Our music critics have already recommended the 25 best concerts in Seattle this week, but now it's our arts critics' turn: Here are their top picks for things to do in Seattle this week, from Pride-related events (including the Seattle Pride Parade, PrideFest at Seattle Center, Capitol Hill Pride, and many, many more) to art events (including the Best of SIFF showcase and a Q&A with Mary-Louise Parker and Sherman Alexie. See them all below, and find even more events on our complete Things To Do calendar.

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Jump to: Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday

MONDAY
FOOD & DRINK
Northwest Herring Week
There’s a movement under way to bring back herring to Seattle restaurants and grocery stores. Once a staple of the Seattle diet (thanks, Scandinavian and Japanese immigrants!) and plentiful in Puget Sound, herring has largely disappeared from menus and markets. Started in 2015 as Seattle Herring Week by Lexi of Old Ballard Liquor Co., the project has grown. Now during Northwest Herring Week, which runs June 20 to 26, you can try the tasty little fishes—wild, oily, nutritious, and sustainably harvested from Bristol Bay, Alaska—at more than 20 restaurants around town, including Art of the Table, Lark, Little Uncle, Porkchop & Co., Revel, Sushi Kappo Tamura, and the Whale Wins. ANGELA GARBES

READINGS & TALKS
Wenonah Hauter: Frackopoly
You don't hear a lot about hydraulic fracturing (fracking) up here in Washington state, mostly because there are no active fracking sites in the immediate area. Meanwhile, according to the LA Times, last year Oklahoma experienced over 890 earthquakes that measured over 3.0 on the Richter scale. How many earthquakes of the same magnitude did the state ride out in 2009? 20. Same kinda thing is going on in Appalachia, Texas, and in the westernmost Midwest states. When accidents happen, the air and water around the site can become contaminated with poisonous chemicals, and that's not to mention the fact that fracking increases our reliance on fossil fuels, which are contaminating the skies and steadily contributing to the destruction of our planet all the time. BLUH, I say. BLUH. Longtime Activist Winonah Hauter (of Food and Water Watch) will say much more than that, and more convincingly, when she reads from her latest book Frackopoly, which lays out the history of fracking and the many problems it presents. RICH SMITH

FILM
Best of SIFF Showcase
Even if you attended SIFF screenings every day, you probably missed some of the films at the excellent 2016 Seattle International Film Festival. Here's a chance to brush up on a few of the amazing movies you didn't get a chance to watch—or an opportunity to re-watch your favorite film, including Hunt for the Wilderpeople, A Man Called Ove, The Queen of Ireland, and Girl Asleep.

THEATER
The Other Season: A New Interpretation of Macbeth
The Seattle Rep presents a staged reading/workshop of Erica Schmidt's adaptation of Macbeth, in which seven women play all the characters you know and fear.

9 Circles
Strawberry Theatre Workshop presents 9 Circles, a play by Bill Cain that likens the civilian trial of Steven Dale Green to the descent through Dante's nine circles of hell, directed by Greg Carter. (Also Thursday-Saturday)

FOOD & DRINK
Food & Sh*t presents The Comfort Room
Chera Amlag and Geo Quibuyen, creators of Food & Sh*t, have moved their popular Filipino pop-up from Beacon Hill to Pioneer Square’s Kraken Congee, and expanded the menu from prix-fixe to à la carte. The Comfort Room features a rotating, seasonal menu of Filipino comfort food dishes such as pork sisig, bagoong fried chicken, and, as always, ube cheesecake. No reservations necessary; just show up and dig in. ANGELA GARBES

Rooftop Dinner Series 2016
Enjoy the warm summer weather (and clear views of mountains and the sound) at Bastille's twice-weekly rooftop dinner series. The groups are small—under 10 guests—and the food is super local, often harvested directly from the rooftop garden. (Through Tuesday)

TUESDAY
DANCE
Seattle International Dance Festival
During this 16-day "explosion of dance," local, national, and international dancers will perform in indoor and outdoor spaces around South Lake Union. The festival includes the Inter|National Series, which connects (as the name suggests) international dance artists and companies with regional audiences and performers, and the Spotlight Series, a group of three performances with different foci on Seattle dance: contemporary ballet, specific artists' perspectives, and contemporary dance. (Through Saturday)

