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There's a lot going on today.

First, The Emerald City Comicon will be going on all day at the Washington State Convention Center. If you've never experienced a comic book convention, I recommend it. Especially if you don't know anything about comic books.

In book-books, with print and stuff, Vicki Delany reads at Seattle Mystery Bookshop from Valley of the Lost, which is about British Columbia...and murder.

There are two group readings at 2 o'clock this afternoon. At the Hugo House, there's a reading called "Cultural Collisions," in which four local authors "who collectively represent at least 16 cultures" will read and interact with the audience. At Elliott Bay Book company, Jane Alynn, Elizabeth Aoki, Lana Hechtman Ayers & Julene Tripp Weaver celebrate National Poetry Month with a discussion about chapbook publishing to follow. Weaver primarily writes poems about her work with AIDS patients. It's sensitive, lovely writing about the topic, and if you've ever lost someone to AIDS, you will probably find a lot to love about her stuff.

There are two other readings at Elliott Bay after that group reading. In the early afternoon, Stuart Brown, M.D. reads from Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul . It is a book about how playing isn't just for kids or perverts. And in the evening, William Dietrich reads from The Dakota Cipher, the third book in his historical series. This time, it's set in the newborn United States instead of Europe.

Hester Rumberg reads at Third Place Books. One of Rumberg's best friends was in a sailing accident that killed her entire family. Ten Degrees of Reckoning is about her friend dealing with that accident and surviving.

And, as an afterparty to the Comicon, the Fantagraphics Bookstore and gallery is hosting Jaime Hernandez and Stan Sakai. Hernandez is co-creator of Love and Rockets. I wrote about the Hernandez brothers for an issue of The Progressive a while back. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have the piece online. Fortunately, this guy has copied the whole thing and put it on his blog, for which I am forever grateful. You should not miss this reading just for Jaime Hernandez. But Sakai is pretty great, too. he's the creator of Usagi Yojimbo, which is the longest-running samurai rabbit comic book in the history of the world. If that's not enough, just-getting started cartoonist Paul Hornschemeier also signs his work. I was not so crazy about Hornschemeier's first comic book, Mother, Come Home. It felt a little melodramatic to me. But I adore his last collected book, The Three Paradoxes, about Zeno and memory and long-distance relationships. He's clearly an artist on the rise. This is a fine collection of comics talent and clearly this is the reading of the night.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.