Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest, whose award-winning novels have been described as "witty, intelligent and passionate" by the Independent, and as possessing "shrewd and playful humor, luscious sexiness and kinetic pizzazz" by the Chicago Tribune. At the time of her visit, Ozeki had written three novels, most recently A Tale for Time-Being (2013), shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

In this episode, we hear from Ozeki, who joined us in November 2014 at Seattle Town Hall for a self-reflective, humorous talk about the writer’s relationship with time, and the ways in which we can learn to cultivate patience and find time to become better writers and better human beings. How did Ozeki’s time in a “neo-Luddite enclave” help her redefine her relationship with technology and birth her most successful novel? How do ideas from the 13th century priest, Dogen Zenji, remain relevant in our lives today? Listen and find out why Ozeki believes that “practicing patience is the most deeply subversive thing you can do.”

Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge, the bestsellers Abide With Me, The Burgess Boys, My Name is Lucy Barton, and the award-winning Amy and Isabelle, all set in New England, all exploring the twists and turns of family dynamics, small-town gossip, and experiences of love, loss, and grief. “The pleasure in reading Strout," writes Louisa Thomas for the New York Times, "comes from an intense identification with complicated, not always admirable, characters. [...] There’s nothing mawkish or cheap here. There’s simply the honest recognition that we need to try to understand people, even if we can’t stand them.”

In this episode, we hear from Strout, who joined us in January 2011 at Benaroya Hall for a talk on why fiction matters, followed by an interview with Linda Bowers, then-Executive Director of Seattle Arts & Lectures. Strout's appearance begins with the tale of an ire-inducing comment at a wedding reception, then traces how, through reading John Updike’s Rabbit books and understanding the despicable Harry Angstrom, she learned to be a more compassionate person. With her signature dry New England wit, Strout shares stories from her puritanical childhood, her battle with writer's block, and her belief that reading fiction is the one guaranteed way to “find out what it means to be human.”