Tag Archives: elliott bay book company

News

Reykjavik is Calling; gives Seattle a Taste of Iceland

Seattle and Reykjavik seem to have a great Sister City relationship. Each year around this time, since about 2007, Reykjavik has been sending some of their most creative people to Seattle. This year, musicians, an author, an arts curator, a chef, and more will braving the long trip across the Atlantic to share their culture with us. If all goes well, the UNESCO City of Literature may even be able to put in a good word for our own bid for such a distinction.

I was at the media preview dinner for the meals that will be featured at the Dahlia Lounge this week. The lamb was quite tasty and got to drink some Icelandic vodka with a fish head frozen inside of an ice cube, because a friend would do no such thing. It was good and you couldn’t taste the fish until most of the ice cube had melted. I also drank some Aquavit out of an ice luge (see right). Sometimes report can be difficult work, I tell you.

One of the events I’m most excited for is the writing jam at Elliott Bay Book Company on Friday night. An Iceland writer, Bragi Ólafsson, and Seattleite, Karen Finneyfrock, created stories based on characters supplied by the other author. They’ll read their stories at EBBC, or so I understand. I didn’t make the connection previously, but Ólafsson is also a musician and he was a member of the band the Sugarcubes, which puts him exactly one degree of separation away from Bjork.

There is also the annual, free concert. This will be held at Neumos and feature the Seattle Rock Orchestra, Eric Anderson of Cataldo, and Say Hi, collaborating with Sin Fang, Soley, and Júníus Meyvant.

The full schedule of events are:

FOOD

Icelandic Menu at Dahlia Lounge

Thursday, October 9 – Sunday, October 12

Dahlia Lounge welcomes Icelandic Chef Viktor Örn Andrésson, Nordic Chef of the Year 2014 who is working in collaboration with Chef Brock Johnson to craft a prix fixe, four-course menu showcasing some of the finest Icelandic ingredients such as salmon, cod and free-range lamb. Diners can also enjoy two signature Reyka Vodka cocktails with a dash of Brennivín created by Dahlia Lounge Mixologist Amber Gephart.

Chef Viktor Örn Andrésson is head chef at the internationally renowned Blue Lagoon’s LAVA Restaurant.  He was named Nordic Chef of the Year 2014, the Icelandic Chef of the Year in 2013 and has been a member of the Icelandic National Culinary Team since 2009. Chef Örn is no stranger to culinary competitions; in 2010 he received gold and silver medals at the Culinary World Cup, and has participated in two Bocuse d’Or championships. Chef Andrésson derives culinary inspiration from the climate and geography of Iceland, which drives his love of preparing local and seasonal foods, including the high-quality, fresh food provided in abundance by the north Atlantic sea; a passion clearly reflected in the Icelandic menu at Dahlia Lounge.

The four-course menu is $75 and reservations can be made by calling 206.682.4142. Dahlia Lounge is located at 2001 4th Avenue, Seattle, WA, 98121.

MUSIC

Reykjavik Calling – Free Concert at Neumos Presented By KEXP 90.3 FM

Saturday, October 11 | Doors at 7:00 p.m.

At Reykjavik Calling, Icelandic musicians take the stage with some of Seattle’s most-loved artists for a concert at Neumos. This FREE, cross-cultural musical showcase introduces Seattle to the vibrant music scene that has securedIceland’s position as a musical powerhouse. Presented by KEXP 90.3, the FREE concert will feature performances and never-before-heard collaborations from the following Iceland/Seattle duos:

From Iceland                     From Seattle

Sin Fang                                 Seattle Rock Orchestra Quintet

Soley                                       Say Hi

Júníus Meyvant                    Eric Anderson of Cataldo

The Reykjavik Calling concert is 21+ only and limited to venue capacity. Doors open at 7:00 p.m.

