Demonology, by Kelly Stuart, plays like a mash-up of LaBute's In the Company of Men and Roth's The Breast: it's a wicked take-down of corporatized misogyny and a surreal expedition into the realm of in-office lactation. It's laugh-out-loud funny, despite a second-act drought on satire and a "serious" wrap-up. Fledgling theatre company Next Stage presents it April 4-6, 10-13 & 17-20; Thurs-Sat 8 p.m.; Sundays 2 p.m.; tickets $17.50. The setting is the executive suites......

BEISBOL!: The Seattle Mariners kick off 2008 by hosting the Texas Rangers. Jeff Weaver Eric Bedard will bring his future-talent-sacrificing, spring-home-run-gifting, 8.63 ERA to the mound. Fans will cheer. Fans will get pissed off. There will be the heavenly scents of processed meat, garlic fries, beer, and (imagined) freshly trimmed field. It will, finally, be baseball season again. (Photo courtesy of Seattlest Flickr pool member grundlepuck.) 3:40pm // Safeco Field // Tickets: Ask a......

We see on CL that Richard Hugo House is now accepting applications (deadline April 11) for its writer's residency program. Only two writers will be selected, who will have the chance to teach in the Hugo House's writing classes. The residency starts this September 1, 2008, and lasts one year. The highlight is you get to live, subsidized, in one of the “Hugo Huts”—Seattle’s historic Belltown Cottages. The rent subsidy doesn't include utilities, jackets with......

The Hugo House Literary Series kicks off Friday night with "Lost in Translation," and the program features Seattlest-favorite and monologist Mike Daisey, novelist Randall Keenan and historian Lesley Hazleton. We don't know why Seattle ever lets Daisey leave, once we've got him here. He's ours! We should just band him or do that thing like with dogs where they are electronically forbidden to leave the yard. Daisey, et al, have each produced three new pieces......

Musical hyphenate-extraordinaire Shawn Smith has been fronting bands and playing solo in Seattle for about 15 years. As recent, local music history goes, he’s as seminal a figure as Kurt Cobain—and more prolific—though not nearly as high-profile. He should be. Always busy, Shawn’s currently spending time with Kevin Wood, covering Malfunkshun tunes (and writing new ones) as From the North. His band Brad has a new album recorded and will, he’s confirmed, play in......

Mom always told me not to talk with my mouth full. But that's just what Leite's Culinaria wants local food writers to do for a project about food writing. Launched last year in New York City, now spreading around the country, "Talking With Your Mouth Full" is a night of reading by food writers "to highlight the versatility of the craft." Contact for Seattle is Kathleen Flinn, author of the soon-to-be-published memoir of a year......

Monday BOOK CRUSH: Librarian Nancy Pearl´s latest book is Book Crush, a guide to books you loved when you were growing up. How does she know? Head over to the launch party and find out. 7-8:30pm // Seattle Central Public Library Microsoft Auditorium // FREE PETER BEAGLE SPEAKS: For the Fantastic Fiction Salon, fantasy author Peter Beagle (The Last Unicorn, Tamsin, and The Innkeeper's Song) teaches "Dialogue Says it All." 7pm // Hugo House......

Monday CALL 911! CALL 911!: Political and economic commentator and White House strategist during the Nixon administration, Kevin Phillips talks about his book, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. Phillips traces the set of related causes that caused the downfall of historical world powers. That same combination of ills he says -- global over-reach, militant religion, resource problems, and ballooning debt -- is......

Monday PREQUEL TO MCARTNEY'S WINGS: Richie Unterberger, the author of several books on the history of rock, shows some film footage and plays some music recordings of unreleased Beatles material. He´s promoting his latest book, The Unreleased Beatles -- Music and Film. We had no idea they were in jail! (Ha! Because of the "unreleased" -- see how...oh...sure, we can move on.) 7pm // Seattle Central Public Library Microsoft Auditorium // FREE GARDENING AT......

Monday THAT STARBUCKS "I WAS A CHILD SOLDIER" GUY: At twelve, Ishmael Beah found himself fleeing rebels, wandering from village to village. At thirteen, he was a soldier in Sierra Leone, hooked on drugs and capable of things he would never have imagined. Now, rehabilitated and living in the U.S., he tells his story in A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, in an attempt to raise awareness of the child soldier......

