Literature Search
North End Forum
Fourth Mon at 8 pm.Open Mic
"You are expected to spend $7 minimum for Beer, wine, appetizers, dessert or dinner" at this song-and-poetry open mic. $7.
Open Mic Night
Wed at 7:30 pm.Open Mic
The resurrected Greenwood bookshop hosts an anything-goes open mic night. Free.
Words Of Youth Open Mic
Third Thurs at 6 pm.Open Mic
This is a youth reading, sponsored in part by 826 Seattle. Free.
Story Swap
Third Fri at 7 pm.Open Mic
This is an open-to-all meeting of the Seattle Storyteller's Guild, in which people tell stories to one another. Free.
Denise Kiernan
Wed June 19 at 7 pm.Reading
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II is about a town full of women who performed invaluable work for the Manhattan Project. Free.
Gregory Spatz
Thurs June 20 at 7 pm.Reading
Spatz's new story collection is titled Half as Happy. He's from Spokane. Free.
Octavia Butler Birthday Tribute Reading
Sat June 22 at 3 pm.Reading
Featured readers including Nisi Shawl, Gabriel Teodros, Rahwa Habte, Zola Mumford and Mayumi Tsutakawa will read work inspired by the incredible Butler on what would have been her birthday, and there will be an open mic, too. Free.
Eli Hastings
Sat June 22 at 7 pm.Reading
Clearly Now, The Rain: A Memoir of Love and Other Trips is about a decade-long relationship. Free.
Cecile Andrews
Sun June 23 at 3 pm.Reading
Do you have conversations, or do you have "real dialog?" That's what the author of Living Room Revolution: A Handbook for Conversation, Community, and the Common Good wants to know. Free.
Kelly Davio, Alice Derry
Tues June 25 at 7 pm.Reading
Davio is a Seattle poet and author of Burn This House. Derry is a Port Angeles poet here with her sixth book, Tremolo. Free.
Elliott Bay 40th Anniversary
Sat June 29 at 7 pm.Reading
Elliott Bay Book Company has been slinging books at your head (figuratively speaking) for four decades now, and they're celebrating with a minifestival of gigantic local talent in one reading. Confirmed to appear as of right now: Ryan Boudinot, Jim Lynch, and Maria Semple. Free.
Chuck Klosterman
Sat July 13 at 7 pm.Reading
I Wear the Black Hat is a meditation about why we are interested in evil characters. Free.
Alexander Maksik
Wed Aug 7 at 7 pm.Reading
Maksik's beautifully written debut novel, You Deserve Nothing, was about an affair between a teacher and a student at a Parisian international school. Then Elissa Strauss published a blog post on Jezebel alleging that Maksik himself lost his job at the American School in Paris for having an affair with a 17-year-old student. That was 2011. Now Maksik returns with his first book since Nothing, A Marker to Measure Drift. It's about a young Liberian woman who washes up on an island in Greece and wrestles with her past. Expect at least one question in the Q&A to not focus on the new book. Free.
Toby Barlow
Tues Aug 13 at 7 pm.Reading
Barlow's last book, Sharp Teeth, was a werewolf novel written entirely in free verse. It made genre fans into readers of blank verse, which is a pretty great accomplishment, although it didn't really garner much attention in the poetry world, which maybe says something about the poetry world. His new novel, Babayaga, is set in Paris in the 1950s, and it features spies, witches, and a police officer who has been turned into a flea. Free.
Sean Beaudoin
Thurs Aug 22 at 7 pm.Reading
Sean Beaudoin marks the debut of his new novel, Wise Young Fool, about a teenage rock-and-roller whose life has gone down the absolute wrong path, resulting in a 90-day stay at juvie. This event features what Beaudoin refers to as a "theatrical reading" with "free booze" and an "acoustic punk performance." Free.
A Night of Genius
Wed Aug 14 at 5:30 pm.Reading
You've by now read about the whole literature Genius Award shortlist, and you're wondering to yourself, "How can I enjoy all these geniuses in one place?" Have I got an event for you: Tonight, the Frye is home to all the finalists at the same time. You'll see Maged Zaher, Neal Stephenson, and the organizers of the APRIL Festival onstage with A&P literature editor Paul Constant for a reading and Q&A about their particular areas of genius and what Seattle-area geniuses they admire. At no other event this year will you see such great literary genius, and in such disparate categories of expertise, on one single stage. (Good thing Constant will be there to dumb things down, so nobody's brain explodes from too much thinking.) $10, 21+.
Live Nude Fish
Sat June 22 at 6:30 pm.Reading
Les Sardines is a Seattle writing collective that puts out small, beautiful literary magazines. Tonight, the seventh issue of Les Sar'zine, titled "Naked," will be available for sale. Readers will read, a band called Seacastle will sing three new songs with lyrics written by Les Sardines, and copies of their new magazine will be available for purchase. Free.
Fifth
Sat July 13 at 6:30 pm.Reading
For months now, the Five Alarms Greenwood team has put together a series of lit crawls that stretched from one end of Greenwood to the other. Tonight, the fifth and final Greenwood Lit Crawl, titled FIFTH, will run from roughly 6:30 to 11 p.m. at four or five different venues. Expect readers including Arlo Smith, Matthew Pritchard, Benjamin Schmitt, Chelsea Kurnick, Luke Johnson, Imani Sims, and Stranger Genius finalist Maged Zaher. For up-to-date information about readers and venues, visit fivealarms.wordpress.com. Free.
Lacey Jane Henson
Thurs Aug 1 at 7 pm.Reading
The Furnace Reading Series brings an outstanding author together with the weird aural hallucinations that sometimes appear on Hollow Earth Radio every now and again, just to see what happens. The resulting story is part radio play, part tone poem, and part memorable performance, and while they're all archived online at thefurnaceseattle.wordpress.com, there's something special about seeing the whole thing performed live. Tonight's Furnace brings local author Henson to read her short story "Trigger." Free.
Jodi Angel, Jennine Capó Crucet, Peter Mountford
Thurs July 18 at 7 pm.Reading
To celebrate the release of Jodi Angel's new short story collection, You Only Get Letters from Jail, fancy writer Capó Crucet and local novelist Mountford get together to read short work "about the seedier parts of life." Sounds like a good time to me. Free.
Nicole Hardy
Fri Aug 23 at 7 pm.Reading
A few years back, Nicole Hardy published a Modern Love column in the New York Times about being a Mormon virgin. Now the expanded version of that column arrives in the form of a memoir titled Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin. The launch party for this event will feature live music, a photo booth, food, a reading, a Q&A, a raffle, and booze, along with some beehive hairdos (to commemorate the Mormon Church's freaky fascination with bees) and lots of awkward laughs. Free.
Shin Yu Pai
Wed Sept 4 at 7 pm.Reading
A while back, Pai moved from Seattle to the Deep South. Her poetry collection about the experience, Aux Arcs, joins her seven other books and a whole pile of collaborative works and broadsides. Tonight's launch party for Aux Arcs will be opened by Whiting Tennis, who will begin the night with a musical set. (Tennis created the cover of the book, too.) Free.
Hugo Works in Progress
7 pmOpen Mic
An evening designed to give writers a chance to share what they have been working on in front of fellow writers. Sign-up at 6:30. Free.
The Stranger
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A complete guide to Seattle's current art, film, dance, and theater season.
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