The Elliott Bay Book Company

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Saturday, June 1 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

Our weekly Children's Storytimes, set on Saturday mornings each month, do their regular commencing for June 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.

BARBARA SJOHOLM
Saturday, June 1 at 2 p.m.

Noted Port Townsend writer and editor Barbara Sjoholm (aka Barbara Wilson, novelist and co-founder of Seal Press), is also known for her fine translations of Danish and Norwegian literature. This afternoon, she reads from her newest such work, an English translation of a book by Danish artist and writer Emilie Demant Hatt. With the Lapps in the High Mountains: A Woman Among the Sami, 1907 - 1908 (University of Wisconsin Press) is a classic work based on Hatt's time with a Sami family in Lapland in the early 1900s.

KEVIN O'BRIEN
Saturday, June 1 at 7 p.m.

Co-presented with SEATTLE7WRITERS. It's summer (or has often felt that way, already) and you know that it's time for Seattle to become a hotbed of corruption, murder, deception, and general mayhem — at least the Seattle that exists within the imagination of thriller writer Kevin O'Brien. We're glad to host the book launch party for his newest novel, Unspeakable (Kensington), which is open to all. In Unspeakable, a Seattle therapist becomes convinced that one of her patients is behind a series of grisly murders Nothing more said ... except that this should be good fun.

SCOTT ELLIOTT
Sunday, June 2 at 3 p.m.

Over from Walla Walla, where he teaches at Whitman College, is Scott Elliott with his newly published second novel, Temple Grove (University of Washington Press). A morality tale involving old growth trees on the Olympic Peninsula is artfully done. "Like Alan Heathcock and Benjamin Percy, Scott Elliott writes from that place where the old myths and the new stories collide. In Temple Grove he reminds us of what it means to be lost to everyone and everything we have ever loved ... and to be found again. It is a story of longing, cruelty, forgiveness, and redemption, shot thought with intimate descriptions of a land on the cusp of ruin that will break your heart with their beauty." - Kim Barnes.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE
Monday, June 3 at 7 p.m.

One of the most accomplished novelists at work today, Nigeria-born fiction writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie makes this welcome Elliott Bay return for her newest novel, Americanah (Knopf). In this book, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and MacArthur Fellowship winner, writes of a couple caught between geography, politics, and history. "An incredibly readable and rich tapestry of Nigerian and American life, and the ways a handful of vivid characters — so vivid they feel like family — try to live in both worlds simultaneously. As she did so masterfully with Half of a Yellow Sun, Adichie paints on a grand canvas, boldly and confidently, equally adept at conveying the complicated political backdrop of Lagos as she is in bringing us into the day-to-day lives of her many new Americans. This is a very funny, very warm and moving intergenerational epic that confirms Adichie's virtuosity, boundless empathy, and searing social acuity."- Dave Eggers.

ELLIOTT BAY FICTION BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, June 4 at 6:30 p.m.

Each month, the Elliott Bay Fiction Book Club reads and discusses the best in contemporary fiction with the occasional classic thrown in for good measure. Our June selection is Georgi Vladimov's Faithful Ruslan. Unavailable for over twenty years, this gripping novel—first circulated anonymously in samizdat and now widely hailed as one of the most important works of the Soviet dissident era—tells the story of the guard dogs left behind at an abandoned prison camp in the Siberian gulag, it is told entirely from the perspective of one of the dogs. Starving and stray, desperate yet dedicated, Ruslan and his cadre of fellow guard dogs wait faithfully at the desolate train depot for the return of the godlike "Masters" they unconditionally loved. Also, for the next batch of prisoners they've been trained to viciously control—training that, as it turns out, gives this book a powerful and unexpected ending, when a train does indeed return to the depot on day.
Based on a real-life incident, and with wrenching detail derived from the gulag experiences of the author's imprisoned mother, Faithful Ruslan is a moving and absorbing tale, and a stirring cri de coeur against the violence of arbitrary power. "[An] exceptionally talented writer who has been cut down in mid-career and who is being hounded by the KGB. One reason for the persecution is his celebrated novella, Faithful Ruslan, which has circulated all over the country in samizdat." - Time. "Known as a writer of strong conscience... Mr. Vladimov's best known work, Faithful Ruslan is a chilling cynical parable of false hopes in the post-Stalin era." - The New York Times.

