Wednesday May 25: Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman Reading

See the Event of the Week column. Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Ave., 652-4255, http://townhallseattle.org. $5. All ages. 7:30 p.m.

Thursday May 26: White Sands Reading

Geoff Dyer writes nimbly about difficult concepts that are exceptionally difficult for most writers to explain; he once wrote a book about not writing a book about D.H. Lawrence. White Sands is about travel, and the idea of travel, and living in the world; I can’t explain it, but I know Dyer can. Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Ave., 652-4255, http://townhallseattle.org. $5. All ages. 7:30 p.m.

Friday May 26: Paper: Paging Through History Reading

In both Cod and Salt, Mark Kurlansky wrote huge, well-researched books about seemingly tiny topics which expand into nuanced histories of the entire world. His newest, Paper, promises to do the same trick with paper and the written word, though it also looks forward, at the prospect (threat?) of a paperless future. Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Ave., 652-4255, http://townhallseattle.org. $5. All ages. 7:30 p.m.

Saturday May 28: Almost Live: The Show That Wouldn’t Die Reading

Now that we’re a world-class city with our very own giant Amazon balls, it’s hard to remember that Seattle used to have its own local low-budget Saturday Night Live. Bryan Johnston’s history of Almost Live includes interviews with nearly every cast member, making it a must-read for the three natural-born Seattleites who can still afford to live here. Third . Third Place Books Lake Forest Park, 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333, http://thirdplacebooks.com. Free. All ages. 6:30 p.m.

Sunday May 29: Literary Events at Fokllife

All weekend long Folklife hosts literary events like readings from the youth-poetry saints of Pongo Publishing, Greg Vandy’s book about Woody Guthrie, and more. On Sunday alone, you can find a whole bunch of children’s storytelling events and a reading from the Jack Straw Fellows hosted by beloved local poetry advocate Kathleen Flenniken. Seattle Center, http://nwfolklife.org. Free. All ages. 11 A.M.

Monday May 30: Author: The JT LeRoy Story Screening

In the late 1990s, everyone was obsessed with JT LeRoy, a media-shy author who wrote thinly veiled novels about his own life as a drug-addicted homeless youth. Then, LeRoy was outed as a middle-aged woman named Laura Albert. Jeff Feuerzeig’s documentary about LeRoy/Albert is coming to SIFF, and today I’ll be joining him for a post-screening interview. Shoreline Community College, 16101 Greenwood Ave. N., 464.5830, http://siff.net. $13. All ages. 3 p.m.

Tuesday May 31: Tribe Reading

Sebastian Junger is not just one of the dreamiest authors alive—he’s a hottie who fearlessly launches himself into dangerous situations—he’s also one of the most compassionate. His newest book, Tribe, documents the many pitfalls that befall veterans when they return to normal life in America, including suicide, PTSD, and drug Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Ave., 652-4255, http://townhallseattle.org. $5. All ages. 7:30 p.m.

Tonight, Lindy West reads from her memoir Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman at Town Hall Seattle, and it’s kind of a triumphant homecoming after the first leg of what looks to be a long book tour: she’s debuted the book in Chicago and in Brooklyn but she hasn’t yet read to a hometown crowd.

When she sat down with me for an interview, I asked Lindy something I’ve been meaning to ask for a very long time: there was a point when she and i worked together at The Stranger when she was becoming a nationally famous feminist cultural critic. In the days before the internet, that would have been the exact point when a writer would have packed up, left Seattle, and moved to New York City, to try to land jobs at high-paying magazines. Did Lindy stay in Seattle because the technology allowed her to telecommute, or was there something else that was keeping her here?

“I just love Seattle so much,” Lindy replied, “and I always have. Both of my parents are from here. There’s something about knowing that when I drive through downtown, I can see my dad walking down the street with his briefcase in 1973.” She said she “had the good fortune to keep getting jobs where they said I could work from wherever, so there’s just no compelling reason to go.” That said, “I know that I’m missing out on things. It’s hard to know what my career would be like if I had moved to New York. I definitely miss out on things like,” and here she screwed up her face with a special kind of disdain, “media cool kid happy hour, or whatever.”

