Books Reading Tonight
posted by June 4 at 10:14 AM
onThere is a gigantic slate of readings tonight including a couple of mysteries and a Poetry Slam.
First, at the Seattle Public Library, we have C.D. Wright reading from Rising, Falling, Hovering. Angela Garbes tells you why you should go:
There is no one like Wright. Her voice—crackling and edgy, corporeal and erotic—carries with it the sound and feeling of her birthplace, the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, though she’s lived the last 20 years outside of Providence, where she teaches at Brown University. She has an uncanny and characteristic reverence for both the vernacular and the esoteric, which leads to riveting and rare depictions of American culture.
If you’re more into fiction, Nam Le reads from The Boat, a collection of seven stories, at Elliott Bay Book Company tonight. I have not read Nam Le, but he is a young author under 30 who has already won the Pushcart Prize, so that pretty much certifies that he is a specific kind of good, at the very least.
Up at the University Book Store, Steven Wax reads from Kafka Comes to America: Fighting For Justice in the War on Terror. It’s about civil rights. And down at Town Hall, Michael Kinsley reads from a collection of essays. Kinsley can be very wrong, but he is also frequently right-on.
And at the Chapel Performance space, Doug Nufer is reading with Janet Sarbanes as part of the Subtext reading series. Doug Nufer is a kick. Andrew Bleeker reviews Nufer’s latest, We Were Werewolves, also in the paper this week:
You can tell a Doug Nufer reading by the kind of laughter it inspires. Nufer won’t ask his audience for those wan chuckles chuckled by initiates in the presence of a flattering joke. That’s too easy for the author of Poem Noir, an increasingly elaborate series of poems that bends a sparse, hardboiled lexicon until it turns white-hot and creaks with genius. Nufer’s audiences laugh from pure surprise, and Nufer’s books remain surprising after multiple reads.
Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is up for your perusal.
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