RU FREEMAN
Thursday, June 6 at 7 p.m.

Originally from Sri Lanka, Philadelphia-based writer Ru Freeman's 2009 debut novel, A Disobedient Girl, won serious praise and attention around the world, including being longlisted for the 2010 DSC South Asian Literature Prize. She makes this most welcome first Elliott Bay visit for a new novel that seems likely to find readers from near and far, the "elegiac and powerful" (Madeline Miller) book that is On Sal Mal Lane (Graywolf Press). Set just before and then into the onset of what would be a thirty-year civil war in Sri Lanka, this book sees what is to come through its masterfully empathetic, wise narrative of a small neighborhood of families — their children, and their adults. How everyone is connected and affected — regardless of varied backgrounds and ages — is told of with grace and a knowing sense of things. Its publication is being championed by numerous booksellers around the country and a chorus of writers and early reviews — Luis Alberto Urrea, Lorraine Adams, Rana Dasgupta, and Tania James among them. "Piercingly intelligent and shatter-your-heart profound, Ru Freeman's On Sal Mal Lane is as luminous as it is wrenching, as fierce as it is generous. A riveting, important beauty of a book." - Cheryl Strayed.

ELLIOTT HOLT
Friday, June 7 at 7 p.m.

Here with one of the most highly touted debut novels of the season is Washington, D.C.'s Elliott Holt's You Are One of Them (Penguin Press), a book set in the U.S. and Russia over a period of years. "Holt creates strong roots, both in 1980s America — with references to friendship pins, Casey Kasem, and the ever-persistent threat of nuclear war — and 1990s Moscow, where tracksuits and cigarettes are never far away. Telling details of Soviet oppression and Russia's budding advertising industry paint a vivid portrait of a country testing the waters of democracy ... [Holt] writes with a pleasing, wry intelligence in this promising debut." - Publisher's Weekly. "Intimate and intelligent, You Are One of Them is a surprising story of friendship and loss, but also a meditation on history and a reminder of how global events can reverberate through the smallest moments of ordinary lives." - Karen Thompson Walker.

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Saturday, June 8 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

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

SUSAN SCHORN
Saturday, June 8 at 5 p.m.

Writer Susan Schorn was thirty-one and a new mother and graduate student when she first stepped into a Japanese karate studio. Two black belts later, she recounted the life lessons learned on the karate mat in her new book, Smile at Them: And Other Lessons in the Art of Living Fearlessly (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). "[Susan Schorn's] insights into the psychology of martial arts training — with special emphasis on the experiences of female students and teacher — is sure to launch a thousand discussions about violence, gender, confidence, and how to deal with alligators." - Mark Salzmann. Susan Schorn's writing also appears in McSweeney's and The Rumpus.

RICK ATKINSON
Saturday, June 8 at 7 p.m.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson, author of what has become a Liberation Trilogy, a series of books on the history of the Allied Forces in Europe and North Africa during World War II, visits with the third and final work. The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944 - 1945 (Henry Holt), follows An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942 - 1943 and The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943 - 1944, and will likely follow in their footsteps in terms of acclaim and bestseller status. "His lively, occasionally lyric prose brings the vast theater of battle, from the beaches of Normandy into Germany, brilliantly alive. It is hard to imagine a better history of the western front's final phase." - Publisher's Weekly. "Atkinson brings his Liberation Trilogy to a resounding close ... The author's long account is masterful and studded with facts and figures." - Kirkus Reviews.

JAN-PHILIPP SENKER
Sunday, June 9 at 3 p.m.

Acclaimed German writer Jan-Philipp Senker is here today with his English-language debut, the radiant novel that is The Art of Hearing Heartbeats (translated by Kevin Wiliarty, Other Press). "A story at once poignant and joyous, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats reaffirms how love can transform the harshest of realities into a mystical one. Sendker takes us from contemporary upstate New York to impoverished Burma, weaving a complex tale that is part romance, part father-daughter story. Reading this book was like reading poetry, with full attention required for each sentence. A thoroughly immersive and enjoyable read." - Margaret Dilloway. A more recent novel, A Well-Tempered Heart, is due out in the U.S. this next January.

