As Louis Collins and I discuss his nearly half-century in the book business, it’s impossible for me to not take notice of his goofy blue sweatshirt, which reads “I TOOK THE PLUNGE! SPA HOT SPRINGS MOTEL WHITE SULFUR SPRINGS, MT.” Collins, the owner of our September Bookstore of the Month, Louis Collins Books, comes across as eminently comfortable in his own skin; he seems happy with his lot in life.

Collins frequently shops in other bookstores around Seattle. You might be surprised by some of his favorites; for example, he still laments the closing of the Capitol Hill Half Price Books, which he thought was pretty good for browsing. The location was outperforming its sales goals, Collins says, and only closed because the rent was increased beyond a sustainable level.

So what does he like to read? He begins with the most common booksellers’ refrain: “I read everything.” Then he narrows it down: “I like to read history. I love anthropology detective stories like Tony Hillerman.” Collins is a fan of mysteries that insert readers into other cultures and provide real information; he calls Hillerman “one of the best,” for instance, because when reading one of his mysteries, he learned the difference between the Navajo and Hopi peoples.

The only kind of books Collins isn’t crazy about? Textbooks. “I like to read overviews of things,” he says. He mentions James Gleick’s book Chaos as a perfect example of his favorite kind of reading experience, authors who can provide “an amateur’s view of something in an intelligent way.”

Collins seems happy to have spent his life with books. He admits that at one time not so long ago, if someone came to him with an offer, he’d have “walked out of here with a suitcase” immediately, but now that he’s training a successor to take over, he’s enjoying the business again. “With Bill coming in, the business works. Doing it all myself was unpleasant, but working with somebody who is involved with it and would like to take it to the next level” makes it all rewarding again. Collins, in short, has found his groove again.

“A Honeypot For Assholes”: Inside Twitter’s 10-Year Failure To Stop Harassment

Charlie Warzel, in BuzzFeed, on the history and intention of Twitter's abuse problem.

“What was once lauded as a virtue has now become the company’s Achilles’ heel — it’s the axis around which all this shit with harassment rotates,” a former senior employee told BuzzFeed News. Nearly all former employees BuzzFeed News spoke to in the course of reporting this story said the same thing. “The whole ‘free speech wing of the free speech party’ thing — that’s not a slogan, that’s deeply, deeply embedded in the DNA of the company,” Twitter’s former head of news, Vivian Schiller, said. “The people that run Twitter … are not stupid. They understand that this toxicity can kill them, but how do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line? I would actually challenge anyone to identify a perfect solution. But it feels to a certain extent that it’s led to paralysis.”

Small Island, Big Experiment

Anna Maria Barry-Jester's long, and fascinating, story on the politics of eliminating an insect species by genetic tweaking.

There are 48 breeds of mosquitoes in the Florida Keys, the string of islands that sweep off the southern tip of Florida and toward the Gulf of Mexico like a flyaway hair. Several of the mosquito types are an extreme nuisance, swarming and biting with fervor. The one Ryan was looking for, however, stands out for its stealth, affection for residential areas and ability to carry viruses that infect humans: the Aedes aegypti. It was the cause of a 2009–11 outbreak of dengue fever, a virus that can cause flu-like symptoms and debilitating pain, in Key West. And it’s the same mosquito that’s wreaking havoc in southern Florida, where the Zika virus is hitching rides between humans in tourist-filled Miami Beach and other nearby neighborhoods. Ryan found 10 breeding sites on this single property.

The species is also at the center of an intense debate about genetically modified mosquitoes. In November, a small group of Florida voters will wade into the center of that debate and make a decision that could have lasting effects in the U.S. and around the world.

Donald Trump Is the First Demagogue of the Anthropocene

I know, I know — we don't want to hear more about Trump (although, Ezra Klein's piece about how Hillary played him like a fiddle in all three debates is a satisfying read), but stick with this piece. There is more subtle things going on here.

In short, this is an important piece, by Robinson Meyer, a preview of what's to come, and an alert — but, also a process of how to deal with it. Erin Kissane broke down the 5 ways she thought this piece was important on Twitter, and I stand behind what she says 100%.

Spend enough time with some of the worst-case climate scenarios, and you may start to assume, as I did, that a major demagogue would contest the presidency in the next century. I figured that the catastrophic consequences of planetary warming would all but ensure the necessary conditions for such a leader, and I imagined their support coming from a movement motivated by ethnonationalism, economic stagnation, and hatred of immigrants and refugees. I pictured, in other words, something not so far from Trump 2016.