Neumos is located at 925 E Pike St, Seattle, WA, 98122. For more information, visit http://neumos.com

ART

Odin’s Eye

Friday, October 10 – Sunday, November 9

The Odin’s Eye art exhibit seeks to build an inspirational bridge between Americans and Icelanders as artists visually interpret the Norse Mythology through various mediums. Participating artists include from Iceland: Gunnella, Kristín Ragna Gunnarsdóttir, Sindri Már Sigfússon, Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir.  From the US: Lulu Yee , Derek Weisberg, Pandora Andre-Beatty and Michael Linton Simpson. The exhibit is sponsored by Icelandair Cargo and Iceland Naturally.

“I lived in Iceland for 4 years and am fascinated with the connection Icelanders have with nature, their colorful heritage, their folklore, hidden people, elves, the Norse Gods,” said Lulu Yee, artist and curator of Odin’s Eye. “Iceland is a nation of great storytellers, and I wanted to work on a group show which addresses an aspect of the Icelandic heritage, while at the same time, viewing it through the lens of a foreigner who has had little exposure to those stories.”

The Nordic Heritage Museum is located at 3014 NW 67th St, Seattle, WA, 98117. For more information, visit http://nordicmuseum.org/

LITERATURE

Reykjavik Writing Jam

Friday, October 10 / 7:00 p.m.

Presented by the Seattle City of Literature and Reykjavik UNESCO City of Literature in partnership with Elliott Bay Book Company, Icelandic writer Bragi Ólafsson and Seattle poet and novelist Karen Finneyfrock will join together to read stories based on characters of the other’s creation. This “character jam” will be accompanied by a “zine jam” hosted by ZAPP, Seattle’s Zine Archive & Publishing Project. Each guest who attends this event will be invited to craft their own zines of Karen and Bragi’s work with a variety of materials, and walk away with a one-of-a-kind art object.

Elliott Bay Book Company is located at 1521 10th Ave., Seattle, WA, 98122. For more information, visit http://elliottbaybook.com/ and http://seattlecityoflit.org

ART AND GEOTHERMAL PRESENTATION IN TACOMA

Nordic Eco: Steps Toward Sustainability

Wednesday, October 1 – Wednesday, November 19

Special Event with Guest Speaker Árni Gunnarsson, National Power Company of Iceland: October 1, 2014 at 7 p.m.

The topic of Icelandic leadership in the field of geothermal and hydroelectric energy production will be punctuated at the opening on October 1st when featured guest Árni Gunnarsson speaks on the history of the industry in Iceland. This event bridges together “Nordic Edo: Steps Towards Sustainability” with the art exhibit, “Elements of Power: Capturing the Icelandic Landscape” as Iceland’s ability to harness renewable energy sources is directly tied to the landscape features recreated in Sigrun’s art installations.

The Pacific Lutheran University, Scandinavian Cultural Center is located at 12180 South Park Avenue, Tacoma, WA 98447-0003. For more information, visit http://www.plu.edu/scancenter

Elements of Power: Capturing the Icelandic Landscape

Wednesday, October 1- Wednesday, October 22

Artist Meet & Greet:  Thursday, October 16 / 5 – 8 p.m.

The exhibit, “Elements of Power: Capturing the Icelandic Landscape” will explore Icelandic glaciers, rivers, lava fields and northern lights through the medium of touchable textiles. Sigrun Lara Shanko, the featured artist, has garnered attention worldwide for her long running series of silks infused with themes from the Viking Age.

The Pacific Lutheran University, Scandinavian Cultural Center is located at 12180 South Park Avenue, Tacoma, WA 98447-0003. For more information, visit http://www.plu.edu/scancenter

News

Notes from the Seattle: City of Literature Town Hall

Photo of Elliott Bay Book Company in 2008, photo by Joe Mabel, from Wikicommons.

A few hundred people turned out Wednesday night to Town Hall to hear some of the stars of Seattle’s literature scene make the case for the city’s bid to become a UNESCO City of Literature. Seattlish called them “the literal literati.”

The speakers were (not in any particular order) Mayor Ed Murray and Deputy Mayor Hyeok Kim, memoirist Elissa Washuta, Sasquatch Books’ publisher and president Gary Luke, Seattle Public Library rock star Nancy Pearl, Elliott Bay Book Company’s Rick Simonson, Washington Center for the Book’s Chris Higashi, Hugo House’s Tree Swenson, and novelist Ryan Boudinot, who has been the public face and voice of the effort. It was emceed by Brian McGuigan of the Hugo House. They each made the case for why this bid is important and worthwhile.