It’s hard to imagine a more famous version of Lindy West right now; her book is getting rave reviews everywhere and she’s doing interviews with seemingly every media outlet in the English-speaking world. But part of her appeal is that she can be the totally fearless, brash, hilarious warrior on the internet and in print, and then she can come home and be a Seattleite who loves her family and friends and city in a completely earnest, un-New-York-y way. It’s hard to imagine a Lindy West without Seattle’s influence, and it’s impossible to imagine a Seattle without Lindy West.

Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org. $5. All ages. 7:30 p.m.

• If you'd like to be an exhibitor in this year's Short Run Comix & Arts festival, you should fill out this form sometime between now and July 15th.

• Yesterday, Artist Trust announced the recipients of their 2016 Fellowships. Fourteen artists received $7,500. According to Artist Trust, the winners were "selected for their artistic excellence, professional accomplishments, and continuing dedication to their discipline." Here's a list of all the literary winners, who deserve your congratulations:

Bill Carty (Seattle)

Miles Caudesch (Pullman)

Ramon Isao (Seattle)

Robert Lashley (Bellingham)

Michelle Peñaloza (Seattle)

Jekeva Phillips (Seattle)

Nance Van Winckel (Liberty Lake)

• Sherman Alexie published a list of his six favorite books about identity at The Week. The books, which include Seattle author Sonya Lea, should absolutely be added to your very long list of books to check out the next time you're at the book store. You can also hear a great interview with Alexie about his new kids' book on KUOW's site.

• As part of their big 40th (!!) anniversary celebration, Fantagraphics announced that they're publishing their own institutional biography, and it sounds incredible.

The highlight of the anniversary celebrations will be the long awaited release of We Told You So: Comics As Art, an irreverent, 600-page oral history of Fantagraphics edited by Tom Spurgeon with Michael Dean, as told through interviews with virtually every key player in the company’s history – as well as a few of its adversaries – and copiously illustrated with hundreds of photos, comics, drawings, and rare ephemera from the Fantagraphics vaults.

I sent an email to Eric Reynolds, the associate publisher at Seattle's Fantagraphics Books, to ask about how his company dealt with the so-called "Netflix of Comics," Amazon's Comixology Unlimited program. Did they alert their creators about the program before it was announced? Do those creators have the right to withdraw from the Unlimited program if they're unhappy with it? Here is Reynolds' response in full:

I did not consult with individual creators, but as with all of our digital sales relationships (subscription or otherwise), I've made a point to enter into non-exclusive and non-binding contracts that allow us to remove any titles at a moment's notice from any platform, in the event that we as a company or an individual author decides they want no part of it (thus far, it's never happened).

I had been approached by a few companies over the past couple of years who have been trying to get a subscription model off the ground, and to be honest, I've resisted for a variety of reasons.

That said, I decided to dip our toes into Comixology's program because I think it is frankly the best positioned to gain traction in the marketplace. We'll see. We are offering a limited selection of backlist -- no frontlist. No frontlist was my primary "demand" in negotiating with Comixology, and they were completely accommodating.

So, yeah, we'll see how it plays out!

(A quick note for those of you who are unfamiliar with book industry terminology: "frontlist" basically means "new releases," the kind of books you'll find at the front of bookstores on display tables and bestseller displays.) Soon after emailing, Reynolds sent a followup message just to clarify a point:

I should also add: I only included titles that we already had rights to sell digitally. Obviously, if we didn't have those rights, then a conversation would need be had. That should go without saying, but just in case.

I'll let you know if Image Comics releases a statement on how they involved their creators in Comixology Unlimited.

This morning, when the Amazon-owned digital comics retailer Comixology announced their new Unlimited plan, the comics and tech media were rapturous. "Say what you will about their effect on the print industry, digital comics have made buying [independent comics] easier," Birth.Movies.Death's Siddhant Adlakha wrote, "especially outside North America. What’s more, it’s about to get a whole lot easier with this $5.99 a month subscription service, which includes, of course, a 30-day trial." Bloggers, many of whom were likely working just from the press release, were quick to label it a "Netflix for comics.”

