The Seattle Public Library - Programs & Events

Love a good story? Come to the scene of the crime, the edge of adventure and timeless realms of wonder. Sit back, relax and escape from the everyday as we bring you gripping short stories expertly read -- and well-calculated to keep you in suspense

The public and private absurdities of American life, dramatic irony, and enduring half-cracked love wend their way through the stories in a heartrending mash-up of the tragic and the laugh-out-loud. "Will stand by itself as one of our funniest, most telling anatomies of human love and vulnerability." The New York Times Book Review (cover review). Moore is an award-winning author and the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Her works include the story collections "Birds of America" and "Self-Help," and the novels "Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?" and "A Gate at the Stairs."

A young man coming of age during an African revolution leaves behind his country and friends for America, where he pretends to be an exchange student, falls in love with a social worker and settles into small-town life. Yet he can't escape the secrets of his past, the acts he committed and the charismatic leader who led him to revolution and sacrificed all. "All Our Names" is about identity, about the names we are given and the names we earn. MacArthur fellow Dinaw Mengestu is the author of two previous novels, "The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears" (2008 Seattle Reads selection) and "How to Read the Air." A graduate of Columbia University's MFA program in fiction, he was the recipient of a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 award and a New Yorker 20 Under 40 award. His journalism and fiction have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Granta, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal.

Famed photographer Edward Curtis’ film was the first feature-length film to star an all-indigenous cast. "In the Land of the Headhunters" premiered in 1914 with gala openings in New York and Seattle, but was a commercial failure and faded into obscurity. After a single copy arrived at the Field Museum in Chicago, the damaged and incomplete reels were re-edited by Bill Holm and George Quimby and released with a new soundtrack in 1973 as "In the Land of the War Canoes." Evans and co-editor Aaron Glass have now worked with a team of scholars, film specialists, artists, and members of the tribe -- descendants of the original Kwakwaka’wakw cast - to reconstruct, restore and reunite the film with its original orchestral score.

From the meaning of status, architecture, travel, Proust, sex, work, religion and love, de Botton turns his attention to the news industry. "The News" ranges across news categories - from politics to murders, from economics to celebrities, from the weather to paparazzi shows -- in search of answers to the questions: "What do we want from this?" and "Is it doing us any good?" Alain de Botton is the author of three works of fiction and six works of nonfiction, including "How Proust Can Change Your Life," "The Consolations of Philosophy" and "The Art of Travel." He lives in London, where he founded The School of Life.

Magee combines history, art and healing to tell an inspirational story of courage, hope and transformation. "Into the Light" is an account of a Latvian-born artist who survived four years in slave labor and concentration camps and chose to leave Europe and move to Los Angeles in 1949. He quickly became a successful artist, painting notables such as author Henry Miller, Ronald Reagan and composer Andre Previn. In this illustrated talk, Magee will discuss the impact of the Holocaust on Aron’s life and art and his response to it over a lifetime. Through his art, she traces his personal transformation as he metabolized on canvas the evil he experienced and reclaimed his own light, and she illustrates the powerful results of his decision at age 78 to tell his story. Susan Beilby Magee was director of the Mayor's Office of Women's Rights in Seattle under Mayor Wes Uhlman. She has been a White House fellow, and held policy and executive positions at the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments. Twenty-six years ago, she became a certified hypnotherapist and meditation teacher. She also participates in healing ministry at the Washington National Cathedral.

University of Pittsburgh Press presents an evening of poetry from three distinguished poets with distinctly different voices. New Poetry in the Pitt Poetry Series In "Tiger Heron," Becker explores relationships between humans and other creatures, while also reaching into core human experiences, such as the deaths of parents. Hamby’s "On the Street of Divine Love" is a collection of 25 years of "word-drunk excursions into the American female consciousness with stops in Italy, Paris, and London." In Ostriker's new collection, "The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog," she presents a sequence of poems in the voices of an old woman full of memories, a glamorous tulip, and an earthy dog who always has the last word. About the poets Robin Becker is a professor of English and Women’s Studies at Pennsylvania State University and is the award-winning author of seven poetry collections, including “Domain of Perfect Affection,” “The Horse Fair,” “Giacometti’s Dog,” and “All-American Girl,” winner of the Lambda Literary Award. Barbara Hamby is the award-winning author of four poetry collections, including "All-Night Lingo Tango" and "Babel." She has co-edited "Seriously Funny," an anthology of poetry. She is a distinguished university scholar at Florida State University, specializing in poetry and fiction. Alicia Suskin Ostriker is the award-winning author of 15 poetry collections, including “The Book of Life: Selected Jewish Poems, 1979–2011” and “The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998,” as well as several books on the Bible. She is professor emerita of English at Rutgers University and teaches in the low-residency MFA program of Drew University.

