Want more? Here’s everything we recommend this month: Music, Visual Art, Literature, Performance, Film, Food, This & That.
Aug 11
Like many readers, I first fell in love with Rax King’s writing via her insightful, moving pop-culture essay “Love, Peace, and Taco Grease: How I Left My Abusive Husband and Found Guy Fieri,” which details how she overcame her toxic, controlling marriage while finding uninhibited joy in the larger-than-life persona of the Mayor of Flavortown. Her 2021 debut essay collection, Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer, presents “a nostalgia-soaked antidote to the millennial generation’s obsession with irony,” exploring the hidden side of everything from Sex and the City to the Cheesecake Factory. Now, her new book, Sloppy: Or: Doing It All Wrong, picks up where her last book left off, examining “sobriety, begrudging self-improvement, and the habits we cling to with clenched fists.” (Third Place Books Ravenna, 7–8:30 pm, all ages, free) JULIANNE BELL
Claire Jia with Jane Wong: ‘WANTING’
Aug 12
LA-based author Claire Jia’s debut novel, WANTING, follows a young woman named Ye Lian living in Beijing. Her life is stable—she has a grown-up job, a marriage-material boyfriend, and plans to live in a luxury high-rise. Basically, all is dandy until her old friend Luo Wenyu comes back into her life like a wrecking ball after a decade spent in California. Wenyu’s seemingly glamorous life as an influencer, fiancée of a millionaire, and mansion resident sends Lian spiralling about her responsible life choices. The novel explores something I think about often: What’s better, a life of stable domesticity or chaotic exploration? Jia will be joined by poet, memoirist, and Western Washington University professor Jane Wong to discuss the book. (Elliott Bay Book Company, 6:30 pm, free) AUDREY VANN
Aug 14
San Francisco–based queer fantasy writer Charlie Jane Anders has been producing her legendary Writers with Drinks variety show for two decades, and this month, she’s bringing it to Seattle. Anders is always the MC, offering delightfully unhinged introductions to every reader. In Seattle, she’s bringing a deep bench with her: her partner and many-award-winning science/sci-fi writer Annalee Newitz; bi-gender, biracial, bisexual author of Daron’s Guitar Chronicles Cecilia Tan; Apache oceanographer and novelist Darcie Little Badger; scientist and hoodoo conjurer Andrea Hairston; and author of the Wayfarers series, Becky Chambers. “After a Writers with Drinks show, the fabric of reality will have looser stitches,” Anders promises, “and a bit more frilly lace on the edges.” (Town Hall, 7:30 pm) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER
Isabel Cañas with Sadie Hartmann: ‘The Possession of Alba Díaz’
Aug 19
In my opinion, it’s never too early to start celebrating Halloween. I’m trying to savor the waning days of summer before the chill sets in, but I’m already excited to embrace all things macabre in just a couple of months’ time, so local speculative fiction author Isabel Cañas’s new gothic horror novel The Possession of Alba Díaz is right on schedule. The book is set during a plague in 18th-century Zacatecas, Mexico, and follows the story of Alba, a woman seized by a malevolent demon, and Elías, her wealthy fiancé’s cousin. The star-crossed pair becomes “entangled with the occult, the Church, long-kept secrets, and each other… not knowing that one of these things will spell their doom.” Fans of Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s bestselling novel Mexican Gothic won’t want to miss Cañas’s conversation with author Sadie Hartmann, aka “Mother Horror.” (Seattle Central Library, 7–8:30 pm, all ages, free) JULIANNE BELL
Aug 20
Chuck Tingle might just be the Elena Ferrante of the niche gay erotica world: His true identity remains a mystery, and he maintains his anonymity by wearing sunglasses and a pink sack over his head with the words “love is real” Sharpied on it. As if that’s not absurd enough, his books feature crude DIY Photoshop covers, often involve abstract concepts and inanimate objects as characters, and bear titles like Taken by the Gay Unicorn Biker. The pseudonymous bicon broke into horror with his 2023 conversion therapy camp thriller Camp Damascus, which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award, followed by last year’s Hollywood slasher Bury Your Gays. Both books wielded urgent messages about homophobia and a surprising amount of heart amid all the gore. Meet the man, the myth, the legend at this event promoting his latest, Lucky Day, a “glittering absurdist romp through existential horror, love, and Las Vegas.” (Third Place Books Lake Forest Park,
7–8:30 pm, all ages, free) JULIANNE BELL
More
Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run by Peter Ames Carlin with Cheryl Waters Aug 5, Third Place Books Seward Park, 7 pm, free
Mazey Eddings with Alison Cochrun: Well, Actually: A Novel Aug 7, 7 pm, Third Place Books Lake Forest Park, free
Annalee Newitz with Ryan Calo: Automatic Noodle Aug 11, 7 pm, Third Place Books Lake Forest Park, free
Ellen Forney’s Book Launch Party: The Adventures of You! Aug 14, 6–8 pm, The Lab at Ada’s Technical Books and Cafe, free
Cal Hoffman with Charles Cutugno: Easy to Slip: A Novel Aug 13, 7 pm, Third Place Books Ravenna, free
Jake Maia Arlow with Sujin Witherspoon: Leaving the Station Aug 19, 7 pm, Third Place Books Ravenna, free
Charlie Jane Anders Presents Lessons in Magic and Disaster Aug 25, Third Place Books Lake Forest Park, 7 pm, free
R.F. Kuang Sept 12, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm
Early Warnings
David Sedaris Nov 16, Benaroya Hall, 7 pm
