The Summer Fiction issue of the New Yorker showed up in the mail box yesterday and the Pacific Northwest (ok, Portland, really, but so what) is well represented. Miranda July, of Portland, has two pieces; one a short story called "Roy Spivey" and the other a recollection of summer movies called "Atlanta." It starts: more ›

AUTHOR, AUTHOR: Barbara Ehrenreich talks about her book Dancing in the Streets, in which she explores the desire for collective joy (see photo), historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. more ›

The Hugo House is running an inquiry into that most terrible and divisive of subjects: childhood. more ›

Back in our freelance days, Seattlest was happy to get 50 cents a word. So imagine the triple cherries that flashed before our eyes when we learned that down in PDX you can get 250 writers for three measly bucks! more ›

Seattlest used to subscribe to The New Yorker. Actually, Seattlest still does subscribe to The New Yorker, but since late September we've barely managed to keep up with the cartoons each week, let alone more substantial content. more ›

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Do you like book readings but wish they were louder and perhaps featured more music, alcohol, and cigarette smoke? Well, tonight The Stranger and Chop Suey will make your dreams come true, as they host what has to be the best (and free-est) author reading/dance party ever, with Jonathan Safran Foer reading from his new novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Like his previous book, Everything is Illuminated, the story is told from the viewpoint of a remarkably precocious young man. This time it's nine-year-old Oskar Schell, a renaissance boy dealing with his father's death in the 9/11 attacks. The book is a heartfelt, inventive, empathetic, literally colorful, and funny piece of work, which has been fairly well received, even by that curmudgeon John Updike. more ›