I just assumed it wouldn’t pop up until 2040.

...

Trump is, in essence, a double case—a preview of what’s to come and a way to practice dealing with it. He represents a test that the leaders of a major American political party are failing, and that the electorate may only narrowly pass. He is showing us how ill-prepared the United States is for post-climate demagoguery, and he gives us an opportunity to improve our societal immune response.

How might we do that? His rise also suggests a number of defense mechanisms. Obviously, the first is that climate change must be mitigated with all deliberate speed. But he also suggests certain cultural mechanisms. Some Americans may favor more restrictive immigration policies, but—in order to withstand against future waves of mass migration (and humanely deal with the victims of climate change)—racist fears must be unhooked from immigration restrictionism. In other words, as a matter of survival against future authoritarians, white supremacy must be rejected and defeated.

Hannah Gadsby: why I love the Arnolfini Portrait, one of art history’s greatest riddles

A great appreciation of one of my very favorite paintings.

The Arnolfini Portrait is one of those paintings that everyone swears they’ve never seen nor heard of until they see it. “Oh! That one!” they always say. “The one with the pregnant lady wearing that heavy green dress!” They are right about one thing: the dress looks equal to the task of curtaining a large bay window. But they are wrong to assume the woman is pregnant.

Not only did Van Eyck have a habit of painting women to look like they were with child even when they were without, but it was also fashionable at the time to look pregnant when you were not. Faking the harvest to attract the seed, so to speak. It’s untidy logic but still makes more sense than thigh gap.

Every week, the Seattle Review of Books backs a Kickstarter, and writes up why we picked that particular project. Read more about the project here. Suggest a project by writing to kickstarter at this domain, or by using our contact form.

What's the project this week?

The Palate Deck: Playing Cards for Beer Tasting. We've put $20 in as a non-reward backer

Who is the Creator?

Dave Shea.

What do they have to say about the project?

Playing cards that offer beer information and casual tasting guidance for the many conversations that happen over beer.

What caught your eye?

Something a little different today. A little less literary than our normal Kickstarter, but no less creative. For those of you who are drinkers, and more specifically, those of you who are beer aficionados, this week's project is for you.

Dave Shea is a designer and creator in Vancouver, BC. If you work on the web, and design using CSS, no doubt you've heard of the wildly influential CSS Zen Garden.

He's also a Certified Cicerone® and BJCP-Certified Beer Judge, and the co-founder of Vancouver's Farmhouse Fest Saison. Dude knows his beer, and he wanted to design a way to talk about beer when tasting — to give people a vocabulary, whether they are new or old hands, at discerning the varied experiences of imbibing brew.

Why should I back it?

Well, if you're into beer, it's a gimme. I played a demo of the cards at XOXO fest in Portland last month, and they're really fun, and beautifully designed. If you like talking about beer, this is going to be a great conversation piece to have with you at the pub. If you're not sure how to talk about beer, this is a great educational tool.

How's the project doing?

18% there and 27 days to go. If this is the kind of thing that sparks your attention, grab one now!

Do they have a video?

Kickstarter Fund Stats

• Projects backed: 42
• Funds pledged: $840
• Funds collected: $700
• Unsuccessful pledges: 2
• Fund balance: $200

Every Friday, Cienna Madrid offers solutions to life’s most vexing literary problems. Do you need a book recommendation to send your worst cousin on her birthday? Is it okay to read erotica on public transit? Cienna can help. Send your questions to advice@seattlereviewofbooks.com.

Dear Cienna,

It's almost November, and soon the seats at Bedlam will be taken up with wannabe novelists instead of the usual wannabe screenwriters. I just really don't get this "NaNoWriMo" thing. No, more than that; I'm kind of offended by it.

Oh, you wrote a novel? In thirty days? Good for you, slim. Here's an idea: why don't you spend more than thirty days on it, then hire an editor, then send out some query letters, then get it published, and then maybe you've written a novel. If I was a derrickman on an oil rig, I'd be plenty pissed if someone half-assed their way through thirty days on the job and gave themselves that title. You're a novelist? The fuck you are, buddy!

It's keyboard masturbation. Sure, people can write whatever they want in thirty days, and that's great, but isn't calling the resulting spew a "novel" really presumptuous? Real, actual writers are toiling to make real, readable books, and they deserve your money, not your me-toos. Is there anything a person can do to discourage this dumb internet fad?

