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‘As many authors as we can logically put on the physical map’ — Lit Crawl Seattle ready for a new march around Capitol Hill

Screen Shot 2014-10-18 at 2.29.05 PM Screen Shot 2014-10-18 at 2.23.48 PMIf you have a love for literature or perhaps even just a passing interest in the written word you may be wishing for the power to be in quite a few places at once in Capitol Hill and First Hill Thursday night. The third annual Lit Crawl Seattle requires you to make a few decisions — three, to be exact.

A fitting, albeit more densely packed, fall complement to APRIL Festival’s early spring celebration of strictly independent literature, and punctuating a Seattle literary calendar already relatively rich with year-round activity, Lit Crawl Seattle will bring some 64 writers and artists out for 21 readings at venues across First Hill and Capitol Hill, along with a over a dozen more folks acting as hosts. The full schedule is here.

“It’s a festive, large event that is meant to provide a giant showcase of as many authors as we can logically put on the physical map in the time span that we have to play with,” co-chair of Lit Crawl Seattle’s board of directors Jane Hodges told CHS.

“We really think of it as sort of a buffet,” she said. “The literary community here is huge. We want to bring out people that have large followings because they’re out being social, as well as people you don’t see so often.”

Both Hodges and fellow Lit Crawl board member Michelle Goodman said one of the goals kept at the fore while planning the event was to make sure the lineup would be both diverse and fresh, with few repeat readers from past years’ festivals.

“We try to change up who we’re offering, and what subject matter they might be reading on,” Goodman said.

Lit Crawl Seattle is one of many Lit Crawl’s around the US associated with LitQuake, a San Francisco literature festival founded in 1999.

Most of the 2014 Seattle readings will involve groups of writers brought together around a theme. Topics will range from pot politics to ghost stories to “Superheroes vs. Fairy Tales.”

There will be poetry about work, poetry about sex and poetry for buses.

There will be words about food, words about siblings and words about life and death; words about mountain climbing and words about social justice. And there will be words that try to make you laugh.

Graphic novels will be read at Ada’s Books — a literary establishment that’s new to the Hill this year — and three Book-It actors will read from the forthcoming stage adaption of The Dog of the South by Charles Portis at Still Liquor.

Host of the “Funny Ha Ha” reading Mary Purdy, who has a background as a writer and performer, said some might find catharsis at Rhein Haus through the work of David Schmader, Tina Rowley and Lauren Ireland. “My feeling is right now our world is a little bit — it feels like it’s filled with melancholy and gloom, and I feel like anyone could use a good pick-me-up, even if it’s sort of sad-funny, or ironic-funny,” Purdy said. “If it gets you smiling and it gets you laughing, you might feel like the world is still an OK place to be in.”

CHS also had a chance to talk with a few additional folks who will be part of Lit Crawl this year, including writer Dominic Holden, who recently exited his role at The Stranger, and who will host Bruce Barcott and Roger Roffman at the “Weed All About It” reading discussing marijuana legalization at Century Ballroom, and Seattle writer Domingo Martinez, a 2012 National Book Award finalist for The Boy Kings of Texas who will read from his forthcoming follow-up memoir My Heart is a Drunken Compass as part of the “Oh, Brother” reading at Hugo House. We also heard from Jane Wong, who will host as well as read at the “Kundiman Poets” reading at Vermillion which will also feature Roberto Ascalon, Oliver de la Paz, Eddie Kim and Michelle Penaloza.

Also at Lit Crawl this year will be celebrated names like Kum Fu (reading from For Today I am a Boy), Jess Walter, Washington State Poet Laureate Elizabeth Austen, Aaron Counts (reading from Reclaiming Black Manhood), Lindy West, Sonora Jha (reading from Foreign) and many more, as well as some relatively less-known writers from around the Northwest. Ireland’s Eimear McBride (reading from A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing) is seemingly the only non-regional writer in the lineup — the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction winner gets a full time slot to herself at Elliott Bay Book Company.

Screen Shot 2014-10-18 at 2.29.05 PMHow it works
The readings are all FREE and will take place in three phases starting at 6, 7 and 8 PM — which means many will happen simultaneously. An after party will start at Hugo House at 9 PM, and the $5 entry fee gets you a pint of beer from Georgetown brewery.

And — perfect for those short on attention or with a fear of commitment — most writers will only read for eight to ten minutes as part the sets they participate in. “This is sort of a fun way to kind of take the express train through some for the coolest authors and poets in town and flag them for future attention,” Hodges said.

unnamed1+ Dominic Holden invested significant time writing about marijuana as a natural consequence of his former duties at The Stranger during the time leading up to and encompassing the legalization of weed in Washington State and is also the former director of Seattle’s Hempfest. He talked with CHS about his thoughts around marijuana legalization issues since the passage about I-502 and about what to expect at the “Weed All About It” reading he is hosting at Century Ball Room starting at 6 PM Thursday. The reading will feature Bruce Barcott, author of Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, and a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow in nonfiction, who is currently working on a book about marijuana legalization and Roger Roffman, a professor emeritus of social work at the University of Washington and a noted marijuana scholar whose most recent book, Marijuana Nation, was released in April.