PHILIPP MEYER
Monday, June 10 at 7 p.m.

Philipp Meyer, whose 2009 debut, American Rust, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors, visits tonight with his stunning, multigenerational, Texas-set epic, The Son (Ecco). This widely anticipated book, the #1 Indie Next Pick of the American Booksellers Association, is a timeless, resonant, coming-of-age story set in Texas. "A true American epic, full of brutal poetry and breathtaking panoramas. Meyer's characters repeatedly bear witness to the collision of human greed, savagery, and desire with the mute and indomitable Plains landscape. Meyer is a writer of tremendous talent, compassion, and ambition — The Son is a staggering achievement." - Karen Russell. "An epic in the tradition of Faulkner and Melville, this is the work of a writer at the height of his power." - Kevin Powers.

ELLIOTT BAY GLOBAL ISSUES & ETHICS BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, June 11 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. Beautiful Souls: The Courage and Conscience of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times by Eyal Press is this month's selected reading. History has produced many specimens of the banality of evil, but what about its flip side, what impels ordinary people to defy the sway of authority and convention? Through this dramatic stories of unlikely resisters, Eyal Press shows that the boldest acts of dissent are often carried out not only by radicals seeking to overthrow the system but also by true believers who cling with unusual fierceness to their convictions. Drawing on groundbreaking research by moral psychologists and neuroscientists, this deeply reported work of narrative journalism examines the choices and dilemmas we all face when our principles collide with the loyalties we harbor and the duties we are expected to fulfill. " A fascinating study in the better angels of our natures." - George Packer, The New Yorker.

JOSEPHINE ENSIGN, EDDIE LUEKEN & KARLA THELLEN
Tuesday, June 11 at 7 p.m.

It's a particular pleasure for us when writers who use our bookstore as a gathering space have new work to celebrate, as will happen a few times this spring and summer. Tonight, Josephine Ensign, who has contributed so much to our community as a nurse and teacher of the next generation of nurses, appears with colleague Eddie Lueken and Karla Thellen for a group reading from their new anthology, I Wasn't Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse (edited by Lee Gutkind, InFact Books). Nurses are the backbone of the healthcare system and these stories reveal something of the experiences of nurses at all stages of their careers. Here is illuminating reading for those aspiring to join the profession as well as for those who benefit from their work.

ANDY SHARPLESS
Wednesday, June 12 at 7 p.m.

How can consumers identify which fish are responsibly caught? And how, given overfishing, can we restore our oceans and better manage wild fish? Andy Sharpless and Suzanna Evans' The Perfect Protein: The Fish Lovers' Guide to Saving the Oceans and Feeding the World (Rodale), is a common-sense guide to sustainable fishing, covering why fish are such an important food and how consumers, governments, and NGOs can work together to better protect the oceans' fisheries. Recipes by 21 top chefs are included. Andy Sharpless, CEO of Oceana, the world's largest international conservation organization solely dedicated to protecting the oceans speaks on this topic and about the work of Oceana today.

DEBORAH WOODARD & MELANIE NOEL
Thursday, June 13 at 6 p.m.
      POETRY
--PLEASE NOTE TIME CHANGE FROM EARLIER ANNOUNCEMENTS!--

Seattle poet Deborah Woodard, who has taught many Seattle poets and writers at Richard Hugo House, returns to our reading series this evening to read from a captivating new collection of prose poetry, Borrowed Tales (Stockport Flats). "Deborah Woodard's Borrowed Tales are novelistic, negotiating numerous twists and turns that are inventive and believable, playful and magical ... Borrowed Tales is unique, personal, and luminous." - Yusef Komunyakaa. Poet and gardener Melanie Noel will join her to read from her collection, The Monarchs (Stockport Flats), in which "textual sculptures" both visual and aural "transport readers from monarch groves to Mars."

CATHY J. TASHIRO
Friday, June 14 at 7 p.m.

