SAL/on air

As a reporter, Patrick Radden Keefe holds two disparate truths together with unparalleled skill: there are facts, and there is a story. In his work as a staff writer at The New Yorker, Keefe has showcased this talent in long form articles ranging from Anthony Bourdain to the hunt for the drug lord Chapo Guzman, and in his nonfiction books he has entranced a generation of readers.

Keefe joined SAL in the summer of 2021 over Zoom to discuss his recent smash hit books, and while there is no thrum and cheer of a crowded auditorium in this recording, Keefe’s words bring all the light and crackle on their own. From how he began Say Nothing by reading an obituary of an unknown woman, to uncovering the moral bankruptcy of the Sackler family in Empire of Pain, Keefe has unearthed stories that must be told, with every fact both a pickaxe and a vein of gold.

At the beginning of the pandemic Charles Yu wrote an essay on the experience, which many noted, had a cinematic slant to it. “Five hundred years ago,” Yu wrote, “What we really mean when we say that this pandemic feels “unimaginable” is that we had not imagined it. Just as imagination can mislead us, though, it will be imagination—scientific, civic, moral—that helps us find new ways of doing things, helps remind us of how far we have to go as a species.”

Having worked as both a television writer and a poet in addition to writing novels, Yu’s imagination is boundless, generous, and vivid. And while his path to his award-winning book, Interior Chinatown, was long and zigzagging, there was endless imagination to keep him going.

As Chris Abani once stated, “The art is never about what you write about. The art is about how you write about what you write about.” Here, we find Abani’s "how" thick with feeling, braided by nimble and swift metaphors, and shaped by mercurial forms. Imprisoned several times for his political writing, Abani does not shy away from the messy reality of exile, both in geography, culture, and memory.

Following the reading, Abani is joined by poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama for a conversation in which he discusses history, West African mythology, and how language continues to change within and around us. Abani reminds that poetry at its greatest, will always resist time.

Nikky Finney is not only a poet but a storyteller, the kind of voice that weaves through the air in a room until every person there feels that much closer together. Her poems travel the world, from her home in South Carolina to the stage at the National Book Awards where she was lauded for her prizewinning book Head Off & Split. The journeys Finney guides her readers on across the page are filled with curiosity and overflowing with lush sound until you feel sure you would follow her anywhere.

In this episode of SAL/on air, two poets from SAL's Youth Poetry Fellowship, Mateo Quispe and Aamina Mughal, talk about access to arts education, finding community in Seattle's literary scene, and about Mateo's forthcoming chapbook, "Dear Spanish." Published by Poetry Northwest Editions, "Dear Spanish" is an inquiry into identity, desire, and belonging to one's self.

For James Tate, comedy and tragedy are inextricably linked within poetry. They appear as dual facets of ordinary life—the mundane and the extraordinary as one. As you’ll hear in this recording from February 2003, this is laugh-out-loud poetry that wanders from the baseball field to the petting zoo and back home. And yet, after the laughter, you’ll often find yourself catapulted into quiet, left to consider how this world breaks your heart again and again.

The works of Barbara Kingsolver have shaped a generation of readers. From her first novel The Bean Trees and beyond, Kingsolver’s characters speak to us, cradle our faces in their hands and exchange their hearts for ours. We were thrilled to recently welcome Kingsolver back to SAL in October of 2023 for a discussion of her Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece Demon Copperhead.

When Dean Young took the stage in October of 2012 to read from his Copper Canyon Press collection, Bender, we were incredibly fortunate to bear witness to his humorous, irreverent, and fearless poetry. We were deeply saddened to hear of his passing in August 2022, and we continue to treasure his voice as it lives on in his work.

In October of 2003, Sandra Cisneros joined us for an evening 20 years after the publication of her luminous work The House on Mango Street. Now, we have the chance to listen again with reverence, 40 years after that seminal book first came into our lives, and we are reminded more than ever of the importance of spending time with work that not only gratifies us but changes our lives.

In September 2019, Malcolm Gladwell stepped on stage at Benaroya Hall as part of SAL’s Literary Arts Series to discuss his book Talking to Strangers. That night, his talk brought us into the complicated layers that underlie our most fraught and violent interactions. 

The Los Angeles Times called Talking to Strangers “a compelling, conversation-starting read.” It’s a thoughtful and nuanced meditation on how we see others, and how we see the world. Like all of Gladwell’s work, brilliant storytelling and razor sharp-observations carry us to understand the world in new ways.