2006-07 Literary Lecture Series

Frank Rich
October 9, 2006
Our series opens with celebrated op-ed columnist for The New York Times, Frank Rich, writer of the paper's weekly in-depth essay on the intersection of culture and news. Rich has also published a childhood memoir, Ghost Light. His drama reviews have been collected in Hot Seat: Theater Criticism for The New York Times.

Frank McCourt
November 21, 2006
One of the master storytellers of our times, Pulitzer Prize winner Frank McCourt is known for his best-selling memoirs, Angela's Ashes, and 'Tis. McCourt's new book, Teacher Man, recounts his thirty-year teaching career in the New York City public school system.

Edwidge Danticat
January 8, 2007
Edwidge Danticat is the acclaimed Haitian author of Krik? Krak!, The Farming of Bones, and The Dew Breaker among other searingly beautiful tales of her Creole culture. Danticat's incandescent stories, imbued with imagery, dispel stereotypes of her native country.

Suzan-Lori Parks
February 7, 2007
Brilliant young playwright Suzan-Lori Parks received the Pulitzer Prize for the Broadway play Topdog/Underdog. Parks is the author of the novel Getting Mother's Body and several screenplays including the Spike Lee film Girl 6 and an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Art Spiegelman
March 5, 2007
Art Spiegelman pioneered the graphic novel as a literary form in his brilliant Maus series, first published in his avant-garde comics magazine RAW. Spiegelman's edgy "comix" have long been featured in the pages of The New Yorker and international periodicals as well as in major museum exhibitions.

Jonathan Lethem
April 18, 2007
The irrepressibly inventive author Jonathan Lethem, a 2005 MacArthur Fellow, has nine imaginative novels to his credit in addition to short stories and essays. Lethem's Brooklyn upbringing inspires much of his writing, including Motherless Brooklyn, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Fortress of Solitude.

All lectures are held at Benaroya Hall at 7:30 p.m.

Special Events

A Conversation with Eric Carle
October 21, 2006, 7:00 p.m.
Town Hall Seattle
Join us for an evening for the entire family featuring an illustrated conversation with the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and seventy other captivating picture books for children. Presented in conjunction with Tacoma Art Museum's exhibit The Art of Eric Carle (Oct. 7 - Jan. 14).
$18 General - $9 Student/Under 25

An Evening with Stephen King
November 1, 2006, 7:30 p.m.
S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium, Benaroya Hall
The master of horror is coming to Seattle. With more than forty bone-chilling novels and two hundred heart-stopping stories to his credit, Stephen King is the absolute monarch of terror writing.
$60 Patron - $35 Main Floor - $25 Balcony - $15 Student/Under 25

Elizabeth Kolbert on Climate Change
December 5, 2006, 7:30 p.m.
S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium, Benaroya Hall
Elizabeth Kolbert, veteran journalist and author of "The Climate of Man," the award-winning New Yorker series on global warming, elucidates the science, deciphers the politics, and shares stories of the impact of climate change on individuals. Presented in conjunction with North Cascades Institute.
$60 Patron - $35 Main Floor - $25 Balcony - $15 Student/Under 25

Writers in the Schools: Student Reading and Celebration
May 24, 2007, 7:00 p.m.
Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall, Benaroya Hall
Since 1994, Seattle Arts & Lectures' Writers in the Schools (WITS) program has connected professional writers with public school students. In the classroom every week, WITS writers-in-residence inspire students to spin stories of fiction and truth, heartbreak and hope. Please join us in celebrating the literary stars of our future at this annual event.
Free admission!

Click here to purchase tickets for the 2006-07 Special Events.