Co-presented with MAVIN. UW Tacoma faculty emeriti Cathy J. Tashiro's groundbreaking work on Americans of mixed race (Asian American/white and African American/white individuals born before 1952) reveals much about the experiences of those whose very existence not only violated cultural norms but also the law of the land. She'll talk today on this topic and her new book, Standing on Both Feet: Voices of Older Mixed Race Americans (Paradigm Publishers). Today's talk is part of "Loving Day," an annual celebration of Mildred and Richard Loving and their landmark Supreme Court victory in 1967 for their right, and the right of others, to marry interracially. Loving day is a project of the mixed heritage advocacy group Mavin (www.mavinfoundation.org).

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Saturday, June 15 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

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

DANIEL JAMES BROWN
Saturday, June 15 at 2 p.m.

One of the most winning stories to be written out of history in these parts, Daniel James Brown's wonderful The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (Viking), tells the story of the 1936 University of Washington men's eight-oar crew team. Their quest not only transformed what had been seen as an elite East Coast sport into something wider, it also became a story of global import, one told more fully now, 77 years after it all happened. "I really can't rave enough about this book. Daniel James Brown has not only captured the hearts and souls of the University of Washington rowers who raced in the 1936 Olympics, he has conjured up an era of history. Brown's evocation of Seattle in the Depression years is dazzling; his limning of character ... is novelistic ... History, sports, human interest, weather, suspense, design, physics, oppression, and inspiration — The Boys in the Boat has it all, and Brown does full justice to his terrific material. This is Chariots of Fire with oars." - David Laskin. With Father's Day in the offing (the next day), this a great and timely book.

MARY OAK
Saturday, June 15 at 5 p.m.

In Heart's Oratorio: One Woman's Journey through Love, Death, and Modern Medicine (Goldenstone Press), Seattle writer, homeopath, and teacher Mary Oak takes readers through a story of her life — travails and challenges that are also dealt with by many — with uncommon depth and knowing. "Here is one of the most beautiful, touching, deeply moving books that I have read in years. Mary Oak's Heart's Oratorio takes the reader into the mysteries of the heart like no one else has ever done. Everything we know of the heart — scientifically, poetically, and as center of our soul and being, comes together here as a whole." - Robert Sardello. "... Heart's Oratorio is so beautiful ... exquisite, soul-sustaining and heart-saving healing grace ..." - Terry Tempest Williams.

JAIMEE GARBACIK
Saturday, June 15 at 7:30 p.m.

What does sexual orientation mean if the very categories of gender are in question? How do we measure equality when our society's definition of "male" and "female" leave out much of the population? Jamiee Garbacik takes on these and many other issues, drawing from neurobiology, feminist, queer, and trans theory, and other sources to question gender and sex as both categories and forms of compulsory identification, the subject of her book, Gender and Sexuality for Beginners (For Beginners Press), illustrated by Jeffrey Lewis.

WILD GEESE PLAYERS present BLOOMSDAY: Readings from Ulysses
Sunday, June 16 at 3 p.m.

Presented by the WILD GEESE PLAYERS. Among the activities the Seattle-based Wild Geese Players get themselves into are annual staged readings from James Joyce's seminal masterwork, Ulysses. Elliott Bay is again delighted to host this group presentation, which has included a sitting member of the U.S. Congress among their number (almost unrecognizably so). Who all will be on hand this year remains to be seen, but this should be great fun, and should have a feeling of climax to it, as this year features the unforgettable final chapter, "Penelope." For more information, please see www.wildgeeseseattle.org.

TAO LIN
Monday, June 17 at 8 p.m.
--PLEASE NOTE SLIGHT TIME ADJUSTMENT!--

With his own fiction and poetry — Richard Yates, Eeeee Eee Eeee, Shoplifting from American Apparel, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and you are a little bit happier than i am — his role as founder and editor of the literary press, Muumuu House, Tao Lin has come along as one of the more ambitious, intriguing writers at work these days. He is here tonight with his newest novel, Taipei (Vintage). "Taipei ... a novel about disaffection that's oddly affecting ... Everything about Taipei appears to run contrary to the standard idea of what constitutes art. And yet, the documentary precision captures the sleepwalking malaise of Lin's generation so completely, it's scary ... for all its emotional reality, Taipei is a book without an ounce of self-pity, melodrama, or posturing, making the glacial Lin the perfect poster child for a generation facing — and failing to face — maturity." - Publisher's Weekly.