THEATER
Paint Your Wagon
In the old Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe version of Paint Your Wagon, a bunch of white guys head west, start up a boomtown once they discover gold in a grave they dug for one of their own, and force a stereotypically drawn Mexican character named Julio Valveras to live outside the town. In this new version, the 5th Avenue Theatre commissioned Jon Marans to write a completely new book. Now the story focuses on racial, gender, and economic tensions that develop between the characters on their hunt for goooooooooooold. It's a valiant effort, one that projects a dream that seems so far away, especially in an election season when yuge numbers of Americans support an openly racist, gold-obsessed, barking jar of ass-meat. RICH SMITH (Through Sunday)

The Mystery of Love & Sex
From Bathsheba Doran (of Boardwalk Empire and Masters of Sex fame) comes this story of two parallel relationships happening across generations. Charlotte's relationship with her childhood best friend Johnny may be turning romantic while her parents' marriage begins to fall apart. (Through Sunday)

ART
Atoms + Bytes: Redefining Craft in the Digital Age
The Bellevue Arts Museum's Atoms + Bytes: Redefining Craft in the Digital Age exhibit, which closes this Sunday, features work by 30 local and international artists and juxtaposes "analog" craft traditions with digital and technological innovation.

COMEDY
Comedy Nest Open Mic
Sarah Skilling, a Kirkland comedian who's been performing stand-up for nine years, will headline tonight's edition of the pro-lady (but not women-only) stand-up night.

WEDNESDAY
READINGS & TALKS
Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton, who is known for his popular works of philosophy and cultural criticism, will read from his new book, The Course of Love, about a romance in Edinburgh and "what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence."

Rock Star Women in Science
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center director, Dr. Gary Gilliland, will speak about female leadership and success that he has seen at his own organization, and brings together a panel of leading women scientists to speak about gender disparities in the field.

ART
The Brink: Jason Hirata
Jason Hirata's sculptures and drawings are about food, about specials in particular. One of his "specials," handwritten on a piece of paper as on a restaurant board, is "Plumpy'Nut," and you wonder, what is that? It is a peanut-butterish food made for the victims of malnutrition, and a single French company has a patent that makes it the only company that can produce it, only to be imported from the developed world, never to be produced where it is consumed. Hirata won the 2015 Brink Award, and his funny, sad, wonky, scruffy Brink Award show takes as its inspiration an early-19th-century print by Francisco de Goya and a 1981 speech by General Electric CEO Jack Welch. There is a great dissonant distance between Hirata's conceptualist style and the smells, tastes, and corpulences that his works conjure. JEN GRAVES (Closes Sunday)

THURSDAY
QUEER
"Whatever Happened to Bianca Del Rio?"
San Francisco and Seattle are like the twin girls in The Shining: weird enough on their own but downright unsettling when they're together—as they should be. Tonight, San Francisco's queen of frights, Peaches Christ, will team up with Seattle's own drag favorites Mama Tits, Sylvia O'Stayformore, Abbey Roads, and Ade to make vicious fun of the most vicious RuPaul's Drag Race winner of all time, Bianca Del Rio, who’s coming back for not one but two live, “hag-a-rific” shows tonight. Half of proceeds from the 9 pm show will be donated to Equality Florida in support of the victims of the Orlando tragedy. MATT BAUME

READINGS & TALKS
Annie Proulx
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Annie Proulx, author of the short story "Brokeback Mountain" that inspired the film, will read from her newest novel, Barkskins, an epic story about the taking down of the world's forests.

Chuck Klosterman
Culture writer Chuck Klosterman (author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto and former writer of The New York Times's "The Ethicist" column) will read from his latest book, What If We're Wrong: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past, imagining future textbooks depicting our current political/social climate.

Joshua L. Reid
Joshua L. Reid, a member of the Snohomish tribe and Associate Professor of history and American Indian studies at UW, will read from and sign copies of The Sea is My Country, about the Makah people, a tribal nation on the northwestern point of the Olympic Peninsula.

Moby: Porcelain
Notable weirdo and Todd Louiso look-a-like (also actual DJ and respected musician) Moby reads from his memoir Porcelain, a critically acclaimed depiction of his journey from suburban poverty to urban fame, and all the hot goss from the '80s and '90s NYC club scene.

Scottie Jeanette & Marcy Madden with Status Causey
Trans woman Scottie Jeanette Madden will speak about her book, In Getting Back to Me: from girl to boy to woman, with her wife, alongside sex, gender, and relationships educator Status Causey.