Steve, Belltown

Dear Steve,

First: Who doesn’t like masturbation? (Answer: Catholics and men with hooks for hands.) Second: Here are three current fads more dumb than NaNoWriMo: artisan salt, people in their 20s writing memoirs, clowns who linger.

While it’s kind of you to clutch your pearls on behalf of published authors, I doubt many NaNoWriMoers actually consider themselves to be novelists any more than I consider myself to be a Trump supporter after grabbing my own pussy. (I wanted to see how the other half lives.) Writing 50,000 shitty-but-coherent words in a month is pretty hard. As you noted, writing an actual readable novel in a month is nearly impossible. Only a fool wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

In general, marathon activities like NaNoWriMo (or running actual marathons) should be viewed as a trendy new take on self flagellation. These trends serve a greater purpose: they help mediocre people better appreciate the hard work that goes into producing something truly great.

But that doesn’t address your question, which was: Is there anything a person can do to discourage this dumb internet fad? Yes, Steve, there is. Any time someone brings up their NaNoWriMo novel in your presence, grab your pussy and start talking about the memoir you wrote in college.

Kisses,

Cienna

Each week, Christine Marie Larsen creates a portrait of a new author for us. Have any favorites you’d love to see immortalized? Let us know

Poet and libertine Arthur Rimbaud was born on October 20, 1854. If you're a super-fan, you can buy the gun Verlaine used to shoot Rimbaud (non-fatally, in the wrist).

Sensation

On the blue summer evenings, I shall go down the paths,

Getting pricked by the corn, crushing the short grass:

In a dream I shall feel its coolness on my feet.

I shall let the wind bathe my bare head.


I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing:

But endless love will mount in my soul;

And I shall travel far, very far, like a gipsy,

Through the countryside - as happy as if I were with a woman.

Arthur Rimbaud
March 1870.

Read more poems by Rimbaud

Get painted by Christine!

Christine is taking on a limited amount of commissioned portraits, in her Seattle Review of Books style, in advance of the holidays. If you want a portrait of a friend, loved one, pet, or even yourself (immortalize your bossest selfie!) for your own wall, or as the most thoughtful gift you can possibly imagine, then please do reach out. There's more information on her website.

• Moss, the excellent free Northwest-centric literary magazine, is offering $20 annual subscriptions through Patreon, which gets you an annual print edition and early access to each quarterly issue of the magazine. This is absolutely a steal. Give if you can.

• You have until Halloween to apply for the Jack Straw Artist Residency programs, which teach artists how to better use sound as a medium. Most writers are, sad to say, terrible readers of their own work. A program like Jack Straw immediately gives writers an edge over the competition by teaching them how to present their work in a reading, radio, or podcast setting. The writers program curator this year is poet and essayist Jourdan Imani Keith, who it is safe to say knows a thing or two about reading work aloud. Get your applications in by 5 pm on the 31st.

• Push/Pull, up in Ballard, is looking for new members to help run the space. If you're an artist with a lot of work to sell — comics, art, crafts — you should consider joining the team.

• Ebooks were not that as big a deal as at least one major publisher thought they'd be:

Penguin wrongly lost confidence in the power of the printed word and invested “unwisely” amid the rise of eBooks, one of the company’s bosses has admitted.

• Mark Haddon joins the list of big-name authors who are making a case against buying books on Amazon.

• It's kind of hilarious that the Nobel Committee can't get a hold of Bob Dylan.

• This poem by Joe Turrent is not extremely successful, but it is interesting: it's an erasure by way of Microsoft Word's "track changes" feature.

• Now the Pulitzer Prize is open to magazines in all categories. Formerly, only newspapers were eligible for many of the categories. Get ready for the New Yorker and the New York Times to go head-to-head forever.

• This comic-strip reimagining of Watchmen is perhaps the best thing I've seen on Twitter this month. (Thanks to SRoB tipper @E_Steven for the tip.)

holy shit pic.twitter.com/0GylRxl9RV

— FINDOM EARLE (@thrusticus) October 18, 2016

• Novelist Brit Bennett, whose new novel The Mothers is one of the most buzzed-about books of the fall, wrote a guest post for Seattle Public Library about the importance of libraries in her life.

• Speaking of the Seattle Public Library, librarian Misha Stone was on KING 5 the other day talking about book clubs. — what makes book clubs work, what books book clubs are reading these days, and so on It's definitely worth your time:

When I was younger, I didn’t really understand the appeal of Ben Katchor’s strip Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer. It has always been easy to see that Katchor is a talented artist — every panel is a beautifully composed portrait of urban life, every person in each panel has their own unique personality and history. But something about the strip resisted my attentions. I couldn’t find a character to identify with in Knipl, or any situations that spoke to me. I chalked it up as one of those rare strips — Prince Valiant is another — that is clearly of high quality, but which never really grabbed my attention.

