Readings
Thursday 11/2
COURTNEY LOVE
The lady who needs no introduction comes back to Seattle to promote Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love. According to press materials: "This event is a signing only. A special signing ticket is required to get in the signing line, available by purchasing Dirty Blonde from University Book Store." See Stranger Suggests. University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. Purchase required. 5 pm.
LINDA FAILLACE
The "writer, songwriter, shopkeeper, and shepherdess" reads from Mad Sheep: The True Story Behind the USDA's War on a Family Farm. Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600. Free. 6 pm.
ECHO BODINE
She reads from The Key: Unlock Your Psychic Abilities. Third Place Books (Lake Forest Park), 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333. 7 pm.
PETER STONE
He reads from Heist: Superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, His Republican Allies, and the Buying of Washington. University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. Free. 7 pm.
MATTHEW ZAPRUDER
Zapruder reads from his new collection of poems The Pajamaist, published by Copper Canyon Press. "Who knows where/the sparrow falls?/All day that song,/the dead one's light/body pushed along/the street in my head." Open Books, 2414 N 45th St, 633-0811. Free. 7:30 pm.
WENDY WERRIS
An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books is about the biz. Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600. Free. 8 pm.
Friday 11/3
MARNI NIXON
The woman who was the singing voice of Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady reads from her book I Could Have Sung All Night: My Story. Third Place Books (Lake Forest Park), 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333. Free. 6:30 pm.
KAT RICHARDSON, LILITH SAINTCROW
Richardson's Greywalker is a novel involving a near-death experience. Saintcrow's Dead Man Rising is about "a half-human, half-demon bounty hunter." University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. Free. 7 pm.
Saturday 11/4
LARRY KARP
The Ragtime Kid is a mystery. Seattle Mystery Bookshop, 117 Cherry St, 587-5737. Free. Noon.
LOS NORTEÑOS
A reading by local Latino poets, writers, playwrights, screenwriters, and journalists. Seattle Public Library, Microsoft Auditorium, 1000 4th Ave. Free. 4 pm.
RIGOBERTO GONZALES
The poet and novelist reads from his memoir Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa. Richard Rodriguez says, "Rigoberto Gonzalez is a writer who walks, with an elegant gait, the line between sorrow and laughter, anger and acceptance. His prose is shaped by the poetry of irony. And he is a master of it." Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600. Free. 4:30 pm.
LAILA LALAMI
She reads from the paperback of her debut story collection Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, full of "telling glimpses into contemporary Morocco and perceptive renderings of the troubles that force people to leave the world they know for a strange and hostile place" (Booklist). Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600. Free. 7:30 pm.
Sunday 11/5
DAVID HLAVSA
The playwright and drama professor reads from An Actor Rehearses: What to Do When and Why. Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600. Free. Noon.
GEOFFREY K. PULLUM
The linguistics scholar reads Far from the Madding Gerund and Other Dispatches from Language Log. Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600. Free. 2 pm.
AIMEE BENDER
The very good short story writer—who is revered among writers but underknown to the world at large—talks about writing and gives a reading. Probably from her latest collection Willful Creatures, recently out in paperback. Here's the first half of one story's first paragraph: "Let's face it. The dead bodies were clearly acts of easy murder, done by the husband to the wife, then the wife to the husband. I found them face-to-face, cold, on the living-room carpet. There is nothing here to solve. The only mystery I can see I have addressed in my report, which will soon be on the desk of my superior, and has to do with the number of salt and pepper shakers in a household of two people. Fourteen seems to me excessive. That, in my opinion, is the living core of this mystery. If you want a motive, I will write it out: the husband hated his wife because she had stopped speaking to him years ago; the wife hated the husband because he was stupid with their money. All this has been verified by various neighbors, relatives, and friends. No one I spoke to was particularly shocked by the double murder, seemingly planned on the same day which, if nothing else, seems to show a sense of kinship between the two..." See Stranger Suggests. Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, 322-7030. $7 general admission. 3 pm.
GALSAN TSCHINAG
He lives in Europe and Mongolia and writes in German. He's here with his first U.S. publication, a novel called The Blue Sky, translated by Katharina Rout. According to the German newspaper Die Welt: "Tschinag describes the strenuous days spent between the herd of sheep and the yurt with both affection and precision." (He also reads tomorrow at UW.) Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600. Free. 4:30 pm.