SPECULATIONS - ELLIOTT BAY SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, June 18 at 6:30 p.m.

As the literature of ideas and imagination, Science Fiction and Fantasy simply demands discussion. Our selection for June is Hannu Rajaniemi's mind-bending debut The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi. Jean le Flambeur gets up in the morning and has to kill himself before his other self can kill him first. Just another day in the Dilemma Prison. Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is a currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turned-singularity lights the night. Meanwhile, investigator Isidore Beautrelet, called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, finds himself on the trail of an arch-criminal, a man named le Flambeur....Indeed, in his many lives, the entity called Jean le Flambeur has been a thief, a confidence artist, a posthuman mind-burgler, and more. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his deeds are known throughout the Heterarchy. In his last exploit, he managed the supreme feat of hiding the truth about himself from the one person in the solar system hardest to hide from: himself. Now he has the chance to regain himself in all his power—in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed.

JESSICA ANYA BLAU
Tuesday, June 18 at 7 p.m.

Baltimore writer Jessica Anya Blau visits today to read from her comic new novel, The Wonder Bread Summer (Harper Perennial). Inspired by a re-reading of Alice in Wonderland, this novel features a college student who steals a Wonder Bread bag filled with cocaine and goes on the lam. "1983 is like, a bummer, man, in this hazy, quasi-comedy about sex, blow, and what's next. No strangers to the unique strain of adolescent nostalgia for California after her similarly themed debut, The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, Blau goes over the top, sometimes very uncomfortably, with this druggie blast from the past." - Kirkus Reviews. The Summer of Naked Swim Parties was selected by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the Fifty Best Books of the Year.

DENISE KIERNAN
Wednesday, June 19 at 7 p.m.

At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee was home to 75,000 residents, many of them young women from small towns across the South. Their work on a secret project later known as the Manhattan Project is revealed by Denise Kiernan in her new book, The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II (Touchstone). "The Girls of Atomic City is the best kind of nonfiction: marvelously reported, fluidly written, and a remarkable story about a remarkable group of women who performed clandestine and vital work during World War II. Denise Kiernan recreates this forgotten chapter in American history in a work as meticulous and brilliant as it is compulsively readable." - Karen Abbott.

GREGORY SPATZ
Thursday, June 20 at 7 p.m.

Spokane fiction writer Gregory Spatz returns to Seattle and Elliott Bay to read from his new story collection, Half as Happy (Engine Books). The eight stories in Half as Happy reveal characters' secrets, losses, and desires. Gregory Spatz's previous books include Inukshuk and Fiddlers Dream. He teaches in the MFA program at the Inland Northwest Center for Writers at Eastern Washington University.

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Saturday, June 22 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

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

Group Reading Commemorating OCTAVIA BUTLER
Saturday, June 22 at 3 p.m.

Local writers, artists, and book lovers join us today for a commemorative reading celebrating the life and work of the late Octavia Butler, who would have been 66 years old on this day. The author of such classic works as Kindred, Parable of the Sower, Wild Seed, the books of the "Xenogenesis trilogy" (also known as Lilith's Brood), Octavia Butler was awarded the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Awards, a MacArthur genius grant, and was a participant in what was likely the first-ever African American Speculative Fiction conference, organized by Seattle's own Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas, and Elliott Bay Book Company. Today, all are invited to read short excerpts of Octavia Butler's work or of original work inspired by her.

ELI HASTINGS
Saturday, June 22 at 7 p.m.

Eli Hastings' Clearly Now, the Rain (ECW Press) is a deeply personal account of his relationship with his late friend and lover, Serala, who was a talented poet and filmmaker plagued with addiction. "Eli Hastings will make you fall in love — and then he will punch through your ribcage and rip your heart out — and by the end you'll thank him for it." - Benjamin Percy. Eli Hastings is manager for the Pongo Teen Writing Project, He is also the author of Falling Room.