Drawn & Quarterly just reissued the first real Knipl graphic novel from Katchor. It’s titled Cheap Novelties, and it’s a beautiful book, designed to look like it’s been wrapped in old newsprint, with the strips reproduced in a larger-than-life format. I thought I’d give it another try, as I’d done on multiple occasions over the years, just to make sure Katchor’s work still didn’t work for me.

Every once in a while, a reading life suddenly shifts dramatically, and a once-impenetrable work of art instantly melds with your subconscious. That’s what reading Cheap Novelties was like for me. From the very first page, I immediately understood the point of the Knipl strip, and of Katchor’s work. I eagerly read Cheap Novelties and found myself wanting to reinvestigate all of Katchor’s books.

The thing I had never quite understood about Katchor’s strip is that the city is the main character. Every page in Cheap Novelties is about some strange aspect of city life: a failing chain of flophouses, the diminished prominence of kosher slaughterhouses, the variety of paperweights used to hold down newspapers at newsstands. They’re little tributes to disappearing aspects of city life, some real and some fictional.

Katchor works at the boundaries of nostalgia and the black hole of memory created when something disappears from our shared experience. I’ve heard plenty of people reminisce fondly about the simple and immobile analog pleasure of landlines, for example, but very few people can remember the satisfying heft of carrying a desktop phone in their hands, or the weird, voyeuristic frustration of sharing a party line with their talkative neighbors. You don’t long for the disappearing city that Katchor documents in Cheap Novelties, exactly, but you do want to acknowledge it, to pay it tribute somehow by bearing witness.

In one strip, a movie theater removes its large marquee and replaces it with a smaller, more stylish sign, we are informed, “in an effort to look modern,” and “to save on electricity,” and “to be taken seriously,” and “to be tasteful,” and “to improve the block.” Our hero, eager to watch a film, walks right by the marquee-less movie theater without noticing it. “I thought it was around here…must be farther,” he mutters to himself. “Maybe those lights in the distance.” The name of the theater (The Bosporus) and the film (An Autopsy for Two) are just extra punchlines on top of the poignant vignette.

Cheap Novelties doesn’t aspire to make cities great again, and it’s not interested in wallowing in the past, or whitewashing history into something wholly admirable. But in every strip, Katchor is throwing a wake for some quotidian urban object or another, admiring them for the purpose that they served, even as he acknowledges that the world has moved on. If you’ve never appreciated the appeal of Katchor’s work, I urge you to give Cheap Novelties a try. Katchor admires and celebrates a city that has suddenly become irrelevant, and his work has a way of suddenly finding a new relevance when you’re ready to see it.

Wednesday October 19th: Margin Shift

Thursday October 20th: Libraroke

Friday October 21st: Overpour Reading

Saturday October 22nd: The Elements and Rock Is Not Dead

The Elements: Love City Love, 1406 E Pike St., http://twitter.com/lovecitylove. Free. All ages. 7 pm.

Rock Is Not Dead: Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, 925 E. Pike St., 658-0110, http://fantagraphics.com/flog/bookstore. Free. All ages. 7 p.m.

Sunday October 23rd: Les Amants Book Brunch

Monday October 24th: The Wangs vs. the World Reading

Tuesday October 25th: #Journalismsowhite

In a post this morning, James Franco Review founder Corinne Manning announced that she is stepping down from the Review after the next issue, which launches on November 1st, and that Monica Lewis will be taking over as publisher, with current managing editor Nicole McCarthy staying on in her current role. Further, the publication will be changing its name. (The new name has not yet been announced.)

The name change is probably a good idea. When Manning announced the James Franco Review, the name was a good joke, a way to grab attention using a white-male-privilege judo flip. But the mission of the Review is vital: to provide authors with a space where every submission is treated with the respect and equal attention that it deserves. It's grown into its own, and it deserves to step out of the shadow of celebrity.

As for Manning, she's also stepping down from her responsibilities as co-founder of The Furnace reading series. The Furnace is shutting down with a big party on December 2nd, as Anca Szilagyi announced in a blog post earlier this month. Manning will be taking the time to focus on her own writing. Which is a great thing! She's a talented writer who deserves to give her writing the time and attention it deserves.

