2009-10 Special Events
Presenting Sponsor: Seattle Times

David Byrne* - Monday, September 28, 2009 (Town Hall Seattle)
Isabella Rossellini - Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Patti Smith - Monday, January 25, 2010
Daniel Handler a.k.a. Lemony Snicket - POSTPONED UNTIL FALL 2010
Arundhati Roy - Monday, March 29, 2010 (Town Hall Seattle)
Barry Lopez - Wednesday, April 7, 2010
David Remnick - Monday, April 19, 2010 (Town Hall Seattle, tickets available through Brown Paper Tickets)
Dr. Atul Gawande (CAPTIONED*)- Monday, May 3, 2010

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All Special Events begin at 7:30pm in the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium at Benaroya Hall. (unless otherwise noted)

Media Sponsors: Seattle Magazine, KUOW 94.9FM Puget Sound Public Radio, KCTS 9, with support from City Arts

Hotel Sponsor: W Seattle

David Byrne
Co-presented with Elliott Bay Book Company
Byrne rides a bike: all over his hometown, NYC, and the world. With his new book, Bicycle Diaries, he’ll host a town-hall presentation on the role cycling plays in city life. Sharing the stage will be local guests also interested in cycling and urban planning, civic responsibility, and the pleasures of the bike. There’s just one ticket price ($30), and it includes a signed copy of the book.
Please note: this event is at Town Hall Seattle.

Isabella Rossellini
Underwritten by Goldman Sachs & Co and Reed, Longyear, Malnati & Ahrens, PLLC
Known as the face of Lancôme cosmetics from 1982-96 and as a film and TV actress (Blue Velvet, Fearless, Alias, 30 Rock), Rossellini is also the creator/writer/director of Green Porno. These short films about the fascinating reproductive habits of insects and marine animals star Rossellini garbed in fantastic creature costumes of her own design—NOT your typical science feature à la Animal Planet or National Geographic. Green Porno, the book, with 125 film stills of Rossellini from the Sundance Channel-produced series, along with a narrative text and DVD, will be out this fall.

Patti Smith
Songwriter/punk rocker/poet Patti Smith blazed onto the rock scene in the 1970s with the seminal album Horses. She had nine additional releases—becoming known as the “Godmother of Punk”—and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Writing in the New York Times last year, Terrence Rafferty referred to Smith as “…a passionate autodidact whose idiosyncratic style is a kind of homemade concoction of Bob Dylan [with whom she has performed], William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, Allen Ginsberg, Little Richard and Buddha…” In addition to her musical career, Smith is a visual artist and a writer. She has written poetry for decades, including The Coral Sea, a book of prose poems written after the death of longtime friend, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; her most recent collection is Auguries of Innocence. She has completed a memoir, Just Kids, about her relationship with Mapplethorpe, to be released shortly before her event with SAL, which will include a reading of her poetry and memoir, Q&A, and end with a few songs.

Daniel Handler a.k.a. Lemony Snicket
The Daniel Handler a.k.a. Lemony Snicket Special Event scheduled for March 15 has been postponed until Fall 2010, and will now be part of our Literary\Arts Series. SAL will contact ticket holders with details on requesting a refund. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Check our website in May for an exact date when we announce the 2010\11 Season. We look forward to having you join us in the fall as Daniel Handler explains how his pseudonym stole his ideas, seduced his wife, and bought him a house, along with some unreliable anecdotes and curious digressions. Please email us with questions.

Arundhati Roy *TOWN HALL SEATTLE, March 29, 2010, 7:30pm
Co-presented with Elliott Bay Book Company
Novelist, activist, and political essayist Arundhati Roy will read from and sign copies of her latest nonfiction collection, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers. Examining the dark side of democracy in contemporary India, these essays looks closely at how religious bigotry, cultural nationalism, and neo-fascism simmer just under the surface of a country that projects itself as the world’s largest democracy. Ms. Roy's novel, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize in 1997. Please note: this event is at Town Hall Seattle.

Barry Lopez, April 7, 2010, 7:30pm
Co-presented by North Cascades Institute
Sponsored by The Boeing Company
"Arguably the nation's premier nature writer." --San Francisco Chronicle

A modern day Thoreau, Lopez deftly integrates his environmental and humanitarian concerns in both his fiction and nonfiction writing. Best known for Arctic Dreams, a National Book Award winner, Lopez' fiction includes Winter Count, Light Action in the Caribbean, and Resistance. He has co-edited with Debra Gwartney Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, a landmark work of language, geography, and folklore.

David Remnick, *TOWN HALL SEATTLE, April 19, 2010, 7:30pm
Co-presented with Elliott Bay Book Company
Editor of The New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, David Remnick will be interviewed by University of Washington communication professor David Domke. The two will discuss the prolific journalist’s latest book, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, followed by a book signing. Patron ticket holders are invited to a reception prior to the event (6-7pm) at the Sorrento Hotel.Please note: this event is at Town Hall Seattle. Tickets available through Brown Paper Tickets.

Dr. Atul Gawande, May 3, 2010, 7:30pm (CAPTIONED*)
Sponsored by Swedish Medical Center
A physician/surgeon, New Yorker magazine staffer, and MacArthur Fellow, Atul Gawande scrutinizes medical practices and the health care system. Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science was a National Book Award finalist.

*Accessible seats at SAL's events are available in all seating sections and price ranges. Please contact the SAL Box Office at sal@lectures.org or 206-621-2230 for any special needs.

SAL is pleased to be able to caption five events for the Significantly Hard of Hearing (SHOH) community during our 2009-10 Season. Based on a prior year’s worth of advice and testing gleaned from organizations representing the deaf and hard of hearing, we determined to make captioning available to patrons throughout the hall rather than in one particular seating section. Working with Dave Crowther of Counterbalance Productions and captioner Darlene Pickard, we devised a projection system that is as low-profile and unobtrusive as possible while still projecting text that is readable from most seats in Taper Auditorium at Benaroya Hall. Through these efforts, SAL intends to create a setting that makes our performances both more accessible and understandable to the SHOH community. The feedback from our audience members has been overwhelmingly positive; here’s what one Literary\Arts Series patron had to say:

“You can’t imagine how thrilling it was for me to attend last night’s presentation of Annie Proulx at Benaroya. For years and years, I have wanted to attend your presentations, but because of a profound hearing loss, have not done so. The captioning was a godsend, a blessing like you can’t believe. Thank you for captioning that performance—after a couple of glitches at the beginning, it went off without a hitch. I could easily read the captions from where I sat, and felt a sense of inclusion and involvement that was exhilarating.