For the second day in a row, Seattle is completely awash in readings options for you tonight. Let me tell you about a few events happening around town.

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First up, Jhumpa Lahiri is giving a free reading at Town Hall. I wrote a review of her newest book The Lowland that explains exactly why you should attend:

Lahiri is the closest thing to an American Chekhov that I've ever seen. This is partly due to the elegant frameworks that her stories are built on, and partly because Lahiri's voice is as unornamented and assured as a Russian master.

The Furnace reading series at Hollow Earth Radio, which bills itself as “One Writer. One Story. Read to completion (with vigor),” brings author Catherine Smyka to share a story with musical accompaniment. Smyka is an award-winning Moth storyteller, the cofounder of T/OUR Magazine, and the social media coordinator here at The Stranger, which means she’s a coworker of mine. Which makes it a little awkward, but I’ve seen Smyka read, and I assure you that this will be a good time and you’ll enjoy the story a whole lot. You can attend the reading at Hollow Earth's studio or you can listen along live on Hollow Earth Radio tonight.

Harvard historian Jill Lepore is giving an illustrated lecture titled "Unseen: A History of Privacy" at Kane Hall that you should consider attending if you're freaked out about the NSA.

And Sheri Speede discusses "the extraordinary resilience of chimpanzees" in Kindred Beings: What Seventy Three Chimpanzees Taught Me about Life, Love and Connection at Elliott Bay Book Company.

Everything else happening tonight—yes, there's plenty more—is in the readings calendar.