However, this means that there are gaps in the Seattle literary community now. It's time for you — yes, you, reading this — to start your own reading series, or literary magazine, or community space. 2017 can be your year. Start your thing, let us know about it, and do your part for Seattle. We need you.

Autumn in literary Seattle brings with it an abundance of choice. Any given night offers at least three decent options for literary events to attend—many of them entirely free.It would be a great problem to have if it didn’t mean you missed so much fun thanks to the overstuffed readings schedules. October and November pass blithely through when-it-rains-it-pours territory and skate directly into a monsoon.

Case in point: this Saturday night delivers not one but two comics anthology debut parties. At the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery in Georgetown, comics authors Mark Campos and Noel Franklin debut a new collection called Rock Is Not Dead with special guest cartoonists and music from Amy Denio. At Love City Love on Capitol Hill, comics collective THE HAND debuts their second anthology, The Elements. No matter where you choose to spend your Saturday night, you’re bound for a fun comics-centric evening.

The back cover copy for Rock Is Not Dead says the anthology was born out of a need to rebut KISS’s Gene Simmons, who in a 2014 interview pronounced rock and roll to be dead. “Rock ‘n Roll is not a business model,” the anthology exclaims. “Rock ‘n Roll is an attitude, a paradigm.” The comics, short fiction, and attached CD of cover songs are supposed to prove that.

Speaking as someone who has grown boundlessly bored of white men playing guitars, I remain unconvinced about the vitality of the genre, but Rock has some excellent comics in it. Franklin and Campos’s “Not Too Soon” is a beautiful, smoky broken love story set in and around the Egyptian Theater, and Wm Brian Maclean’s “Never Trust a Junkie” is a vibrant celebration of motion and color.

The Elements is thematically looser: it’s just a collective of Seattle-area artists presenting their work as a single unit. The best of the lot is Robyn Jordan’s story of a woman who desperately wants a child. She visits a tarot card reader, who then delivers some bad news. The story ends with an account of Sarah and Abraham from the Old Testament, and it concludes on a moment of decision. The confidence in Jordan’s cartooning is inspirational: a full-page depiction of the tarot reading delivers a dense spray of information in as few lines as possible, and it’s not until you give your eye time to soak in the whole thing that you can appreciate how much work went into the page.

A lot of The Elements is like that. Rachelle Duazo’s “Shower Scene” can to a prurient-minded reader represent nothing more than a comic strip about two naked people making out in a shower. But it’s really a complete history of a relationship, from beginning to end, captured in the motions and gestures of sex: one lover kneeling before another, fingers clenched together into an exploratory knot. Comics don’t get much more, well, elemental than this: raw emotion, delivered in a few representative lines on a page.

The Elements: Love City Love, 1406 E Pike St., http://twitter.com/lovecitylove. Free. All ages. 7 pm.

Rock Is Not Dead: Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, 925 E. Pike St., 658-0110, http://fantagraphics.com/flog/bookstore. Free. All ages. 6 p.m.

Editor's note: Poet Linda Andrews, author of Escape of the Bird Women, winner of the Washington State Book Award, and judge for 2014-2016, sent this letter to the editor in response to Susan Rich's article "Why does Carl Phillips need the Washington State Book Award?"

So, the 2015 Washington State Book Awards were granted and celebrated on October 8, though I fear some will be no happier with the winners than they were with the list of finalists. The author, Susan Rich, has a right to wonder about the process of choosing the award winners, so I’d like to respond to her concerns.

Indeed, Carl Phillips, a non-resident, did win in the poetry category, and Carl’s publisher submitted the book according to the guidelines which state that the author either be born in the state or have maintained three years continuous residence. We judges are sent the books that have been vetted according to those guidelines. We judge what we get. Susan mentioned Rick Barot’s fine book, Chord, and its national awards. But unfortunately it was not submitted for a Washington State Book Award. The article also mentioned collections by Michael Schmeltzer and Maya Zeller, whose books weren’t submitted, either. Books can be submitted by publisher or author, so here’s the good news: According to Guiding Policy #10, “a title that was inadvertently not considered one year is eligible for consideration the following year.” The next deadline is April 1, 2017. All books published in 2016 and any overlooked books from 2015 are eligible for submission. I hope that Barot and any others who qualify will take advantage of that policy.