“The big question is, ‘What is the future of legalization?’ And will the model that Washington State has established function as a template for other states, or will it end up being an example for what to avoid?” Holden told CHS. “And Roger Roffman has spent a lot of time, and was involved in the campaign to pass Initiative-502, with the goal of allocating tax revenue from marijuana for a new type of education program to reduce the harm associated with marijuana use, rather than a hyperbolic, fear-based, ‘just say no,’ message,” Holden said.

“When we’re talking about, ‘How does legalization work,’ which is the subject of these books,” Holden said, “I think the broadest question we need to ask ourselves is: ‘Even though voters want marijuana regulated, is there excessive regulation that fails not only entrepreneurs and consumers, but that also fails voters, by failing to produce enough revenue to do the things that they wanted marijuana taxes to [do]?'”

Martinez

Martinez

+ Domingo Martinez will read from his as-yet unreleased memoir My Heart is a Drunken Compass — which Publishers Weekly called one of “the most anticipated books of fall 2014” — at the “Oh, Brother” reading at Hugo House, also starting at 6 PM. Though nothing is guaranteed yet, Martinez is currently is in the production stage of making his last book, The Boy Kings of Texas, into an HBO miniseries, working with HBO through Salma Hayek‘s production company.

“If The Boy Kings of Texas was origin myths, the family origin myths, My Heart is a Drunken Compass is kind of the consequences of those myths, and so it deals primarily with alcoholism and addiction, and bad choices in regards to relationships,” Martinez told CHS. “It’s kind of counter-point to the first book, and it’s also kind of — in a sort of meta sort of way — sort of the origins of the first book,” he said. “Because I was in the middle of all this trauma then I kind of realized — well, somebody told me — the only way to get out of this mess that you’re in, and it was a mess … was to write my way out of it.”

The first third of My Heart is a Drunken Compass takes place in Texas, introducing many of the same characters from the first novel, but the rest of My Heart focuses on Martinez’s life in Seattle.

Though Martinez remained a finalist at the National Book Awards, with the 2012 award for nonfiction going to Katherine Boo for Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, he said he’s not sore about being a runner-up. “Lovely woman, wrote a fantastic book,” Martinez said of Boo. “And I have to admit, after I took it home and read it, yeah — she completely deserved that award, not me,” he said.

Martinez said he has been spending a lot of time lately working with HBO on developing The Boy Kings of Texas in to a potential miniseries and that the process involves some compromise, including fictionalizing many of the book’s details. “I’m still trying to keep it as close to the original material as possible, but also getting it by the legal department,” he said. “It’s different and it’s painful, but it is rewarding.”

“If I had my choice of anything I ever wanted to do, it’s this. I’ll be waiting to HBO to call,” he said. “It certainly beats selling business cards to Microsoft employees like I was doing before.”

Martinez is also getting started on his third book, which he says will be a collection of short fiction, currently under the working title Dog’s Body. “Everyone that I’ve spoken to … [has said], ‘You are going to be so relieved when you start writing in fiction,'” he said.

tumblr_inline_mnuoe1X0A91qk6s7t+ Jane Wong will read at and host the “Kundiman Poets” reading at Vermillion starting at 8 PM. Other poets reading will be Roberto Ascalon, Oliver de la Paz, Eddie Kim, Michelle Penaloza. The Kundiman Foundation is New York City-based national organization “dedicated to the creation and cultivation of Asian American creative writing.”

Wong’s told us her thoughts on the evening via email:

I’m incredibly excited to host a Kundiman (a non-profit organization for Asian American poets) reading in Seattle. In particular, I think it’s absolutely necessary to provide a venue for poets of color in the PNW! Such readings are sadly too rare. The poets who will be reading on Thursday come from a range of backgrounds, experiences, and aesthetics. Oliver de la Paz will be coming in from Bellingham (his newest book, Post Subject: A Fable just came out) and it will be Eddie Kim’s first Seattle reading! I’m incredibly proud to be a part of Lit Crawl and Seattle’s literary scene!

Pick your three
While it will only be possible to make it to three complete readings Wednesday night, out of 21 offered, Lit Crawl board member Hodges said readers will likely be able to run in to favorite writers they miss, and possibly chat with them, at the after party at Hugo House. Also at Hugo House, The Drop Shadow will bring the noise staring at 9 PM, Jemil’s Big Easy food truck will be bringing the noms throughout the evening and Matthew Rowe will bring his Poem Shop setup for your on-the-spot literary demands during the after party. Elliot Bay Book Company will have selected works there for sale.

Last year, about 1500 heads were counted entering Lit Crawl readings in total — though folks who went to more than one reading were counted more than once — and 250 people attended the after party, Hodges said. “We were pleasantly surprised and really happy with that,” she said. “That’ a lot of author/audience contact.”

Hodges and Goodman both said they are hoping for a similarly strong turnout this year.

For more information and a schedule of the night’s stops, check out litcrawl.org/seattle.

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[…] was a Lit Crawl Thursday night! The CHS Crow joined the happy chaos of the most action-packed literary event of the year in Seattle and met a Lamda Literary Award winning author and activist during the after party at Hugo House, a […]