This month’s online presentation welcomes Ann Spiers, Nicolas (Denny) Stern and Kathryn Thurber-Smith.About the authorsAnn Spiers lives on Vashon Island where she was its inaugural Poet Laureate and won First Place in Mukai Farm and Garden’s 2021 haiku competition. Her chapbook Harpoon (Ravenna, Triple Series, 2022) joins her two 2021 poetry books, Back Cut (Black Heron) and Rain Violent (Empty Bowl).Nicolas (Denny) Stern. Guilty in a trial of errors but leaps the tall sentence in a single paragraph to live at large under the small radars of the grammar police, and the running noses of sniffling critics to bask in the magisterial solipsistic splendor of a post romantic indulgent anonymity and….promises to provide a less silly and more considered short bio.Kathryn Thurber-Smith is a clinical supervisor at Seattle Children’s Hospital, mindful-self compassion facilitator for parents of children with health issues, and a writer. She was raised bi-coastally in Washington DC and Olympia, has a BA from Grinnell College, where she was granted the Seldon Whitcomb Poetry Award, an MSW from University of Kansas-Lawrence, and advanced clinical supervision certificate from Smith College. Most recently, her work was featured in Susan Landgraf’s craft book published by Two Sylvias Press. She lives on the traditional lands of the coast Salish people, now known as Wild Rose Ranch, near Langley, Whidbey Island.

This month’s online presentation welcomes Nicole Hardina, Don Krieger and Larry Crist.About the authorsNicole Hardina is a Seattle-based writer and the author of "Little Washington," an exploration of 100 small towns in the Evergreen State (Adventure Publications, 2020). Her work has appeared in Scope, Months to Years, the Bellingham Review, Proximity, and elsewhere. She has received support from Artist Trust for her memoir-in-progress, an account of love and grief. When not writing, she can be found in SoDo on the flying trapeze or making cocktails at Ballard's best whiskey-soaked gastropub.Don Krieger is a biomedical researcher whose focus is the electric activity within the brain. He is author of the 2020 hybrid collection, "Discovery" (Cyberwit), the 2022 hybrid chapbook, "When Danger Is Past, Who Remembers?" (Milk and Cake Press), a 2020 Pushcart nominee, and a 2020 Creative Nonfiction Foundation Science-as-Story Fellow. His work has appeared in American Journal of Nursing, Neurology, Seneca Review, The Asahi Shimbun, The Blue Nib, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and others, and has been translated into Farsi, Greek, Italian, German, and Turkish.Larry Crist is from California. He lived 25 years in Seattle, and many other places as well but has returned to his hometown in (Humboldt County) to take care of his elderly mother. He has two books "Undertow Overtures," a poetry collection, and "Alibi for the Scapegoat," a poem and short story collection. Both books are available online. Larry earned an MFA from Temple in theatre and has performed in over a 100 plays as well as a handful of films.

This month’s online presentation welcomes Anna Dahland, Benjamin Schmitt and Katerina Canyon.About the authorsDahland writes about immigration, parenting, and identity. She teaches English as a Second Language and Academic Writing at North Seattle College and Edmonds College and is the co-author of several textbook sets which have been used nationwide in South Korean high schools since 1996. She is a former professor of English Education at Chonnam National University in South Korea. A child immigrant and foster parent, Dahland is currently writing a three-part "motherhood and identity" memoir series. The first book of the series, "Swedish Again," was published in November 2021. It follows her experience of moving back to Sweden after 45 years in order to parent her six former stepchildren, who are grieving the death of their father. The next book in the series, "Almost Korean," chronicles 15 years of living in South Korea, where she adopted and raised children after getting married. It is slated for publication in late 2022. Known as Anna Kim to her students, Dahland lives and works from her home in Shoreline, WA.Schmitt is the author of four books, most recently The Saints of Capitalism" (New Meridian Arts, Fall 2021) and "Soundtrack to a Fleeting Masculinity." His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Sojourners, Antioch Review, The Good Men Project, Hobart, Columbia Review, Spillway, and elsewhere. A co-founder of Pacifica Writers’ Workshop, he has also written articles for The Seattle Times and At The Inkwell. He lives in Seattle with his wife and children.Canyon is a 2020 and 2019 Pushcart Prize Nominee. Her stories have been published in New York Times and Huffington Post. From 2000 to 2003, she served as the Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga. During that time, she started a poetry festival and ran several poetry readings. She was featured in the Los Angeles Times and was awarded the Montesi Award from Saint Louis University in 2011, 2012, and 2013. She has published multiple chapbooks and an album. Her latest collection is "Surviving Home."About the eventAbility to use Zoom on your own computer or phone is required for this program.This reading will be recorded for podcast and will also be available for future viewing on the It's About Time Writers' Reading Series YouTube channel.