But here’s a bigger issue: How can a poet’s work not be influenced by, be born of, that person’s history? Read Christina Stoddard’s fine book, Hive. The content of that book is firmly rooted in her Mormon upbringing in Tacoma and the trauma of living her young life in the shadow of the Green River killings. A finalist for this year’s poetry book award, Christina is a resident of Tennessee and she attended the ceremony last Saturday. Her work is stunning, home grown, and absolutely deserving of our recognition. Because authors move from the state for the chance to study or teach or to meet the demands of family, should their books be disqualified? Should David Wagoner refuse the honors bestowed on him by the University of Illinois? Would Michigan not claim Theodore Roethke as its own, even though he lived several years and then died in Washington State? Willa Cather wrote her Nebraska books while homesick in New York. The poetic/literary imagination is not confined by geography. We take our histories with us wherever we go and those histories feed our work.

We judges are a group of five and, as Susan noted, only one is a poet. That’s me. The article’s implication is that the others might not be able to adequately judge poetry. Poetry is not just for poets. All of us on the committee love the word and we discuss the work submitted to us with respect, evidence, appreciation, and deep belief in the beauty of a good book. We are entrusted with judging four categories. I personally have never written a novel, a book of non-fiction, or a memoir. But am I qualified to read and judge? Yes. The other judges are librarians and book sellers and worthy evaluators of good writing.

Concerning the article’s title, “Why Does Carl Phillips Need the Washington State Book Award?” I agree that he doesn’t “need” another award. But need is not one of the criteria. We, the judges, receive about 200 books to judge in the four categories assigned to us. Last year, more than 40 of those books were poetry. How can the judges assess the need of each author? What level of fame or financial security would disqualify someone? Should posthumous publications (one of which was a finalist for a 2014 book award) be disqualified because need no longer exists? The selection criteria since the inception of the awards are: literary merit, lasting importance, and overall quality of the publication. Those are the criteria we follow, and follow seriously, through all the months of reading and through our deliberations and decisions. The judging criteria have been in place for 50 years. They have honored many authors who have Washington in their hearts and in their writing. Home stays in the memory powerfully, no matter where the writer wanders.

The Seattle Review of Books responds:

All of the reading, deliberation, and conversation that goes into choosing an award recipient is never an easy task, so we want to open by thanking Linda Andrews for her time, attention, and her work towards the betterment of Washington's literary community. We appreciate her letter, and taking time to engage on this important issue.

We agree, too, that more local presses needed to submit works to this prize. We suspect many of those presses are now paying closer attention, and our hope is that next year's selections make judging even more difficult than it must have been this year, by dint of the quantity and quality of submissions. May next year bring 60 manuscripts; may the one after bring 80.

Where we differ is in counting influence. It is possible that Carl Phillips — a preternaturally talented poet, and one worthy of accolades — carries such strong influence from his familial connection to Washington State that his single year of residency imbued his life and work with evergreen ghosts. And while it is true neither Phillips, nor his publisher, broke any rule, either literal or ethical, in his submission, his win did hit a soft spot for many in our state, especially in Seattle.

We have long been a community whose art scene was localized and isolated. You see this in the literary scene, the music scene, the graphic and performing arts — Seattle always felt a little unsure of its own place in the world. And while the work produced here was on par with any international comparison (as evidenced by its worldwide consumption when we found our way onto the various maps), we have historically felt colloquial, ignored, and belittled. In fact, many artists, shunned while they were here, had to leave for Los Angeles or New York to receive the recognition they deserved for their work. Their leaving diminished us, and those who stayed and fought to gain ground for a Washington State artistic homeland deserve praise and acknowledgment.

We live now in a time of great renaissance of Washington letters and arts. Our literary scene, in particular, is exploding in Seattle, Spokane, Bellingham, Tacoma. High caliber work is being published daily by daring presses and journals, and writers with international standing come out of Washington State to make our reputation second to none on the world stage.

So while Phillips' work may have overwhelmed the judging criteria you list — literary merit, lasting importance, and overall quality — it certainly neglected one criteria that is not currently part of the judges' mandate: regional importance.

A work bearing the honor of Washington State Book Award should reflect the state which granted it such privilege. Why else would we bestow our attention to it? What are we saying by our assignment?

So while we, once again, thank Linda Andrews, and want to be clear that we do not feel she, or any of the judges, were negligent in their duties to the rules as they sit, we believe that the rules themselves needed be changed in two specific ways:

1. That a residency requirement be implemented. The form, or strictness, of this can be debated, but it should be put in place to ensure Washington State artists are receiving this award.
2. That the judging criteria consider regional importance, in addition to the other three criteria.

We want nothing less than the Washington State Book Awards to celebrate Washington writers, and we think this request is both reasonable, obvious, and what most laypeople would assume the award is for to begin with.