And on first blush, it’s easy to understand why they’d say that. The new Comixology Unlimited plan includes most of the major comics publishers minus the big two of Marvel and DC. (Marvel owns and operates its own $9.99-a-month Unlimited service.) According to Heidi MacDonald at The Beat, who says Comixology “just hit a slam dunk” with Unlimited, the service includes publishers like “Image, Dark HorseIDW Publishing, BOOM!, Dynamite, Kodansha, Oni, Valiant Entertainment, Archie , Fantagraphics, Humanoids, Action Lab Entertainment, Aspen, Zenescope and more.”

But there are a few problems with the Unlimited plan. Jude Terror at The Outhousers notes that…

…most of the comics available on the service are the first one or two trades of series, meaning they serve more as an advertisement to purchase further issues than a truly "unlimited" reading experience. For instance, you can read the first two Walking Dead and Chew trades, or the first six issues of Saga… And to access the service, you'll need to merge your comiXology account with your Amazon account, because Amazon would really like to store all the data they're collecting on you in one place.

Especially interesting is the fact that it’s looking like a lot of creators weren’t told about Comixology Unlimited in advance. And many of them are not happy about it:

And now with Comixology Unlimited I suddenly understand how all those musicians feel

— Cameron Stewart (@cameronMstewart) May 24, 2016

@PiaGuerra wow. First I've heard of this. :/

— Kurtis Wiebe (@kurtisjwiebe) May 24, 2016

Did any creators hear about Comixology Unlimited before it was announced?

— Jamie McKelvie (@McKelvie) May 24, 2016

Other factors, including how much creators are going to be compensated for their books’ involvement in Unlimited, aren’t public yet. It’s especially surprising to see Image Comics, which prides itself on the fact that every single one of their titles are creator-owned, seemingly signing on to this plan without telling creators first.

It’s unclear if Image told any of their creators, but Jamie McKelvie, whose tweet is quoted above, is the artist of The Wicked + The Divine, which is one of the most popular Image Comics right now. If he wasn’t told, it’s clear that communication between Image and their creators was lax. In a threaded Twitter conversation with McKelvie, cartoonist and self-publisher Spike Trotman said that she "was emailed weeks ago and asked to participate in the launch," and that she "had to sign a contract and NDA and everything!" McKelvie confirmed that she was a publisher and concluded that Comixology "[t]alked to publishers, but not creators," to which Trotman replied, "I hope that's not the case!"

At least partly, it does seem to be the case. In an interview with Comic Book Resources, Comixology co-founder and CEO David Steinberger says that he doesn't "get between our publishers and their creators," meaning that Amazon/Comixology didn't contact any creators on their own. Steinberger also refused to comment about potential royalties.

I have emails out to several publishers and creators. We’ll have more on this story as it develops.

UPDATE 12:17 PM: I've just published Fantagraphics Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds' response to my questions about creator involvement in Comixology Unlimited.

Last Friday night, at the Hugo House's very last reading in its old site, House Executive Director Tree Swenson pulled off a first in the history of readings: her introduction was perhaps more interesting than the headlining authors. Swenson told the audience about the House's penultimate reading, an event called "Where the House Was," hosted by Frances McCue. It seems that in the middle of the reading, the event was interrupted by the sound of running water coming from somewhere inside the house. It sounded like a gushing leak, Swenson said, and so the House staff went in search of the noise as the reading below was put on pause. They soon discovered that an upstairs drain had been clogged and water was flowing, river-like, indoors.

