Events
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Start: 7:00 pm
Co-presented with the GARDNER CENTER FOR ASIAN ART & IDEAS. As part of a summer of presenting noteworthy writers from South Asia at the Seattle Asian Art Museum (more in July!), we're delighted to present this evening with award-winning Sri Lankan novelist Shehan Karunatilaka, newly named winner of the Commonwealth Prize and the DSC South Asian Literature Prize. He is traveling for the U.S. publication of his dazzling debut novel, The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (Graywolf). Narrated by aging sportswriter W.G. Karunasena, it is a rollicking commentary on his life—his marriage, his grown son, his cronies, his homeland—and his obsession with a legendary Sri Lankan bowler and cricket itself. Michael Ondaatje selected this book for a pre-publication prize, and it was just awarded this year's prestigious DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. "There's much to enjoy in Wije's garrulously meandering narrative—in the grouchy humour, the laconic observations on Sri Lanka's political tribulations, the pathos of coming to the end of your life only to realize that maybe life does matter and you might have let people down ... A debut bristling with energy and confidence, a quixotic novel that is both an elegy to lost ambitions and a paean to madcap dreams." – The Sunday Times (London). "A crazy, ambidextrous delight." – Michael Ondaatje. Free admission. The reading will take place in the court atrium of the Seattle Asian Art Museum. SAAM is at 1400 East Prospect in Volunteer Park.
Start: 7:00 pm
Already a non-fiction author of note—with a biographical work on Edith Minturn and Newton Stokes, Love, Fiercely: A Gilded Age Romance (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), newly out—it is really for her captivating debut novel, The Orphanmaster (Viking) that Jean Zimmerman makes this first Elliott Bay visit. The Orphanmaster is set in seventeenth-century Manhattan—a time when the tiny colony is beginning to shift from Dutch to British control. "The Orphanmaster is a sweeping novel of great and precise imaginative intelligence; it's also the most entertaining and believable historical novel I've read in years. Jean Zimmerman is a debut novelist who already writes like an old master." – Darin Strauss.
Start: 7:30 pm
Presented by SEATTLE ARTS & LECTURES. Nearly a decade after winning global attention with his photographs and book, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, former Seattle-area resident Subhankar Banerjee continues to give needed focus to the Arctic and the many forces allied against its well-being. He visits this evening with a timely, urgent, eloquent new anthology, Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point (Seven Stories Press). Over thirty essays, many by Native writers and activists, comprise this vital work. Among those contributing: Sarah James, Nick Jans, Velma Wallis, Peter Matthiessen, Nancy Lord, Rosemary Ahtuangaruck, George Schaller, and more. "The earth and her beings have been speaking. But we failed to listen. Arctic Voices compels us to listen. We will stay deaf at our peril." – Vandana Shiva. Tickets ($15/$30) and more information are available via www.lectures.org, or (206) 621-2230. Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca).
Start: 7:30 pm
Co-presented by ISLAND PRESS and TOWN HALL CENTER FOR CIVIC LIFE, in association with ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY and ISLANDWOOD. Jeff Deyette, senior energy analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists' Clean Energy program is here this evening with a book that the Union has put out on lower-carbon impacts, Cooler Smarter: Practical Steps for Low-Carbon Living (Island Press). This could be a particularly apt program for Town Hall as we come into summer. $5 tickets are available at the door starting at 6:30 p.m., or in advance via www.brownpapertickets.com (1-800-838-3006). Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca). Preferred seating for Town Hall members. For more information on this evening, please call Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600, Town Hall at (206) 652-4255, or see www.townhallseattle.org.
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