Next week, Seattle will formally submit its application to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to become the world’s eighth City of Literature. Being in the Great Hall at Town Hall, attendance may have seemed somewhat sparse, but that was only because the room was so big. I would guess that somewhere between one and two hundred people showed up. All were writers and/or dedicated readers.

Ryan Boudinot first raised the idea of Seattle becoming a City of Literature last June, when he gave a talk at Elliott Bay Book Company’s 40th anniversary celebration. He said:

Unesco cities of literature currently include Dublin, Reykjavik, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Norwich, and Iowa City. These cities comprise an international network devoted to collaboration and cultural exchange. Our city, which has given us so many authors, books, events, and resources deserves to stand beside these cities and uphold the responsibilities that come with the designation. I have contacted Unesco to begin the process of applying for the City of Literature program and learned that the application process begins again next year. I’ve also been consulting with friends in Reykjavik who successfully applied for inclusion in the program and reached out to Iowa City’s City of Literature Board of Directors. Tonight I’m proposing a committee to pursue City of Literature designation, comprised of representatives from Seattle’s arts organizations who have a stake in Seattle’s thriving literary culture. And I’m proposing that we present Elliott Bay Book Company’s forty-year commitment to the written word as one of the primary reasons that the world should recognize Seattle as a City of Literature. If you’re interested in becoming involved, let me know, and let’s make this happen.

(You can read the full speech here – and should.)

The first speaker Wednesday night was Elissa Washuta, who noted Seattle’s cultural history and Native American heritage. She said, “Storytelling in Seattle boasts a 10,000 year legacy.” Chris Higashi noted how Seattle voters have always supported library levies overwhelmingly. Rick Simonson talked about a reading at Elliott Bay Book Company in 1997 that was packed for then-mostly-unknown author Haruki Murakami, who hadn’t sold 10,000 books in the US at the time. Nancy Pearl was Nancy Pearl. She spoke of bringing in authors from war-torn nations to Seattle to tell their stories. Tree Swenson envisioned a city-wide literary hub.

Mayor Murray was the second speaker, who after showing off his Elliott Bay Book Company punch card, said that “Seattle is a city of literature, Seattle is a city of readers.” He went on to note that “To be a city of literature, we need to be a city of literacy” while speaking of his own learning disabilities as a child and how he learned to read and it became his favorite pastime.

One funny moment came when Ryan Boudinot tried to interrupt Brian McGuigan’s introduction of Nancy Pearl, saying he wanted to introduce her. She ended up shush both of them.

Ryan Boudinot promised that every book he writes, for the remainder of his career, “will be stamped ‘Published in Seattle.’” He challenged writers to work with one another and complete their own projects. “Now is the time for alliances,” he said. He also noted that “Seattle writers will see more visibility in foreign markets” and that “we will se an increase in cultural tourism… More writers will come to Seattle to work and learn.”

As someone who lives in Seattle and loves books and its literary scene, it was tough not to feel inspired leaving Town Hall. Seeing Seattle designated as a “City of Literature,” one of fewer than ten in the world, would be incredibly exciting and the benefits would be immense. I could think of nothing more exciting than having Seattle become a “City of Literature” in the same year it became Super Bowl champions. This is big deal.

As Mayor Murray put it, “Arts are good for business, yes, but the arts are also good for the human spirit.” He also said that this would be “recognition for something that already exists.”

{Photo by Joe Mabel from Wikicommons.}

Arts & Entertainment, Literature

Eight off-site AWP events not to miss this week

Late in our hibernation, a controversy erupted where the bookfair at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference was temporarily excluding the general public from the fair on its final day, Saturday, March 1. It was a break from tradition that AWP said was due to complexities in Seattle’s tax code, which, they say, differ from other cities that host the conference.