Downstairs, in the cabaret space, a light fixture, which had filled with water, dropped from the ceiling and hit a woman in the knees before crashing to the floor. (The woman said she was fine, Swenson assures us.) This alarming Phantom of the Opera moment was accompanied by electrical sparks. At this point, everyone became very concerned, and so House staff vacated the building and called the fire department, who showed up and declared everything to be fine. (One of the firefighters, Swenson said, assured her that his wife loved the Hugo House, but he was more of a comics person.) So after an eventful delay, the show went on in the theater space. The best part of the evening, Swenson told the audience on Friday night, was that because the House was scheduled for demolition, she knew she wouldn't have to repair any of the damage.

The symbolism of a house shedding tears on the eve of its destruction is almost too on-the-nose, of course, but somehow — for the Hugo House — it works. I don't believe in ghosts, but I want to set my disbelief aside for a moment to congratulate whatever spirit it was that decided to go operatic in the closing days of the Hugo House. Your spectral works did not go unappreciated.

Sponsor Seattle7Writers is throwing a Bookish Brunch on June 5th, and you're invited! This one is extra special: not only is their a keynote from Deb Caletti, but there will be writers at every table for good conversation. Get all the details on our sponsor's page.

Seattle7Writers events are always a good time, and $30 of your ticket price is a tax-deductable donation. How often can you say that about your favorite brunch spot in Seattle?

We have only four sponsor slots left, before August. If you're a small publisher, writer, poet, or foundation that is looking to back our work, and advertise your own in an inexpensive and expressive way, take a look at our open dates. We'd love to talk to you about opportunities to sponsor us. It's our way of making internet advertising something to look forward to.

A few Seattle-area booksellers have achieved celebrity status. They’re the names that PR people from New York publishers casually drop when they discuss the Seattle market, the booksellers that other booksellers look to for recommendations, the superstars who represent regional booksellers on panels and in organizations. Queen Anne Book Company bookseller Tegan Tigani is absolutely one of those celebrity booksellers. (If you need any more proof of her celebrity status, consider that Montana author Shann Ray recently waxed rhapsodic on the cadence of her name in the middle of an onstage interview.)

Tigani is heroically devoted to books and literature. Aside from the 16 to 20 hours a week she puts in at QABC as the children’s and young adult book buyer, she’s also the editor for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association’s Northwest Booklovers blog a children’s book editor at large for Sasquatch Books’ children’s imprint, Little Bigfoot, and a freelance developmental editor who works on adult and young adult novels. Seemingly every hour of her day is spent thinking about books: buying books for the store, selling books to customers, editing books, talking about books.

Tigani has been a bookseller at QABC (and its predecessor, Queen Anne Books) for about 15 years. It was, she adds, “my first job out of college.” When she moved to Seattle, Queen Anne Books was the first bookstore she visited. She credits the bookstore for honing “my sense of community. As somebody who is naturally an introvert, it’s nice to have a place where it’s safe to talk to people about books that I love.” She calls the bookstore “a great reason to get out of my pajamas. A lot of my other jobs I can work from home, and so it’s wonderful to go out and see people and have to be presentable once in a while.”

So what has Tigani been recommending lately? She’s been extra-fond of Strictly No Elephants, a picture book by Lisa Mantchev. “It’s darling,” Tigani says, “because it’s about outsiders.” Elephants is the story of a boy who takes his pet elephant to a pet club, but then he discovers that the club only accepts traditional pets, so he and some other kids — one of whom owns a narwhal — form their own club. Tigani enjoys it in particular because “it’s a story about kids and pets but It’s also a story about fitting in and standing up for yourself,” as told in “beautiful illustrations that look classic to me.” She’s also fond of One Day in the Eucalyptus, Eucalyptus Tree, which she says is “really fun to read aloud.”

Fifteen years is a long time in the bookselling business, and Tigani has a lot of interesting jobs; what keeps her invested in Queen Anne Book Company? “There is the proximity issue,” she laughs. “My husband and I bought a house in Queen Anne because we love a neighborhood that is centered around a bookstore.” When she goes to work, she says, she’s reminded that “what I really love about Queen Anne Book Company is that this is my community. The fact that my neighbors, the people I run into at the grocery store, the people who cut my hair — they all come to the bookstore, so it’s a center of our life.”

