• If you weren't at the March 31 fundraiser at the Space Needle for the Genius Awards and Shunpike, you missed the chance to hang out with hundreds of well-dressed arts supporters, many of whom spent part of the party making fashion accessories out of tinfoil. You also missed a play for one person at a time by theater company the Satori Group, free-flowing Gnostalgic absinthe and Hendrick's gin, and Genius Award–winning poet Heather McHugh auctioning off a chain-mail headdress and a week's stay at her island home to the highest bidder. Eighty percent of past inductees into the League of Geniuses were present—including Lead Pencil Studio, Lynn Shelton, the Cody Rivers Show, and Lesley Hazleton, all of whom donated their talents to give presentations in the VIP room.

Thank you to the Space Needle from the arts community: They donated the space, the staff, and all of the food for the event. Another thank you goes to party sponsor Alaska Airlines Visa. In the end, $10,000 was raised for the Genius Awards (and another $10,000 for Shunpike), thanks in part to a generous donation from Chihuly Garden and Glass, plus private donations by employees of the Space Needle, wine from Sparkman Cellars, and thousands of dollars of art and performance all given freely to benefit Genius and Shunpike. The party helped inspire a recommitment from Amazon to continue funding the Literature Genius. In all, that's enough funding for three Genius Awards right there.

There are rumors that a Space Needle fundraiser might become an annual affair. Also: You'll want to save the date for the Genius Awards on September 22 at the Moore Theatre. It's the 10th anniversary and will be the first time the Genius winners are announced live from the stage.

• Last week, Egyptian-born, Seattle-based playwright Yussef El Guindi won the $25,000 Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award for his Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World, a story of love between an African immigrant and an American waitress. Congratulations, Yussef.

• Hugo House quietly canceled its entire slate of spring youth writing classes due to lack of interest. The House's brand-new executive director, Tree Swenson, might have more on her hands than she realized.

• Cornish College of the Arts is now unsure whether Mike Daisey will receive an honorary degree next month or give this year's commencement speech. As Cornish alum/teacher and playwright Mallery Avidon has been saying in a monologue of her own: "Cornish gives honorary PhDs but only confers BFAs—so the honor itself is a lie."

• Christopher Martin Hoff, the thirtysomething, generous-spirited plein air painter who could be found on any given sidewalk encapsulating the moody poetry of this city, has died. His death was sudden (the family says it was natural causes), and the communal loss is great. His paintings live on at Linda Hodges Gallery and in the mind's eye—sometimes, when you blink, one of his scenes might register for a moment rather than the actual view in front of you. It's magical.