Monday FANTASTIC FICTION SALON: Novelist, nonfiction author, and short story writer Terry Bisson has swept every honor in the science fiction field as well as France's Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire. He joins Hugo House's Writing Fantastic Fiction workshop series, where he will teach "Who Likes Short Shorts? We Like Short Shorts!" 7pm // Hugo House // $4 donation ARTS & LECTURES POETRY SERIES: "Poetry is what maintains our capacity for contemplation and difficulty." That's......

David Mamet must be pretty damn good, because the Strawberry Theatre Workshop is reviving a play of his that's so obscure, it doesn't even have a Wiki page, and yet the thing is fantastic. Like all Mamets, The Water Engine runs on dialogue--put Keanu Reeves and Scarlett Johansson in the thing, and it would be unwatchable. Luckily, the Strawberry folks got Gabriel Baron to play protagonist Lang, a nebbish who's invented an engine that runs...on......

FILM: The NW Film Forum is screening the potentially watchable Climates, which won a less than inspiring 71% at the rotten tomato site. Of course you can't go by those ratings since a masterpiece like Anchorman scored a feeble 64%, but an over-rated gorefest like Pan's Labrynth won a ludicrous 95%. That's worse than Al Gore losing to George Bush. 7, 9:30 // 1515 12th Ave // $8.50 MUSIC: The last time we did......

Monday LESS IS MORE: In Trance of Scarcity: Stop Holding Your Breath and Start Living Your Life, Victoria Castle asks why we feel that nothing is ever enough. Castle's book shows us how to escape this malaise and become more relaxed and alive. Hopefully it doesn't involve crisscrossing the U.S. on a book tour. 7pm // Third Place Books // FREE NATURE WRITING: Robert Michael Pyle's Sky Time in Gray's River: Living for Keeps......

Monday SEATTLE ARTS & LECTURES: Art Spiegelman's 1992 Holocaust tale Maus (based on a true story) won the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a comic book. Its success paved the way for the graphic novels thriving today and led to Spiegelman's ten years on the staff of the New Yorker. In the Shadow of No Towers (2004) gathers his recent broadsheets of disenchantment with the war on terror. 7:30pm // Benaroya Hall // Tickets:......

Monday SEATTLEST BOOK CLUB PICK: For March, we're reading Jonathan Raban's Surveillance, set in a not-so-distant future, when everyone's actions are highly monitored. Get a head start on the conversation by hearing from Raban himself. (We'll know if you went or not.) 7pm // UW Bookstore // FREE FANTASTIC FICTION SALON: Connie Willis, an award-winning SF writer, hosts this discussion of sci-fi/fantasy fiction writing. (As a new member of Hugo House's "Writing Fantastic Fiction"......

CASTING CALL: Local director Garrett Bennett is looking for extras to cast in his independent film The Spy & the Sparrow. 3-8pm // First Church of Christ Scientist [1519 E. Denny Way] // $Whatever minuscule remnants remain of your dreams of an acting career BOOKS: Don't wear sweatpants to this event. Erotica writer Jennifer Munro reads from her award-winning work, as does the winner of Hugo House's erotica writing competition. Keep your fingers crossed for......

Monday A NADER REMEMBERS: Recalling his childhood in Winstead, Connecticut, former presidential candidate and longtime political and social activist Ralph Nader offers 17 values a child should learn to become a conscientious adult. Not helping elect neo-fascists was, unfortunately, #18. 7pm // Third Place Books // FREE Tuesday EROTICA: "One Foot on the Floor: A Reading of Erotica." Jennifer D. Munro (aka Dawn O'Hara) -- whose work has appeared in many collections, including "Best......

DEMOCRACY: There's a Seattle school levy election today. If you don't know where you are supposed to vote, but know your name and the day you were born, you can look it up online. If you can't get to that place, you can cast a provisional ballot anywhere--just march up to the nice poll-worker ladies at your local school or church and say "I'd like to cast a provisional ballot, please." We did it last......