For the few dark months when Queen Anne Books was closed and Queen Anne Book Company had not yet been created, she says, “I just had a hole in my life. I didn’t have that place where I ran into people. I didn’t have a place where I could unabashedly geek out about books, a place where I’m accepted and even celebrated for being a book-lover.” With Queen Anne Book Company, she always has that place. It’s another kind of home.

How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist

A peek inside the designer's mind, and how navigation and other tricks by designers and companies trick you into feeling like you have choice, when in fact you're being guided through a very specific experience. The author, Tristan Harris, was Google's design ethicist, so is deeply familiar with all the techniques.

By shaping the menus we pick from, technology hijacks the way we perceive our choices and replaces them new ones. But the closer we pay attention to the options we’re given, the more we’ll notice when they don’t actually align with our true needs.

The empty brain

More brain stuff! In Aeon, Robert Epstein looks at the brain, and as the subtitle says "Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer".

Our shoddy thinking about the brain has deep historical roots, but the invention of computers in the 1940s got us especially confused. For more than half a century now, psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists and other experts on human behaviour have been asserting that the human brain works like a computer.

To see how vacuous this idea is, consider the brains of babies. Thanks to evolution, human neonates, like the newborns of all other mammalian species, enter the world prepared to interact with it effectively. A baby’s vision is blurry, but it pays special attention to faces, and is quickly able to identify its mother’s. It prefers the sound of voices to non-speech sounds, and can distinguish one basic speech sound from another. We are, without doubt, built to make social connections.

We’re in an amazing black cultural moment. Can we avoid the backlash?

Syreeta McFadden in the Guardian, looking at the exposure and relevance of black culture in popular media, and how white America is bound to respond (Donald Trump sure seems to be a paranoid freakout to our first black President to this observer).

This artistic triumph isn’t a new movement, then, but rather reads like one because this time around, creators aren’t making work that over explains black life or that makes white society comfortable, centered or even included. Beyoncé’s Lemonade was made to speak to black women. Larry Wilmore’s N-word use at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner wasn’t meant for the white people it offended. Shonda Rhimes is the most successful showrunner in television, creating space for black actors to feature complex representations of black life. Claudia Rankine’s critically acclaimed volume, Citizen, explicitly interrogates micro aggressions that shape black life in America.

What does it mean when we call women girls?

Robin Wasserman on the popularity of books with "girl" in the title, and what it's like to be an author who wrote one.

As a dedicated contrarian—someone whose few attempts at trend-chasing have culminated in baroque, Wile E. Coyote-esque failure—little makes me feel more alien in my own skin than finding myself accidental avatar of a cultural fad. Which is to say, I’m not really the zeitgeist type. And yet it seems I’ve written a book with “girl” in the title. First prize: Free ride on the bandwagon, like it or not.

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?

Scablands Books. We've put $20 in as a non-reward backer

Who is the Creator?

Sharma Shields.

What do they have to say about the project?

Help us publish the poetry collections of local writers Ellen Welcker and Tim Greenup!

What caught your eye?

If you're a regular reader of the Seattle Review of Books, or a fan of Northwest writing, you know Sharma Shields. She's written for us, and is the author of the novel The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac, and the short story collection Favorite Monster.

This project by her is all about publishing poetry collections from fellow inland Northwest writers Ellen Welcker and Tim Greenup.

Why should I back it?

Local pride, for one. Spokane has a burgoning lit scene, and that's great to see. Also, the money is to make the books right, from paying the poets a good rate, to hiring designers to lay them out right. Here's to small publishers in Spokane!

How's the project doing?

They're 42% funded currently, with less than $1400 pledged of their $8k goal.

Do they have a video?