I’ll be attending the conference next week, and attending to as many readings and panels as I can manage on Thursday and Friday, but, like the final day of the book fair, there are a bunch of great events that happening off-site that are open to the public. Here are a few that I recommend checking out:

Festival of Language, Rock Bottom, Wednesday, February 26, 5pm-10pm (website)

I’m not familiar with most of the fifty (!) writers booked for this reading, and that’s part of the fun. The night will be divided up into three 90-minute segments. The readings will be short, forcing authors to grab listeners immediately and turn them on to their writing. And even if not, it’ll be just a few moments until the next one takes the microphone. The one author on the roster I am most familiar with is Alissa Nutting, who wrote the scandalous Tampa, one of the most talked-about books of 2013 (though I liked her gripping and unique short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls a little more).

AWP Event with Tin House Books, Wave Books, and Tumblr, Chop Suey, Thursday, February 27, 8pm, free  (website)

This party may actually literally have it all: readings from great writers (Dorothea Lasky, Peter Mountford, Bianca Stone, and Matthew Zapruder), DJ sets from Mas y Menos and New Dadz, and free drinks, provided by Tumblr. I recommend finding a copy of Mountford’s brand new novel The Dismal Science, and asking him to sign it for you. It’s the best novel you’ll read all year that features Paul Wolfowitz.

MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction, Vito’s Restaurant, Thursday, February 27, 7pm-9pm, free (website)

This is the launch party for the a new anthology that explores the two predominant “scenes” of American fiction, edited by Chad Harbach (with N+1 magazine and author of the popular novel The Art of Fielding). This is one of the books I’m most anxious to read, and I did find The Art of Fielding to be an entertaining read, so this is on my must-see list. There was also an excerpt from the book, about the famous editor Gordon Lish, on the New Yorker’s website.

Slate Live: Audio Book Club Podcast Recording: Hugh Howey on Kurt Vonnegut, Town Hall, Thursday, February 27, 7:30pm, $10 tickets. (website)

A live taping of the Slate podcast will include a discussion about the beloved Kurt Vonnegut, and will feature Slate writers Dan Kois (Slate Book Review editor), and Hanna Rosin, plus Hugh Howey, author of the popular WOOL series.

Sex Death and Memoir Reading, Babeland, Friday, February 28, 5pm-6:30pm (website)

This reading is hosted by former students who had taken Portland author Lidia Yuknavitch’s Ecstatic States workshop. The workshop’s aim is to “go beyond the clichés of sex and death” and that’s exactly what makes Yuknavitch’s writing so compelling. Her 2011 memoir, The Chronology of Water, is such a compelling book because whether she’s writing about abuse, sex, or swimming, Yuknavitch knows that the right words are often the most direct. It’s beautifully written because Yuknavitch is honest with her readers, even when it doesn’t paint her in the most flattering light. It is one of the books that has stuck with me since reading it. I can’t wait to hear first-hand how Lidia Yuknavitch directly influenced a subsequent group of authors.

Jazz and Poetry Soiree with Molly Ringwald, Heather McHugh, Robert Pinsky, and friends, Chihuly Boathouse, Friday, February 28, 5pm, $135 tickets. (website)

Tickets for this event are long sold out, and you really didn’t want to go anyway.

VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, Hugo House, Friday, February 28, 8pm, $10 minimum donation (website)

This is one of the higher-profile readings, and for good reason. It’s loaded. It features beloved authors like Cheryl Strayed (Wild), Nick Flynn (Another Bullshit Night in Suck City), Pam Houston (Cowboys Are My Weakness), Natalie Diaz (When My Brother Was an Aztec), Kate Lebo (A Commonplace Book of Pie), and more. The readings start at 10pm, I’d recommend getting to the Hugo House much earlier.

Bedtime Stories, Elliott Bay Book Company, Saturday, March 1, $15 tickets (which includes a copy of Suzy Vitello’s new book The Moment Before) (website) 

The theme of this evening reading at Elliott Bay Book Company is “adult bedtime stories” and it stars some very well known authors: Chelsea Cain, Chuck Palahniuk, Monica Drake, Lidia Yuknavitch, and Suzy Vitello (all of whom, I think, are friends in Portland). The EBBC website says the first fifty people to arrive in the bedtime attire (safe for bookstores, presumably) will be handed a heart-shaped box of chocolates by Chelsea Cain.

