Literature

43 Stories

Books

Seattle is a UNESCO City of Literature. Advocates want you to read all about it

Seattle has been part of the global network of Cities of Literature since 2017. This month, they're celebrating the 20th anniversary of the City of Literature designation in Edinburgh, the first city to receive the title.
Katie Campbell
Books

'A match made in literary heaven.' The Jaipur Literature Festival is coming to Seattle

Seattle is adding another festival to its summer roster, and it's a big one for the local literary scene: the Jaipur Literature Festival.
Katie Campbell
Arts & Life

Gabriel García Márquez's last novel is published against his wishes

Until August is the last novel of the Nobel Prize-winning author, a work he asked his sons to destroy. But, nearly 10 years after his death, they have decided to publish his final novel.
Carrie Kahn
Arts & Life

Digital reading is on the rise in King County. How do I even do that?

We recently reported that the King County Library System was the second most popular library across the United States, digitally. That inspired a great question from a reader: I'm paraphrasing, but they basica
Katie Campbell
Arts & Life

The comedy and complexity of campus life: Sonora Jha's 'The Laughter'

The plot of "The Laughter" twists and turns around issues of Islamophobia, sexism, and the changing culture of campus life. Author Sonora Jha, a Seattle University professor, discusses her newest novel and why she chose to make her main character so unlikeable.
Libby Denkmann

Alec Cowan

Zaki Barak Hamid
Arts & Life

Celebrate Black literature and history all year long at Seattle Public Library's Douglass-Truth Branch

Seattle is home to what some may consider a hidden treasure at the Douglass-Truth Branch of the Seattle Public Library: one of the largest collections of African-American literature and history on the West Coast.
Katie Campbell

Angela King
Arts & Life

'Waiting to dance again.' How Seattle's literary community weathered the pandemic

The role of Seattle’s civic poet is to be an ambassador for the literary arts, fostering dialogue between communities, and connecting people with art. For the last three years, that role has also been to memorialize various unprecedented challenges we’ve collectively faced.
Libby Denkmann

Alec Cowan
Arts & Life

This 19th-century short story might help combat racism against refugees today

India's Rabindranath Tagore was the first nonwhite writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature. His 1892 story, "The Kabuliwala," fostered empathy for migrants and refugees. It still resonates today.
Lauren Frayer
Arts & Life

Anna Qu’s fierce memoir grapples with child labor, immigration, and love

As a teen, Chinese American author Anna Qu was forced by her mother to work in their family's garment factory in Queens, New York. At home she was the family’s maid, and faced punishment for doing things like schoolwork. Qu contacted Child Protective Services to report her mother, but due to bureaucratic bumbling she was left her to fend for herself. Now as an adult, Qu reckons with life, family, and not so easy answers to past trauma in her memoir.
Sonya Harris
Arts & Life

Fantasy books are my escape, but I wish the genre was more inclusive

Adar Abdi is a White Center teenager with a passion for fantasy. She gravitated to fantasy novels as an escape from reality, into worlds without racism or sexism. But as she continued to read, she found more messages — subtle and overt — that brought the same issues she tried to avoid to the forefront. This piece is an imagined confrontation between Adar and a fantasy writer.
Adar Abdi

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