Kickstarter Fund Stats

• Projects backed: 20
• Funds pledged: $400
• Funds collected: $300
• Unsuccessful pledges: 0
• Fund balance: $640

• The awesome organizers of comics and art show Short Run made a special announcement about their upcoming fall show: Special guests at the show this year will include Vanessa Davis and Trevor Alixopulos. Davis's comic Make Me a Woman was published by Drawn & Quarterly, and Alixopulos is an up-and-comer who will be in the newest volume of the Kramer's Ergot anthology. In case you've missed it, Short Run also revealed the identity of this year's Dash grant recipient, a program that provides funds to an artist to make a new comic in time for the show; this year's Dash winner is a new-to-Seattle cartoonist named Brendan Kiefer. The Short Run Festival will happen at Fisher Pavilion in Seattle Center this year on Saturday, November 6th. Save the date.

• Now is the time to nominate the Seattle-area "artists, arts and cultural organizations and community members" that you love for the 2016 Mayor's Arts Awards. Get your nominations in by May 31st.

• It's always award season somewhere: Lots of women won at the Nebula Awards last week, and a pair of Japanese literary prizewinners have been announced, including an 80-year-old literary critic who won a prize for up-and-coming authors. Also, yesterday the O Henry Prizewinning short stories were announced. Congratulations to everyone.

• Marley Dias, the 11-year-old who invented the #1000BlackGirlBooks movement, guest-starred on this week's episode of the BuzzFeed podcast Another Round, which included a roundtable on beloved children's books. If you are in need of something heartwarming after another dismal week of Trumpery, this is the most life-affirming thing I've heard in a very long time.

• Jeff Bezos has confirmed that more Amazon Books brick-and-mortar stores are on the way. If you haven't read it, here's my experience at the first Amazon Books store.

• Yes, and Jonathan Franzen went on Jeopardy! this week and he didn't win and he didn't embarrass himself. It's pretty sketchy that one of the categories on his show was "Birds," given that Franzen is maybe the most famous birder in the United States right now and he was representing a bird-preservation nonprofit on the show. Sure, it was all for charity, but it's still a hell of a coincidence, isn't it?

• In Austrailia, a civil servant published a book and was arrested for it, but according to Melville House's MobyLives blog, "nobody seems quite sure why" he was arrested. Fascinating.

• There is no good goddamned reason to publish a young adult version of the Da Vinci Code. If a teenager wants to read the Da Vinci Code, they should just read the Da Vinci Code. It's not a particularly challenging book on any level, from reading comprehension to content. There's nothing wrong with reading a trashy thriller, but the unnecessary repackaging of trashy thrillers to appeal to different demographics is getting tiresome.

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,

My friend self-published a novel. I bought a copy and tried to read it and, well, I'm being charitable when I say it's not very good. "Unreadable" is a word I'd use to describe it. What do I do the next time I see my friend? He'll definitely ask what I think of it. I've avoided a few social events out of fear that he'll be there, and I can't keep living like this.

Thanks,

Jim, Bitter Lake

Dear Jim,

You’ve done your duty – you bought the book. That’s all any person should reasonably expect from a friend or partner: the precious token of affection exchanged when one person expresses a shallow interest in another person’s hobby. When my best friend’s hobby was emotional eating, I learned how to open packets of his favorite foods so that we could enjoy what he called “the couple’s gravy experience.” Now that he is a marathon runner, I offer him milk electrolytes and proteins sold in brick form. But I will not ask him about his bowel movements or split times or any of the other silly shit runners are prone to discuss for hours with each other while jogging in place because my attention span is a finite resource that must be reserved for my own hobbies, like watching spiders commit hate crimes on flies.

So what do you do? The next time there’s a party on the horizon, email your writer friend and ask him if he’ll be attending because you want him to sign your copy of his book. Bring the book (make sure to crack the spine in several places) and don’t give him a chance to ask what you think. Go on the offensive: Say that you really enjoyed the work. You immediately connected with the main character and got swept up in the narrative. Tell him he has a unique voice, reminiscent of TKTKTK (throw out the name of some writer he likes). Then, quickly pivot and begin asking him questions: What inspired him to write it? Has the book been reviewed? Has he been conducting readings around town? What feedback has he gotten from his friends/family/significant other? How thick is his fan club? What project is he working on now?