"They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School" is the first full-length memoir about life in St. Joseph's Mission at Williams Lake, British Columbia. Along with other Aboriginal, Inuit and Métis children across Canada, Sellars was removed from her community and forced to attend a church-run residential school whose aim it was to “civilize” Native children through Christian teachings, forced separation from family and culture, and strict discipline. In addition, beginning at the age of five, Sellars was isolated for two years at Coqualeetza Indian Tuberculosis Hospital in Sardis, B.C. Bev Sellars was first elected chief of the Xat’sull (Soda Creek) First Nation in Williams Lake, BC in 1987. She earned degrees in history and law, and served as adviser for the B.C. Treaty Commission. Chief Sellars has spoken out on behalf of her community on racism and residential schools and on the environmental and social threats of mineral resource exploitation in her region.

Why are some cultural groups in the United States generally more successful than others? Chua and Rubenfeld draw on groundbreaking research and statistics to identify a unique combination of traits - insecurity, a superiority complex, impulse control -- that drives some groups to succeed more than others. Amy Chua is the author of the international bestseller "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," which unleashed a firestorm debate about the cultural value of self-discipline, as well as the bestselling "World on Fire." She was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2011. Jed Rubenfeld has written extensively on how Americans’ desire for instant gratification undermines their ability to live for the future. He is the author of the international bestseller "The Interpretation of Murder."

In a future, long-declining America, society is strictly stratified by class. Long-abandoned urban neighborhoods have been re-purposed as high-walled, self-contained labor colonies. The members of the labor class - descendants of those brought over en masse many years earlier from environmentally-ruined provincial China - find purpose and identity in their work to provide pristine produce and fish to the small and elite satellite charter villages that ring the labor settlement. "On Such a Full Sea" takes Chang-rae Lee's elegance of prose and masterly storytelling, along with his long-standing interests in identity, culture, work and love, and lifts them to a new plane. Stepping from the realistic and historical territories of his previous work, Lee brings us into a world created from scratch. Against a vividly imagined future America, Lee tells a stunning, surprising and riveting story that will change the way readers think about the world they live in. Lee is also the author of "Native Speaker," winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for First fiction, "A Gesture Life," "Aloft" and "The Surrendered. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.

Will Allen shared his thoughts on how communities, families and even children can take part in the growing food revolution to provide good food for all. Allen also discusses his autobiography, "The Good Food Revolution," a Goodreads Choice finalist for best food book of the year, and the just released children's biography, "Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table." Allen is the founder and CEO of Growing Power, Inc., in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His farm & educational center are considered the country's preeminent urban farm, and it yields enough produce and fish to feed thousands. Allen is widely considered a leading authority in the expanding field of urban agriculture. In 2010, TIME magazine named Will to its annual list of The 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Seventh-century Britain comes to life through a young girl’s rise to prominence in a time of political foment and change. Hild is the king’s niece and she becomes his seer, charting the course of history as people begin to trust in her ability to see into the future. Seattle author Nicola Griffith, originally of Yorkshire, England, has received several awards for her writing that include the Nebula, Lambda and James Tiptree, Jr. Awards. Her previous works include "Ammonite," "Slow River" and the Aud Torvingen crime novels.

"War-Toys" chronicles the artist's collaborations over the course of two years with children in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The book shows drawings the children created alongside the photographs they inspired. The resulting series provides powerful context for the children’s accounts while documenting the playthings available in each area. These cheap, plastic arsenals mirror what the children see every day -- in the news and on the streets.

In a new performance, Jenkinson brings alive the faces of Mount Rushmore. Jenkinson appears in costume and character as Theodore Roosevelt and offers commentary on the faces of Mount Rushmore: Roosevelt, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Jenkinson, a Rhodes and Danforth scholar, is a co-founder of the modern Chautauqua movement. He has portrayed Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert Oppenheimer, and other historical characters in first-person interpretations. Jenkinson is host of the weekly syndicated National Public Radio program “The Thomas Jefferson Hour.” He is director of the Dakota Institute in his home state of North Dakota, a columnist for the Bismarck Tribune and founder/chief consultant of the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University.

Join us for original music inspired by Timothy Egan's award-winning "Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis." The Bushwick Book Club Seattle is not your run-of-the-mill book club. When they read books, they also write & perform songs about the books! Tonight's performance features a new group, Read and Destroy, whose members are longtime Bushwick performers: Wes Weddell, Moe Provencher, Aimee Zoe and Geoff Larson. The show will include songs inspired by the Great Northwest, the Native Americans' battle for survival, the fight for art, the Westward Expansion and more.