FOOD & DRINK
Guest Chef Night with Renee Erickson
FareStart is a fantastic organization that empowers disadvantaged and homeless men and women by training them for work in the restaurant industry. Every Thursday, they host a Guest Chef Night, featuring a three-course dinner from a notable Seattle chef for just $29.95. This week FareStart welcomes Renee Erickson and her chefs Bobby Palmquist (of Bar Melusine) and Clare Gordon (of General Porpoise, and one of Zagat’s 30 under 30).

QUEER
Queers and Beers
Two Doors Down, Seattle's only gay-owned beer and burger bar, is throwing "Queers and Beers" for this Pride, with drink specials and patties on the grill all night long, featuring beers and ciders on draft from over a dozen gay-friendly breweries across Washington State. They'll be giving away t-shirts, pint glasses, and growlers throughout the night, with dancing along to "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" on the big screens to get you in the celebratory mood.

FRIDAY
READINGS & TALKS
Mary-Louise Parker with Sherman Alexie
Tony- and Emmy-winning actor Mary-Louise Parker visits Elliott Bay Book Company to read from her memoir, Dear Mr. You, which doesn't at all sound like the self-aggrandizing, ghostwritten schlock you get from a lot of actors. The book is composed entirely of letters to the men in her life, as well as the ones who are conspicuously out of it. Those folks include her father, a grandfather she's never met, an oyster farmer, a fire fighter she kinda once ran into, and several others. That Dear Mr. You has literary ambitions is no surprise, considering the fact that, as an actor, Parker has taken on many complex characters in critically acclaimed works, such as weed-slingin' mom Nancy Botwin in Showtime's Weeds and Harper Pitt in HBO's version of Angels in America. Big-time famous author, Stranger Genius Award winner, and all around great guy Sherman Alexie will lead a Q&A session with Parker after the reading. RICH SMITH

Ian Frazier
Writer, humorist, and longtime New Yorker contributor Ian Frazier will read from Hogs Wild: Selected Reporting Pieces, which brings together some of the best pieces from his body of work, about topics ranging from feral hogs to the rise of homelessness in New York City under Mayor Bloomberg.

PERFORMANCE
Some Kind Of Space Opera
Expect madcap comedy, striptease, political statements (lesbians who don't die in the course of the show!) and more at Some Kind of Space Opera: a burlesque sci-fi experience! produced by Scarlett O'Hairdye and Maggie McMuffin. Starring Sin de la Rosa, Apollo Vidra, Maggie McMuffin, Evilyn Sin Claire, Sara Dipity, and Lowa de Boom Boom. (Through Saturday)

FESTIVALS
22nd Annual Olympia Experimental Music Festival
This three-day event in our state’s capital can be viewed as a counterpart to Seattle’s Debacle Fest: Both boast variety, excellence, and reasonably priced tickets. If you’re into the outer reaches of jazz, Bad Luck and Shoup/Horist/Kikuchi Trio should set your world on fire. Drone lovers will elevate to higher planes of consciousness with L.A. Lungs. Four Dimensional Nightmare lives up to his name with chaotic experimental electronic music, while Dead Air Fresheners taps into a dadaistic vein of sonic subversion. Malaikat dan Singa fuse Indonesian music with rock with raucous, chakra-opening power. All this plus the surprise return of Unwound side project Replikants and their avant-electro-rock. DAVE SEGAL (Through Sunday)

FOOD & DRINK
Le Gourmand June Cooking Class
A three-hour cooking class with Bruce Naftaly, where you'll work with seasonal ingredients including strawberries, roses, Montmorency cherries, gooseberries, cèpes, plum cots, mulberries, and pink singing scallops. (Through Sunday)

SATURDAY
QUEER
Capitol Hill Pride Festival March & Rally
After the “Never Forget” 1969 Stonewall civic march at 10am, the free, all-day Capitol Hill Pride Festival will include live entertainment including a Michael Jackson tribute show, a Doggie Drag Costume Contest, Rainbow Light Art Walk, and more.

Family Pride and Queer Youth Pride
Family Pride at Cal Anderson Park includes kid-friendly entertainment like "Drag Queen Storytime" and bounce houses to spread the all-inclusive PFLAG-esque love around. Queer Youth Pride will follow in the evening, with interactive educational activities and queer youth performers doing live sets of spoken word—all are encouraged to join in and share their stories.

Lambert House Pride Drop-In
Dinner and a movie (plus games!) for people ages 11-22 at queer-friendly Lambert House, organized as part of Seattle Pride.