If he asks you any pointed questions about the work that you can’t answer because you haven’t read it, simply respond with, “I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t quite ‘get’ what you were trying to do there. I think it went over my head. What were you going for?”

When you’ve blown enough smoke up your friend’s ass, pivot the conversation again to your own hobbies with something like, “Speaking of man’s eternal struggle with nature, I’m embarrassed to say I think the spiders living in my home are incredibly racist and I’m not sure how to confront them about it. What are your thoughts?”

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

Seattle superstar Sherman Alexie is appearing next Tuesday at University Temple United Methodist Church, an event thrown by University Bookstore to present his new book Thunder Boy Jr. (And don't forget, Alexie will be showing up at Bumbershoot for a Seattle Review of Books event).

The Seattle International Film Festival kicks off tonight, and the next four weeks will bring hundreds of movies from around the world to venues throughout the region. You should absolutely take part in SIFF; it’s one of the cultural events that shapes and defines the city. Because we know you love books — you’re on this site, after all — we thought we’d assemble SIFF’s most literary films into an alphabetical list for you, along with SIFF’s descriptions. If you’re interested in a film, just click on the title, which will take you to SIFF’s page, where you can watch a trailer and buy tickets. At the end of the list, I’ll give some of my picks.

The Academy of Muses

Eclectic Spanish filmmaker José Luis Guerin inventively explores the fine lines separating fact, fiction, art, and life through the story of an ethically dubious university professor who uses the precepts of ancient literature as an excuse for his dalliances.

Antonia

This sumptuous and dreamy biopic about posthumously celebrated Italian poet Antonia Pozzi explores the artist's passions, enlightenment, sexuality, and torments as a young girl in 1930s Milan as she struggles to find her own voice in her short life.

Author: The JT LeRoy Story

Uncover the fascinating truth behind wunderkind JT LeRoy, whose tough, sordid memoirs about life as a teenage male hustler captivated the literary world—until he was revealed to be a fictional creation of 40-year-old female writer Laura Albert.

Finding Babel

75 years after subversive Soviet writer Isaac Babel's execution for supposed criticism of the Communist Party, his grandson works to piece together the story of the grandfather he never knew and understand the author's unique artistic style.

The IF Project

A compassionate Seattle police officer creates a unique writing program along with a group of inmates at a maximum-security women's prison, challenging them to answer a simple question with a difficult answer: What if things had been different?

Indignation

Frequent Ang Lee collaborator James Schamus steps into the director's chair to adapt Philip Roth's novel about an independent-minded college student (Logan Lerman, The Perks of Being a Wallflower) at odds with the mindset of 1950s America.

Love & Friendship

Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, The Last Days of Disco) delivers a marvelously witty take on Jane Austen's novella about cunning widow Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale) who plots and flirts to find suitable husbands for herself and her daughter.

Maya Angelou and I Still Rise

Made over a four-year period, and featuring interviews with the iconic writer herself, this inspirational and informative documentary uses an effective chronological approach to celebrate beloved poet Maya Angelou and her work.

Paul à Québec

Michel Rabagliati's celebrated graphic novel The Song of Roland comes to life in this charming, wryly funny, and uplifting tale of a graphic designer and his relationship with his dying father-in-law.

Slash

Sexually questioning high-school freshman Neil (Michael Johnston, Teen Wolf) discovers a new creative outlet when his new friend Julia (Hannah Marks, Awkward) takes him down the rabbit hole of online erotic fan fiction.

Uncle Howard

The nephew of filmmaker Howard Brookner, whose work captured the creative culture of '70s and '80s New York City, sets out to find the lost negative of a film on William S. Burroughs, uncovering his uncle's influence on a generation of artists along the way.

Vintage Tomorrows

Dive deep into the world of steampunk, the subgenre of science fiction inspired by 19th-century technology and aesthetics, in this documentary featuring appearances by authors William Gibson, China Miéville, and Cory Doctorow.

