Book-It Repertory Theatre in Seattle kicked off its season last week with an adaptation of PNBA Award-winning A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. In Tokyo, 16-year-old Nao’s only solace is her diary. Across the Pacific, Ruth is a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore …
It was five or so years ago when I met my French translator, Philippe. We’d been corresponding by email for some time, our discussions initially consisting of questions relating to the translation of my first novel. But once the work was completed we continued the back and forth, establishing a friendship beyond professional matters. …
This week, 600 booksellers gathered in Denver for the 11th annual Winter Institute, a 3-day educational conference for people who own or work in independent bookstores, hosted by the American Booksellers Association (ABA). The ABA started a new tradition on the opening night: a backlist book swap. “Backlist” titlesare books that have been around (the opposite of …
As a reader, I find recommendations difficult to ignore. Even when the pile beside my evening chair is in danger of toppling, something new, received at the insistence of a friend, simply must be cracked open. The same goes for gifts. While I have no trouble composting an unwanted fruitcake, or exchanging a shirt with …
Sometimes a unicorn shows up in your life and makes everything better. I wasn’t really expecting one. A few years ago, I had nearly realized an ambition I’ve had since age 12: I had scored a contract to develop a comic strip for newspaper syndication. I won that contract, in the Comic Strip Superstar contest, …
What did I think of when I learned that my peculiar collection of essays had won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award? Weirdly, not the barrels of cash and fine wines and excellent cheeses that would surely come my way, or the hordes of somber graduate students that would soon be studying my semicolons, or the …
I left my hometown in Washington at seventeen, riding the Amtrak Cascades line south to Seattle and then the Empire Builder east. My father hugged me goodbye on the gray platform. It was, as always, raining. You know what they say, Meg, he said. You can never come home again. Those words confirmed the worst …
“Where do you get your ideas?” This is probably the single most common question authors are asked. I think part of the reason is a notion—or maybe a hope—that all you need to write a book is a good idea. Alas, it’s rarely that straightforward. Almost no one has an idea for a book and sits down to …
“First, a cat has suddenly shape-shifted into a fish, then its owner is mysteriously murdered. Next, fossils of a giant unknown creature go missing. The second book in William Ritter’s Jackaby series has Jackaby, a fantastical Sherlock Holmes, and Abigail Rook, his intuitive and intelligent Watson, teamed up with a host of characters to solve …
The 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction came as no surprise to many Northwest booklovers! Revisit our coverage of this fantastic novel by clicking on this link for an original essay by the author, reader recommendations, and much more. Congratulations to Idaho author and literary luminary Anthony Doerr!