Monday AIR SUPPLY: Eric Klinenberg’s new book, Fighting for Air, examines how corporate ownership and control of local media has remade American political and cultural life. Klinenberg, a sociology professor at New York University, is interviewed by Michael Fancher, Seattle Times editor-at-large. 7:30pm // Town Hall // $5 Tuesday PANEL OF POETS: Sherman Alexie, Chelsea Rathburn, Richard Wakefield and Eric McHenry present "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Rhyme": a roundtable discussion......

PHOTOGRAPHY: The Jonas Bendiksen exhibit at the Photographic Center Northwest is worth visiting on the strength of the image above alone. The title of his book Satellites refers both to the space junk that occasionally comes crashing to Earth as well as to the former Soviet republics in which he shot these pictures. 12-9:30pm // Photographic Center Northwest // free BOOKS: Paul Park writes humanist fantasy and science fiction and is participating in a......

Monday LOCAL AUTHOR, LOCAL AUTHOR: Clear Cut Press presents two of its novelists: Matt Briggs' Shoot The Buffalo is about a boy growing up in Snoqualmie during the '70s. Stacey Levine's Frances Johnson, set in a small town in Florida, details the random choices made by the eponymous Ms. Johnson. 7pm // University Bookstore // FREE SCI-FI SALON: One of the finest authors on the "humanist" wing of American science fiction and fantasy, Paul......

Monday 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. 7:30pm // Town Hall // Tickets $5 Tuesday MANUSCRIPT READING: Frances McCue, former artistic director and co-founder of Richard Hugo House, reads from "Chasing Richard Hugo" and presents a short film shot in Montana with Charles D'Ambrosio, Bill Kittredge and......

Ever desired to follow in the footsteps of Henry Miller, Anne Rice, or Anonymous? The Richard Hugo House is giving you your chance: Richard Hugo House invites writers age 18 and older to submit manuscripts of fewer than 5,000 words to its erotica writing competition. The theme is "One Foot on the Floor" and the deadline is February 1. The winner will receive a $250 prize, a $50 gift certificate from Babeland and the chance......

Wednesday, December 13 >>>Hugo House, 7:30pm. Screenwriters Salon: Geoff Miller and Mark Handley invite you to bring your questions about format, technique, structure, dialogue, writing characters, and how to use your catering gig to hand your script to celebs. $5 general/$2 students. Free to members. >>>Seattle Public Central Library, 5:30-7:00pm. Mayor Greg Nickels and City Council President Nick Licata rochambeau to see who gets to salute Seattle author Tim Egan. His book, The Worst......

Wednesday, November 29 >>>Third Place Books, 7:00pm. Another weighty tome, Unreleased Beatles by Richie Unterberger, to add to your Beatles-only reference section. It details the shitload of stuff that was recorded but, you know, forgotten about what with being so high at the time, plus the whole headtrip with Yoko. Free with OCD collecting disorder. >>>University Bookstore, 7:00pm. Elizabeth George backtracks: in her last Inspector Lynley mystery, the Inspector's wife was killed. In What......

Wednesday, November 15 >>>UW iSchool at Kane Hall, 7:00-9:00pm. "Voices in an Empty Room: Five Apologies for the Narrative": Children's author Richard Peck discusses his writing and teaching careers, and his experiences with the kids today. He'll read from On The Wings Of Heroes, his new novel about a World War II childhood. Free with RSVP. Kane Hall, Rm. 220. >>>Third Place Books, 7:00pm. We saw this book talk about adoptive parents and thought......

Wednesday, November 8 >>>UW Forum for Science and Ethics Policy, 5:30pm. Dr. Dennis Schatz, VP for Education at the Pacific Science Center, cheerleads for “Making Science as Pervasive as Sports in Society.” His ulterior motive? It can only be to pack the Sonics off to Oklahoma and build our very own Exploratorium right here in Seattle, to which we say “Be Aggressive, Be Be Aggressive!” Free. UW Health Sciences Building, T-478. >>>Pacific Science Center......

Wednesday, November 1 >>>Benaroya Hall, 7:30pm. Seattle Arts and Lectures brings prolific big shot and errant van survivor Stephen King by. Maybe you’ve heard of him? For the Constant Reader, it’s an event not to be missed. He'll talk about Lisey’s Story, his latest novel. Tickets $25 and $35. But, like many things in King’s Dark Tower world, they’ve already moved on. >>>University Temple Methodist Church, 7:00pm. Keeping with the All Soul's Day theme,......