ArtSEA: How to get a head in the Seattle arts scene

We’re also coming up on Banned Books Week (Sept. 22 – 28), during which Seattle Public Library celebrates the freedom to read whatever the hell you want. Events include a public letterpress printing event with Partners in Print at the Central Library (Sept. 22) and the Books Unbanned program, which gives readers aged 13 – 26 free digital access to books that have been banned at various schools and community centers across the country. 

Related: Visit Seattle recently produced a series called Seattle Bookmarked: Banned Edition, in which local artists recite passages from banned books written by Seattle authors. See actor Jeremy Rudd read from Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes (with a cameo by painter Barry Johnson); muralist Angelina Villalobos read from Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison; and writer Dan Savage read from Brave Face by Shaun David Hutchinson. 

Also on the book front are three new titles by local authors — each of which captures different shades of the Northwest. (Thankfully none have been banned … so far.) 

The Sound of Seattle: 101 Songs that Shaped a City, by KEXP DJ and musician Eva Walker (of the Black Tones) and local writer Jacob Uitti (married to Walker), offers an enjoyably eclectic spin through Seattle music history.

Opening chronologically with the surprising choice of Bing Crosby’s 1942 hit “White Christmas” (the crooner was born in Tacoma), the book offers breezy blurbs on influential songs by Ray Charles, Ernestine Anderson, Dave Lewis, the Sonics, Heart and Dave Matthews plus all the grunge stars, with songs from “Purple Haze” to “Baby Got Back” to “Thrift Shop.” (Book release at Town Hall Seattle, Sept. 26 at 7:30 p.m.)

River Songs: Moments of Wild Wonder in Fly Fishing, by outdoors writer and fisherman Steve Duda, is a decidedly more mellow set of music. Here, songs come in the form of personal (and sometimes very funny) anecdotes that reveal the rhythm of cast and catch, the quiet stillness and pure silliness that draws fisherpeople back to the riverside again and again.

Duda’s richly drawn stories from Northwest waterways are (mercifully) less about epic quests of rod and reel than about close friendships and the ceaseless miracles of the natural world. (Bonus: lovely woodblock illustrations by Matthew DeLorme.) 

This One We Call Ours is the new collection by Seattle poet Martha Silano, and it’s a beauty (thanks in part to cover artwork by local painter David Hytone). Here, the longtime writer, recently diagnosed with ALS, showcases her special gift: translating environmental overwhelm into crystalline vignettes.

From an active-shooter drill to a visit to the Burke Museum to “Leading a Nature Walk on 23rd & Yesler,” an earth-ache thrums through Silano’s poems. Always, she urges us to remember the bruised planet in simple ways: “Just stand in a field,/Let your shoes get wet in knee-deep grass.” (A dozen poets of note will celebrate Silano with an online tribute via Terrain, Sept. 30 at 5 p.m.)