Want more? Here’s everything we recommend this month: Music, Visual Art, Literature, Performance, Film, and Food.
Dec 4
Kolkata-born author Megha Majumdar’s incendiary 2020 debut novel A Burning, which follows the story of an Indian woman who witnesses a terrorist attack on a train, became a New York Times bestseller and was longlisted for the National Book Award that year. Set in the near future of Kolkata, Majumdar’s sophomore novel A Guardian and a Thief tells the intertwining stories of Ma, whose purse containing crucial immigration documents is stolen just before her family’s move to America, and Boomba, the thief who is driven to crime out of his desperation to support his own family. Majumdar will drop by Elliott Bay to discuss her work with local writer Kim Fu, author of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century. (Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm, free) JULIANNE BELL
Jan 13
Celebrated Irish author Colm Tóibín follows in the footsteps of literary giants like Henry James, James Baldwin, and Elizabeth Bishop, writing intensely human stories with unadorned, rhythmic prose. You’re most likely familiar with him through his sixth novel, Brooklyn, a breakout success that was adapted into the Oscar-nominated 2015 film of the same name starring Saoirse Ronan. Brooklyn revolves around young midcentury Irish immigrant Eilis Lace’s struggle to reconcile her past in Ireland with her new life in New York. Tóibín continued the saga with his 2024 sequel, Long Island, which picks up 30 years later as Eilis finds her marriage with her Italian husband Tony in disarray. Join him for this conversation at Town Hall for a glimpse into the mind of what the Boston Globe called “one of the world’s best living literary writers.” (Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm) JULIANNE BELL
Jan 27
National Book Award-nominated fiction writer, poet, and essayist Honorée Fanonne Jeffers spent 15 years researching archives for her critically acclaimed 2020 collection The Age of Phillis, which reimagines the life of revolutionary 18th-century poet Phillis Wheatley. For her next act, she published her 2021 debut novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, an ambitious 816-page intergenerational epic that traces a Black family’s lineage from before the Civil War to the present. Her latest work is her nonfiction debut Misbehaving at the Crossroads, which explores the crossroads—defined by Jeffers as “a location of difficulty and possibility, a boundary between the divine and the human”—in Black American and African cultures. Jeffers will join host Colleen Echohawk, Community Roots Housing CEO and Seattle Arts and Lectures’ Community Curated Series director, for a discussion on this fascinating intersection. (Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm) JULIANNE BELL
More
Pamela Gullard Dec 3, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm
Limitless: Stories from the Neighborhood That Shaped Seattle Dec 4, Third Place Books Seward Park, 7 pm
Polly Dugan Dec 5, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm
Thom Hartmann with Special Guest Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson Dec 6, Town Hall Seattle, 7 pm
Yume Kitasei Dec 7, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm
Tyler J. Bieber Dec 8, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm
Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Jen Barnes Dec 10, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm
A ‘Birdbrains’ Reading with Susan Rich & Contributors Dec 14, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm
‘We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth’ A Community Reading Jan 29, Third Place Books Seward Park, 7 pm
Early Warnings
Aja Monet Feb 5, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm
Cristina Rivera Garza & Javier Zamora Feb 24, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm
James McBride March 3, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm
Stephen Graham Jones March 30, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm
George Saunders: ‘Vigil: A Novel’ Apr 7, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm
Patrick Radden Keefe April 22, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm
Marlon James May 6, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm
Emily Wilson May 12, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm
Tommy Orange May 21, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm
