY CATHERINE BATESON, Sept. 29 at Town Hall Seattle; AYAAN HIRSI ALI, Sept. 29 at Town Hall Seattle, presented by the World Affairs Council (www.world-affairs.org); ETHAN STOWELL, Sept. 30; MONA SIMPSON, Sept. 30. Also, early word on big Town Hall evenings at the very start of October: FATIMA BHUTTO, Oct. 2 at 7:30 p.m.; and MICHELE NORRIS, Oct. 4 at 7:30 p.m. (the latter presented by the CD Forum). We'll have updated information online very soon. 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 August and/or see our September newsletter for more current and detailed information forthcoming. Thanks.

HAPPY HOUR & SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORIES is from JULIE SHEEHAN's book of poems and 'otherwise,' Bar Book (see August 17), and GARY SHTEYNGART's new novel, Super Sad True Love Story (see August 2).