{Photo by Tom Murphy VII, from Wikicommons}

Arts & Entertainment, Literature

Meyer’s Texas Epic “The Son” Sweeps from Comanches to Oil Barons

Novelist Philipp Meyer (American Rust) reads from his newest book, The Son, June 10 at 7 p.m. at Elliott Bay Book Company.

“[F]ortune,” goes the epigraph from Edward Gibbon at the outset of The Son, “spares neither man nor the proudest of his works,” and to prove the point, Philipp Meyer then goes on to chronicle the rising and falling of human affairs, specifically, those of the McCullough clan in Texas, from the mid-19th-century when the Republic’s dissenters included Comanches and Mexican landholders, until the present day, as death approaches for Jeanne Anne McCullough, an oil baroness from an age and industry where women needn’t apply.

Don’t be put off by the crusty orotundity of Colonel Eli McCullough in the opening few pages (presented as if extracted from a 1936 WPA oral history), as Meyer swiftly finds a more engaging voice in which to tell Eli’s — and Texas’s — story. (You look in on his son Peter’s life via a diary, and enter directly the senility-confused mind of great-granddaughter Jeannie.)

As a young boy, Eli loses most of his family in a Comanche raid on their ranch, though he ends up adopted by one. Meyer captures the immediacy of long-ago days, and is scrupulously faithful to the world as Eli perceives it:

The Indians were ignoring us and talking among themselves, ums and ughs, grunts, no language at all, though they had words that sounded Spanish, and one word, taibo, they said to us often, taibo this and taibo that. We were barefoot and it was dark and I tried not to kick a prickly pear or be tromped on by the horses stamping and pacing.

Reality evolves on you, though. Soon enough, Eli’s vocabulary expands: “paa, water; tuhuya, horse; tehcaró, eat. Tunetsuka — keep going.” The Comanches enter him into a remedial program where he learns how to prepare a buffalo hide, and make necessary tools from animal sinew. “By comparison,” thinks Eli, “we were dumb as steers. They could not understand why they had not defeated us.”

Eli will consider himself, in later life, Indian, not Christian. His ruthlessness in defense of his “tribe,” and willingness to take advantage of social structures he doesn’t necessarily believe in, make him an empire builder.

His son Peter can’t stand the way Eli manipulates the local Mexican inhabitants, who respect Eli as a sometimes-brutal, sometimes-beneficent “lord of the manor” in a way that they don’t respect Peter. Where Eli’s defining experience was his childhood abduction, Peter is an adult when a neighboring Mexican family is massacred — how horrible it is to slaughter innocents (and how justifiable it is when it “needs doing”) becomes a theme of the book.

By the time Jeannie kicks up her traces at an attempt to socialize her in a boarding school back East, the vast McCullough ranch has become a devouring thing, emblematic of a Texas that, through grazing, has scoured itself to the topsoil, and can only be propped up by the titanic amounts of money that oil discovery unleashed. She has in her Eli’s capacity to join with the raiders (instead of Comanches, oil firms are the new predators) and learn their ways, at the expense of cattle-raising culture — which in turn came at the expense of farmers, who had settled expropriated tribal land.

Meyer made several winning choices in telling his epic, most notably to forego epic expanses of strictly chronological storytelling. At 561 pages, The Son nevertheless speeds along because chapters from the storylines are intercut with one another; each generation gets their say, as they understand it. It lends poignancy to the tendency people have to imagine that if they’d been for forty or fifty years earlier or later, they might have had a better life. But it also keeps the reader situated in a time-hopping “now” that keeps you turning pages late into the night.

And while Meyer judiciously salts his characters’ speech with dialect (Eli feels “dauncy,” for instance), he also imagines people speaking forthrightly, not for the pages of history or old Western movies, with their ums and ughs. The Comanche Escuté says, ” My arm hurts so bad I can’t sleep but you don’t hear me whining like a child. Kill some Mexicans, die a hero. I don’t give a fuck, but this talking is pointless, you might as well cut your own throat, and the throats of your people while you’re at it.”

These are visceral, dusty, bloody pages, but they are hard to let go of.