JONATHAN REYNOLDS
The former New York Times food writer reads from his memoir Wrestling with Gravy, which includes recipes for squash and chestnut soup with chipolte cream, chocolate malted icebox pudding, and barbecued Chinese duck, and clunky sentences like, "Most of my downturn in fortune was due to a combination of rebelliousness and not knowing what the canon was that I was rebelling against." Third Place Books (Lake Forest Park), 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333. Free. 5:30 pm.
Monday 11/6
GALSAN TSCHINAG
The Tuvan novelist reads—for the second time this week—from The Blue Sky, which "describes the strenuous days spent between the herd of sheep and the yurt with both affection and precision," according to Germany's Die Welt. UW COMMUNICATIONS BUILDING, RM 120, UW Campus. Free. 7 pm.
JOHN MOE
He reads from Conservatize Me: How I Tried to Become a Righty with the Help of Richard Nixon, Sean Hannity, Toby Keith, and Beef Jerky. University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. Free. 7 pm.
MICHAEL COLLINS
Death of a Writer is a novel involving a college campus and an unsolved murder. Third Place Books (Lake Forest Park), 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333. Free. 7 pm.
MARNI NIXON
The woman who was the singing voice of Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady reads from her book I Could Have Sung All Night: My Story and sings a couple songs. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, 652-4255 for info. $5. 7:30 pm.
Tuesday 11/7
DAVID ORR
He gives a talk called "Design on the Edge: Climate Change, Posterity, and the Design Professions," which focuses "on the revolution in the design professions and its relation to larger issues of climate change, law, and the rights of future generations." Kane Hall, Room 120, UW Campus. Free. 6:30 pm.
ELIZABETH MERRICK, HOLIDAY REINHORN, BRANGIEN DAVIS
The fiction writers read their contributions to This Is Not Chick-Lit: Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers. University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. Free. 7 pm.
GARTH SUNDEM
Geek Logik: 50 Foolproof Equations for Everyday Life flattens all kinds of difficult decisions into clear equations. Third Place Books (Lake Forest Park), 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333. Free. 7 pm.
MATT LEE, TED LEE
They share The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook: Stories and Recipes for Southerners and Would-be Southerners. Burney's Wine Corner, 17171 Bothell Way NE, 497-3910. Free. 7 pm.
Wednesday 11/8
STELLA CAMERON
A Marked Man is a mystery set in Louisiana. Seattle Mystery Bookshop, 117 Cherry St, 587-5737. Free. Noon.
CHARLIE SMITH
The New York poet reads from his recent books, including Women of America and Heroin and Other Poems. Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers, 208 First Ave S, 282-2677. $10. 7 pm.
JILL FERGUSON
Sometimes Art Can't Save You is a novel narrated by a 16-year-old named Jessica. A random excerpt: "I painted his private parts in green and yellow. I picked up the burnt sienna and applied that to his nipples. Then I wiped my hands on my paint-stained apron and grabbed the camera." Third Place Books (Lake Forest Park), 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333. Free. 7 pm.
NGUGI WA THIONG'O
The exiled Kenyan writer reads from his new novel Wizard of the Crow. "He has done for East Africa what Ahmadou Kourouma's Waiting for the Wild for Beasts to Vote did for West Africa," according to Washington Post Book World. "He has turned the power of storytelling into a weapon against totalitarianism." Seattle University, Piggott Auditorium 900 Broadway, 296-6135. www.cdforum.org. $5 general admission. 7 pm.
JOHN MOIR
He reads from Return of the Condor: The Race to Save Our Largest Bird from Extinction. Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600. www.wos.org. Free. 7:30 pm.
MATTHEW DIFFEE
The second cartoon in The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, In The New Yorker is two birds sitting on the edge of a building, one saying to the other: "I'd say my biggest influence is probably Pollack." Kane Hall, Room 110, UW Campus. Free. 7:30 pm.
THOMAS HOMER-DIXON
The Upside of Down "argues that five tectonic stresses are accumulating underneath the surface of today's global order: energy stress, economic stress, demographic stress, environmental stress, and climate stress." Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, 634-3400 for info. $5. 7:30 pm.