ART
Urban Craft Uprising Summer Show
Urban Craft Uprising's curated lineup of more than 150 makers, designers, and artisans will display and sell their work at the summer edition of this twice annual event. (Through Sunday)

The Punk Rock Flea Market
The beloved Punk Rock Flea Market survives, with vendors selling a wide variety of "stuff they made, stuff they purchased, stuff they stole." (Through Sunday)

Seth Goodkind: Don't Look Away
One of those lines that all writers know but can't seem to place is the one that goes, "The writer's only job is to never look away." Illustrator and comic artist Seth Goodkind takes up that charge in Don't Look Away, which, according to press materials, is a "a collection of 24 pen and ink portraits and stories of people who have fallen victim to systemically racist legal institutions and their blue-shirt military executors." Goodkind is an artist of many styles. The stuff he draws for the quarterly, comics-only newspaper, Intruder, is often incredibly detailed, dense, and cross-hatchy. The lines he used in the portraits he drew of the authors who read at 2015's APRIL Festival, however, were more liquid and watercolor-y, impressionistic. Whatever the course of his line, he's a versatile and intelligent comic who you should keep an eye on. RS

Barbara Earl Thomas: Heaven on Fire
Barbara Earl Thomas is a Seattle legend worth the title. (She’s a 2016 Stranger Genius Award nominee, and she also recently won the Yvonne Twining Humber Award from Artist Trust.) You might know her as the charismatic founding director of the Northwest African American Museum, but she’s finally getting her due as the lifelong artist who channels deep wit, material mastery, and the presence of primordial forces in ordinary lives to weave stories. They’re told in layered prints, paintings, cut-paper installations, sculptures, and writings that hush and captivate. This week, you have to get out of Seattle and over to Bainbridge to see the ways in which heaven is on fire. JEN GRAVES

READINGS & TALKS
Max Porter with Frances McCue
Max Porter will read from Grief Is the Thing with Feathers—described by the London Review of Books as "compact and splendid," and a "polyphonic narrative with elements of the prose poem"—in a conversation with Seattle author and Hugo House Founding Director Frances McCue.

FOOD & DRINK
Sushi Making & Sake Tasting
Learn to roll five different types of sushi at this tasting event with Chiso Sushi owner Hirohiko Kirita. You'll also get three different sake tastes, a full pour of your favorite one, a prize if you're on the best sushi maker team, and a take-home sushi-making guide. (Through Sunday)

Pacific Northwest Cider Awards Festival
A long afternoon tasting local cider is promised at the Pacific Northwest Cider Awards. With your ticket, you'll receive a tasting glass and eight 4-ounce pours (you can purchase more). Wander around, try the best cider from the Pacific Northwest, and munch on snacks—both gluten-y and gluten free.

SUNDAY
QUEER
42nd Annual Seattle Pride Parade
There's a rich queer vein flowing through the city, and this weekend it takes the form of thousands of shouting, cheering, chanting revelers. This year's theme looks to the future, asking what shape Pride might take as we continue to fight for justice and equality. Hot tip: Reserve a seat on the Westlake bleachers for a cool $30 for a sweet view of the whole shebang, and remember to shout till you're hoarse. The beer gardens open at 9:30 a.m., which is maybe a little early for a drink—but it's never the wrong time to meet your friends, dress to impress, and hold hands in a great big mob of queer unity. MATT BAUME

PrideFest 2016
PrideFest is the largest free Pride festival in North America, now in its tenth year. Featuring performances from local and international touring acts, this year's fest also has family-friendly activities as well as identity-specific marches and parties for many tastes (not all of them, but a lot of them).

FOOD & DRINK
Metal Brunch
Listen to DJ Ryan Schutte (of MetalShop) and a rotating special guest DJ spin metal while you enjoy all-you-can-eat breakfast for $10. There will also be appropriately named drinks (Mimosadadeth or Metallicarita, anyone?) and as many biscuits as it takes to cure your hangover.

Snouts & Stouts
Little Water Cantina’s monthly Snouts & Stouts event includes a whole hog roast, plenty of local beer, and live music. For $17, you get a pork taco platter (roast pork, rice and beans, handmade tortillas, plus all the fixings) and a pint of beer from Chuckanut Brewery & Kitchen. Best of all, you can enjoy it from Little Water Cantina’s huge back patio overlooking Lake Union. The event is kid-friendly and doesn’t take reservations, so you're advised to get there early. KATHLEEN RICHARDS