• September 18
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• Burien

IN PERSON: Whiskey and Wiretaps: The Northwest’s Rumrunning King

On Thanksgiving Day, 1925, Roy Olmstead was trapped by federal prohibition agents and their Tommy guns on a lonely Puget Sound dock. His reign as the Northwest’s most prolific bootlegger had ended. But big questions—political, cultural, and legal—remained. Why did Olmstead, the youngest lieutenant in Seattle Police Department history, form a secret gang to take […]

• September 15
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• Seattle

IN PERSON: How Audio Technology Changed the World

Although we live in a visual world, audio still has the power to create intimacy and spark the imagination like no other medium can. Veteran broadcaster Ross Reynolds explores the impact that audio transmission has had on society and storytelling, beginning with the first century of radio up to the modern age of audiobooks, internet […]

• September 13
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• Pullman

IN PERSON: Telling Your Story: A Personal Essay Workshop

Our life stories are a means for connection—a tender offering in a troubled era. Part reportage and part reflection, personal essays can reveal hidden truths about ourselves, our families, and our societies. In this interactive and generative writing workshop, Kristen Millares Young will help participants tell their own stories. Available in English and Spanish, each […]

• September 21

ONLINE: An Appetite for Film: Food in the Movies

A film can build tension through editing, just like a simmering stew builds flavor through a slow dance between ingredients. Putting food and film together, however, opens movie lovers up to a slew of wonderful experiences and shared memories. Food can help us to identify with characters who bond over meals, explore ideas about identity […]

• September 21

ONLINE: Telling Your Story: A Personal Essay Workshop

Our life stories are a means for connection—a tender offering in a troubled era. Part reportage and part reflection, personal essays can reveal hidden truths about ourselves, our families, and our societies. In this interactive and generative writing workshop, Kristen Millares Young will help participants tell their own stories. Available in English and Spanish, each […]

• September 21

ONLINE: The Art of Rebellion: Social Justice and Chicana/Chicano Visual Arts

How has art has been used to mobilize communities and disseminate messages of social justice? Is art just a commodity that is only accessible to the elite? How has the idea of “art for the people” shifted the way we look at art? In this talk, Chicano artist Jake Prendez traces the history of social […]

• September 18

ONLINE: Laughing Matters: Asian Americans, Comedy, and Inclusion

When we want to learn about the past, we turn to history books. When we want to learn how the past continues to live within us, we can turn to humor. While everyone finds different things funny, we all have experienced laughter as a signal of who belongs, and who does not. Who laughs, and […]

• September 16

ONLINE: After the Blast: Mount St. Helens 40 Years Later

On May 18, 1980, the world watched in awe as Mount St. Helens erupted, killing 57 people and causing hundreds of square miles of destruction. Everyone thought it would take ages for life to return to the mountain, but scientists who visited soon after were stunned to find plants sprouting up through the ash and […]

• September 14

ONLINE: This is the End: How Movies Prepared Us for the Apocalypse

Great city streets emptied of people; a population panicked; misinformation in the air. If some of our experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic seemed familiar, it might be because the movies already imagined them. Whether the cause is environmental factors (The Day After Tomorrow, Snowpiercer, Contagion), nuclear disaster (On the Beach), or unexplained doomsday (Midnight Sky, […]

• September 11

ONLINE: The Ancient Art of Madhubani Painting

For generations, women of a small region in Northeast India have been using Madhubani painting to tell the stories of their lives. Depicting mythological and social scenes, every painting reflects the belief systems, cultural practices, and social arrangements of a specific era in history. After centuries of being limited to its region of origin, the […]