Whew! That’s a lot of movies. How do you narrow them down? Here are the three I’m most excited for:

• I can’t wait to see Author: The JT LeRoy Story. LeRoy/Laura Albert is one of the most fascinating figures of the early 2000s, and the question of authenticity in literature is very serious and very interesting. (“LeRoy”’s books were billed as fiction, after all, which means there’s a slight moral difference from, say, the James Frey situation.) I’ll be interviewing director Jeff Feuerzeig after the screening at Shoreline Community College on Monday, May 30th at 3 pm.

• Whit Stillman and Jane Austen are a match made in heaven; you could argue that Stillman’s movies have largely been modern-day Austen riffs. So Love & Friendship is a must-see: it’s got a great cast, Stillman is stretching himself in an interesting way, and even a bad Austen adaptation has the benefit of being an Austen adaptation, so you can’t really go wrong with this one.

• The trailer for Slash sold me. A teen comedy set in the world of sexy fan fiction? With what seems to be a realistic depiction of nerd culture? I’m down for any movie about finding your identity through writing, and movies that demonstrate both the benefits and the detriments of growing up nerdy are in short supply.

All the cool literary people are writing comics now. Ta-Nehisi Coates is doing an excellent job with Black Panther, Margaret Atwood’s comic Angel Catbird is coming out sometime this year, and yesterday the very first issue of sci-fi legend William Gibson’s very first comic, Archangel, hit the stands. Co-created with screenwriter Michael St. John Smith and illustrated by comics veteran Butch Guice, Archangel is closer to Gibson's previously published work than, say, Black Panther is to Between the World and Me, but Gibson is definitely marking new territory here; this is not a lazy cash-grab Neuromancer sequel in comic form or anything so crass.

It’s not always easy to discern the long-term plot of a comic from its first issue, of course, but Archangel, as it stands right now, seems to be a time travel story that is largely set during World War II. In short, a dystopian, ruined America from the year 2016 is secretly invading the past and colonizing it.

The first issue of Archangel introduces several complicated concepts with ease: time travel, UFOs, espionage, and international relations during the second World War. In the first five pages, it also evokes that classic time-travel cliché of murdering your own grandfather, just to let you know that Gibson is aware of the tropes of the genre, and to warn you that he’s not messing around.

And neither is the artist. Guice is one of those rare comics professionals whose work is noticeably improving as he ages. The stiff realism of his work in the late 1980s/early 1990s has loosened into something a little simpler. He still pays close attention to the fashions and surroudings of his characters, but the looseness of his work allows the faces on the page to show more unforced emotion. His characters aren’t posing anymore, as they were in the days when Guice worked for Marvel Comics, they’re emoting and moving and interacting. (Some of the credit for this evolution must go to inker Tom Palmer, of course, and Palmer definitely provides some of the Bryan Hitch-like confidence in the finished art. But a few pages of reproduced un-inked pencils in the back of the book prove that Guice’s art is consciously evolving.) He’s packing as many as ten panels on some pages, but the layouts feel unforced and cinematic.

Gibson does have some lessons to learn about writing for comics. Though he trusts Guice to relay information visually, some of the pages are a little too verbose, with word balloons unbalancing and obscuring the art. Writing for comics, particularly in dialogue, has been described by Seattle author G. Willow Wilson as haiku and by Coates as poetry; Gibson occasionally falls back into prose in some of his dialogue. He doesn't desroy any single page with expositional walls of text, but some sequences are remarkably wordy when compared to most modern comics. It would be nice in future issues to see Gibson lean back a bit and allow Guice a few splash pages and widescreen sequences to really show off his genius for creating settings that a reader can practically walk through with her eyes.

These are relatively mild complaints. As a first issue, Archangel is interesting, provocative, and a hell of a lot of fun to read. Gibson is clearly having a good time translating his skill set to a new medium, and it’s thrilling to see him take on a couple subgenres of sci-fi that he’s never written before. Part of the appeal of these polished literary talents approaching the serialized storytelling format is getting to watch them learn the rules of the medium in real time. It’s as close an experience as we’ll ever get to sitting behind Gibson at his writing desk, watching him over his shoulder as he writes his newest novel..