CECILE ANDREWS
Sunday, June 23 at 3 p.m.

One of Elliott Bay's longstanding friends and champions, Cecile Andrews, quite aptly in this week which marks the bookstore's 40th anniversary, pays this Sunday visit with her newest book, Living Room Revolution: A Handbook for Conversation, Community, and the Common Good (New Society). "Do we have lopsided, purposeless conversations? Or do we have real dialog about matters of substance where everyone is heard? There's no way society will change positively unless the answer to the latter is yes. Living Room Revolution shows the way." - Neal Gorenflo. "Cecile Andrews gets to the heart of what we really need in America — a restoration of conversation about what matters in our lives." - John de Graaf.

KELLY DAVIO & ALICE DERRY
Tuesday, June 25 at 7 p.m.
      POETRY

Two fine poets, Kelly Davio from here in Seattle, and Alice Derry, from across the water in Port Angeles, both published by lively Red Hen Press, visit this evening to read together from their newest books. Kelly Davio is here with her debut collection. Burn This House. "Kelly Davio's Burn This House is a vivid, nuanced, beautifully organized, and wit-enriched debut. It is a dark book, but the darkness is illuminated throughout with the cool flames of ironic humor, and the brightest light arrives in the concluding sequence's conflagration, the flaming out of the poetic house .. this compassionate and harrowing book promises more brilliance to come." - Carolyne Wright. With Alice Derry, who first read here with her debut, Stages of Twilight, in 1986, Tremolo is her sixth collection. "Tremolo is a tour de force of vibratory power that marks Alice Derry as having come into her own as one of our very best poets ... Derry possesses an exquisite emotional and mental register. She is unstintingly frank about our failures with each other while witnessing the tenderness, the give and take that let us cleave to each other." - Tess Gallagher.

MATT BELL
Friday, June 28 at 7 p.m.

In Matt Bell's much-awaited debut novel, In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods (Soho Press), a newlywed couple begin life together in a deserted land. When their attempts to conceive a child fail, the land becomes a physical reflection of their strife: strange objects sung into being by the woman strain the earth and sky, beasts stalk the couple and a labyrinth of memory appears beneath the house. "Bell puts the fable in fabulism ... The book's musical, often idiosyncratic prose will carry its readers into an unfamiliar but unforgettable world." - Library Journal. "This is a fiercely original book — at once intimate and epic, visceral and philosophical — that sent me scurrying for adjectives, for cover. Matt Bell commands the page with bold, vigorous prose and may well have invented the pulse-pounding novel of ideas." - Jess Walter.

CHILDREN'S STORYTIME
Saturday, June 29 at 11 a.m.
      KID'S EVENT

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

JYM LYNCH, MARIA SEMPLE & RYAN BOUDINOT
Saturday, June 29 at 7 p.m.

On this, our fortieth anniversary, we celebrate the past, present and future with this evening featuring three writers who in enormously popular, nationally (and internationally) noted novels published last year, did their own form of celebrating this city we call home. Olympia writer Jim Lynch's Truth Like the Sun (Vintage), in large part is set in a Seattle of 1962, 11 years before Elliott Bay took wing. Maria Semple gave readers the bestselling Seattle book any of us have probably ever seen, and the funniest, this side of Tom Robbins, with her present-day set Where'd You Go, Bernadette (Back Bay Books). And Ryan Boudinot, in Blueprints of the Afterlife (Grove Black Cat), gives readers a Seattle we may or may not easily recognize, one in an uncertain near future. This evening should be a fun mix of all these times—and this time, this place, which we are delighted to be here for.

ALSO TO NOTE:

• Stages. Seattle's Drama Book Group meets next at Elliott Bay on Monday, June 24 at 7 p.m. to discuss Grey Gardens, book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel, lyrics by Michael Korie. For July, the group has selected to read Shannon Murdoch's New Light Shine, winner of the Yale Drama Series Prize for Emerging Playwrights. Please join us!

JULY EVENTS

July events. Information coming soon.

OUT OF THE BLUE. "Out of the Blue, a Variety Show" is a chapter in RU FREEMAN's On Sal Mal Lane (see June 6).