This month’s online presentation welcomes Ann Batchelor Hursey, G.G. Silverman, and Judith van Praag.Ann Batchelor Hursey's poems have appeared on Seattle buses, in the Seattle Review, Raven Chronicles, and Crab Creek Review, among others. Besides collaborating with a variety of artists, she has written poems to compost, community gardens and fair trade. Her chapbook, A Certain Hold, was published by Finishing Line Press, 2014. Soon to be released is her hybrid collection "FIELD NOTES" to Maya Lin’s Confluence Project Landscapes, Salmonberry Press, 2021. Hursey holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing WorkshopG.G. Silverman is an author of speculative and literary short fiction and poetry who lives just north of Seattle. She is also disabled and the daughter of immigrants. Her short fiction has appeared in the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Women in Horror anthology Not All Monsters from StrangeHouse Books, and was a finalist for the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Award for feminist writing, among other honors. Her work has also appeared in Psychopomp, Speculative City, Corvid Queen, So To Speak, The Iron Horse Literary Review, The Seventh Wave, Molotov Cocktail, and more. Her short story, “I’m sorry, I tried, I love you,” was optioned by writer/director Goldie Jones for short film adaptation, which completed production in November of 2021 and is now under consideration at several film festivals.Writer/artist/performer Judith van Praag is a Second Generation Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands. She enjoys painting pictures with words and colors. Before her immigration to the US in 1994, Judith worked as a theater designer for primarily immigrant theater. As Arts and Lit writer to The International Examiner she covered the Asian American community in Seattle. Judith is the author of Creative Acts of Healing: After a Baby Dies (Paseo Press 1999). After a hiatus she has returned to her works-in-process and hopes to finish another book before too long.

This reading features fellows in the 2017 Jack Straw Writers Program, hosted by curator Jourdan Imani Keith. The 2017 Jack Straw Writers are afrose fatima ahmed, Quenton Baker, Jamaica Baldwin, Ellie Belew, Catalina Marie Cantú, Wancy Young Cho, Calvin Gimpelevich, Steph Kesey, Hera McLeod, D.A. Navoti, Ashlan Runyan, and Brandon Young. The Jack Straw Writers Program, now in its 21th year, was created to introduce local writers to the medium of recorded audio, to develop their presentation skills for both live and recorded readings, to encourage the creation of new literary work, and to provide new venues for the writers and their work.Each year 12 writers/writing teams are selected by a curator out of dozens of applicants, based on artistic excellence, diversity of literary genres, and a cohesive grouping of writers. The program features voice and presentation training, in-studio interviews, public readings, a published anthology, and podcasts. Live readings are recorded, and selected portions are produced for podcasts and radio broadcast.Jack Straw Productions is a non-profit organization that supports all forms of audio art through its programs for musicians, sound designers, choreographers, and writers.

In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation―that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, "The Color of Law" incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation―the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments―that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.As Jane Jacobs established in her classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods.

Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship. Claire Messud is a recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Author of five previous works of fiction including her most recent novel, The Woman Upstairs, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.

This is the first thorough historical account of Chief Seattle and his times--the story of a half-century of tremendous flux, turmoil, and violence, during which a Native American war leader became an advocate for peace and strove to create a successful hybrid racial community.Chief Seattle was a powerful representative, having gained power and prominence on Puget Sound as a war leader. Over time, he came to embrace white settlement and, following traditional native practice, encouraged intermarriage between native people and the settlers, offering his own daughter and granddaughters as brides, in the hopes that both peoples would prosper. Topics for discussion may include the treaty signings that would remove the natives from their historic lands, the roles of such figures as Governor Isaac Stevens, Chiefs Leschi and Patkanim, the Battle at Seattle that threatened the existence of the settlement, and the controversial Chief Seattle speech that haunts to this day the city that bears his name.Cecile Ann Hansen -- a descendant within the family of Chief Si 'ahl ("Chief Seattle") -- has served as the elected chair of the Duwamish people since 1975.David S. Buerge has been a teacher, historian, and writer. He is an alum of the University of Washington and the Peace Corps. He has published fourteen books of history and biography.A native of Washington State, Dr. Nile Thompson is a linguist and anthropologist. Since 1973 he has been involved in recording and preserving the American Indian languages and knowledge of traditional cultures of the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada. David Brewster is a journalist and civic entrepreneur. He was founder, editor, and publisher of the "Seattle Weekly" and "EastsideWeek."

Don't miss the opening program for photojournalist Ira Block whose vivid images offer iconic glimpses of Cuba's love for baseball, a passion in common with America. Block's imagery captures a wide variety of baseball players—men, women and children—photographed over the last three years. With the 2016 death of Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, Block's photographs capture a remarkable time period in breath-taking colors. "Baseball: Culture of Cuba" will be on display in the 8th-floor gallery and 3rd floor at the Central Library from November 2 to December 30.

This one-hour discussion will be moderated by Q13 FOX News' C.R. Douglas and is sponsored by The Friends of The Seattle Public Library and The Seattle Public Library Foundation. Bring your written questions to submit. This event may be televised.