In September 2019, Malcolm Gladwell stepped on stage at Benaroya Hall as part of SAL’s Literary Arts Series to discuss his book Talking to Strangers. That night, his talk brought us into the complicated layers that underlie our most fraught and violent interactions.  The Los Angeles Times called Talking to Strangers “a compelling, conversation-starting read.” It’s a thoughtful and nuanced meditation on how we see others, and how we see the world. Like all of Gladwell’s work, brilliant storytelling and razor sharp-observations carry us to understand the world in new ways.

In A Gentleman in Moscow, the subject of Amor Towles' 2019 SAL lecture, the ever-charming Count Rostov says, “By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.” It takes an extraordinary writer to create a thirty-year history of a Count trapped inside a Moscow hotel and make every page feel propulsive. But that’s exactly the plot of Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow—and that’s exactly the kind of writer Towles is. Amor Towles writes books worth considering and reconsidering, that delight in every possible setting, at every possible hour. Whether he is exploring Russian history or a 1950s road trip, Towles creates rich and nuanced worlds filled with both daily joys and fascinating characters. Join us for this episode of SAL/on air, which takes us through the research process of A Gentleman in Moscow, which spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list.

Richard Powers’ characters are often both artists and scientists—disciplines he sees as intertwined. In a delicious moment in this March 2008 reading, he describes the commonality between art and science as a state of “bewilderment,” which happens to be the title of his new book, released thirteen years later in September 2021. In this recording, Powers shares a short story called “Modulation.” A story that draws on Powers’ knowledge of music and technology, “Modulation” centers on the global dissemination of a musical computer virus. Powers’ work embodies this spirit of marveling and wondering in a most bewildering way. His writing describes in Technicolor detail our most ephemeral human experiences, yet his precision doesn’t define; instead, it expands our awe and pondering long after his tales are over.

Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, and Jim Rainey, an award-winning reporter with the Los Angeles Times, spoke with hometown hero Timothy Egan in March of 2019 about the importance of investigative journalism and the path forward for media in this political era. These veteran journalists discuss how investigative reporting has changed over time, and what audiences expect and demand from the media today. They share challenges that reporters face when reporting from the field. “We allowed ourselves to become mysterious; as a result, people saw us as elites in an ivory tower,” Dean Baquet says. Jim Rainey agrees, adding, “When we go out now, it's not just what we write. It's how we conduct ourselves. How empathetic we are. And so—I think, correctly—we have a lot to prove.” These reflections set the tone for a lively conversation about transparency, credibility, and truth. With wit and honesty, they shine a spotlight on what the media can and should do better in an era of disinformation. They look to the future of newspapers: from print journalism (here to stay, they insist) and paid content, to podcasts and interactive digital storytelling. They also discuss ways in which journalists—young and old—mentor each other today.

In this talk, recorded in March of 2010, former U. S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove shared poems from her then-new book, Sonata Mulattica. This collection tells the story of George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower. Previously just a footnote in Beethoven’s biography, Bridgetower—who was a Black violinist—had a sonata dedicated to him, and then, after a falling out over a girl, found that same sonata renamed. In this groundbreaking book, Dove tells Bridgetower’s story and restores one piece of lost history of African Americans in classical music. Without Dove to revive his story, Bridgetower may have been lost to time. Dove once noted, “There’s always been a special place in my work for people who drop out of history.” In this reading, which feels like an intimate fireside chat, she brings George Polgreen Bridgetower to life for an audience in whose minds he lives still. Let’s rekindle his spirit once again, and hear what Dove’s writings—and Bridgetower’s life and music—continue to tell us today.

At the start of this reading, which includes poems in English and Polish, Zagajewski says, “As long as you write new poems, you are alive. It’s the only proof of this.” Zagajewski died this March, but his poems remain with us—proof he was alive and lives still. In a poetic twist of fate, the date of Zagajewski’s passing was the same as the evening he read at Seattle Arts & Lectures—exactly nineteen years earlier. This reading by Adam Zagajewski, recorded in March 2001, was postponed from its original date by the forces of Mother Nature. On February 28, 2001, the Nisqually Earthquake struck. In wry form, Zagajewski banters about the interplay between reality and poetry, life and art. He notes thematic links between his book Tremor, his poem Lava, and the shaking earth that brought daily life in the Pacific Northwest to a halt. The pre-eminent Polish poet of his generation, Zagajewski’s early work was political in nature. He sought to illuminate conditions in western Poland post-World War II: “the bitter bread of urgency and contemporaneity.” With insight and imagination, Zagajewski’s poems depict the surreal experience of daily life in a totalitarian state following the Soviet takeover of his hometown, Lvov, in present-day Ukraine.

This talk by celebrated novelist Wallace Stegner, recorded in 1990, is really a master class on the intermingling of life and art. With equal measures of charm and critique, Stegner questions the very nature of storytelling: is it method, perspective, experience, or technique? The writers he admires aren’t carpenters working from blueprints, he says, but sculptors in search of “the mystery implicit in the stone.” The questions Stegner raises in this lecture—about fact and fiction, life and art, craft and vision—are ones we continue to explore today.

"I live in a space between," Imbolo Mbue says in this talk. "It is the immigrant's burden to live with a body in one place, and the heart in another." In this episode, recorded on June 7, 2019, at Town Hall Seattle, Imbolo Mbue describes how her in-between began in Cameroon, where she was born, and continued in New York, where she traveled to attend college. She stayed, attended Business School, got a job in New York City and then in 2008, she lost her job in the Great Recession. She saw during this time the great economic stratification of New York and the seed for her book, "Behold The Dreamers," was born. The book went on to be a New York Times bestseller and an Oprah book club pick. The book asks the questions we all inherently struggle with. What is happiness? And what makes a good life? Why would we be willing to do or to give up for ourselves, for family, for love, and for dreams?

Maxine Kumin, whom we lost in 2014, once said that, quote, “The garden has to be attended every day, just as the horses have to be tended to. Not just every day, but morning, noon and night. Writing, I think, exerts the same kind of discipline. I think of myself as a Jewish Calvinist. You know: salvation through grace, grace through good works and working is good, just that simple.” In this episode, recorded in April of 2005, we hear poems from across Maxine Kumin’s impressive body of work, including her collection Jack and Other New Poems. Acclaimed for her meticulous observation and her mastery of traditional forms, Kumin’s poetry draws comparisons to Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and Anne Sexton, her longtime friend and collaborator. But her voice defies easy comparisons. Often reflecting the dailiness of life and death on her New Hampshire horse farm, her powers lay in the unsentimental way she translated personal experience into resonant verse. “The paradoxical freedom of working in form…” as she says in this reading, is that it “gives you permission to say the hard truths.”

As with any condition, until we have language for what we are experiencing, until we can name it, we often feel controlled by it. In January of 2019 Soraya Chemaly renamed and redefined anger for us. In a riveting talk based upon her book, “Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger,” Chemaly puts female anger into its societal context, revealing it as a tool of transformation, an untapped resource for change. Soraya Chemaly is the Executive Director of The Representation Project. An award-winning author and activist, she writes and speaks frequently on topics related to gender norms, inclusivity, social justice, free speech, sexualized violence, and technology. In this illuminating talk and Q&A with journalist Carole Carmichael, Chemaly details the very real ways that women are taught from an early age to control and suppress their anger rather than harness it for change—and the way that this socialization is harmful to women and men, and especially to people of color.