Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series

Why don’t our kids do what we want them to do? In our modern highly-connected age it sometimes seems as though children have less self-control than ever. To offer us some behavioral insight, journalist and parenting expert Katherine Reynolds Lewis joined us with revelations from her book The Good News About Bad Behavior. She met for a conversation with KIRO 7 News reporter Patranya Bhoolsuwan to explore the ways we can instill the values of independence, responsibility, and self-regulation...

Photographic walking tours to writing workshops, “disruptive” art to small groups talking through modern masculinity—our 2018 Inside/Out Neighborhood Residents created some of the most interactive programs in Town Hall’s history. Now, Town Hall invites you to take part in their capstone evening as they reflect on their experiences during this experimental year. Join this season’s Residents—Jordan Alam, Peter DiCampo, Erik Molano, and Shin Yu Pai—as they share a behind-the-scenes look at...

Estimates have placed the number of individuals experiencing homelessness in Seattle at well over 8,000, with nearly half of those people living unsheltered in streets or parks. The city of Seattle spent roughly $50 million on emergency shelters, food and hygiene services, eviction prevention measures, and other similar relief programs—yet the problem only seems to be growing. To reframe our conception of this issue we welcome Kaia Sand, Susan Robb, and Rex Hohlbein, whose diverse artistic...

The photographic Everyday Africa project has inspired photojournalists all over the world to follow the Everyday model to fuel conversation and connections between seemingly disparate groups of people. Now Peter DiCampo—co-founder of Everyday Africa and Town Hall’s Inside/Out Resident representing the University District and Ravenna neighborhoods—convened a panel of Everyday project founders to discuss the changing world of journalism and the power of photography to reframe narratives...

Artists Imani Sims, Tani Ikeda, and Jordan Alam share a passion in creating work relating to the ways personal experiences are held in the body. We’re thrilled to welcome them to present their narratives through film, prose, and poetry explorations of the events of their lives that have impacted their bodies, and how those changes have affected their encounters with the world. First we hear from local poet and author Imani Sims, who has been hailed as a “cultural ambassador, leader and...

An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hearing and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These characters and their struggles exemplify the sweeping, impassioned story of activism—and stunning evocation of the natural world—that is author Richard Powers’ twelfth novel, The...

Town Hall is excited to invite you to a live taping of Trust Issues, a podcast about facts gone wrong. Each week, journalists Sydney Brownstone and Heidi Groover dive into conspiracy theories run amok, fake news stories, shady health claims, or chain emails sent by our grandparents. They took us down the rabbit hole to find the strange ideas we construct, and try to understand why people believe they’re true. Sydney and Heidi are reporters at The Stranger, where they cover city politics,...

In 2011 a magnitude-9 earthquake shook northeast Japan and wracked the coast with a massive tsunami, devastating towns, destabilizing economies nationwide—and causing meltdowns in nuclear power plants. Nonfiction author William T. Vollmann joined us to share firsthand accounts of the fallout from these disasters, bringing excerpts from his newest book No Immediate Danger, whose title sardonically co-opts the reassuring mantra of official Japanese energy experts. Vollman cautioned against...

Mexican-American author Kathleen Alcala explored the indestructible link between a people and their land in her novels and nonfiction work. With a deep interest in the forces of history that shape an individual’s experience and worldview, Kathleen creates characters that reflect the evolution of society as it has changed from traditional to modern. To lend us a unique glimpse of her perspective, Alcala took our stage to discuss the role of archives and historical research in the process of...

Writer Samantha Irby is known for her brazen wit and boldly honest feminist writing from her blog bitches gotta eat, as well as her book We Are Never Meeting In Real Life and her essay work contributing to Nasty Women, a collection of feminist essays on life in Trump’s America—and a discussion recently hosted on Town Hall’s stage earlier this season (where author Samhita Mukhopadhyay hailed Irby as “the funniest writer in the world right now.”) Irby took our stage to present a reprint of...

How do our bodies retain memory of the events they experience? How can we connect with the emotions and life-altering changes recorded within our physical selves? Local artists Neve Mazique and Nic Masangkay took the stage with Inside/Out Neighborhood Resident Jordan Alam to share original works of prose, movement, and music expressing how personal experiences are held within the body. They presented their narratives of life altering and intensely physical moments—from birth to...

Do you have strong feelings about the word “irregardless”? Have you ever tried to define the word “is”? Many of us take dictionaries for granted, and few may realize that the process of writing dictionaries is, in fact, as lively and dynamic as language itself. Kory Stamper took our stage to crack open the complex, obsessive world of lexicography—the practice of making dictionaries—in her book Word By Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. Stamper revealed the agonizing decisions about...

Known for the warmth, humor, clarity, and depth of his teachings, Zen teacher Peter Levitt is also the author of fourteen books of poetry and prose. Legendary poet Robert Creeley wrote that Peter Levitt’s poetry “sounds the honor of our common dance.” Town Hall is thrilled to welcome Peter to the stage for an evening sharing his recent works of poetry that explores our connection to the natural world and sing the sacred in the everyday. After the readings, he was joined in conversation...

Parental Guidance recommended. This recording contains explicit language. Many music fans consider the Wu-Tang Clan to be hip-hop royalty. But remarkably, none of the founding members have told their story. Town Hall is excited to partner with 206 Zulu to present Raw: My Journey into the Wu-Tang, a history of this seminal hip-hop group by Lamont “U-God” Hawkins, one of the group’s founding members. U-God charts the group’s origins—how, brought up by the streets and bonding over their love...

Former Town Hall Programing Director Katy Sewall and children’s author and travel writer Tiffany Parks invite you to a special live installment of The Bittersweet Life podcast. The episode centers on Tiffany Parks’ new book for young readers Midnight in the Piazza, an all-ages adventure following a young girl in Rome racing to solve a centuries-old unsolved mystery and navigate a world of unscrupulous ambassadors, tricky tutors, and international art thieves! The Bittersweet Life podcast...

Visitors to the Seattle Art Museum can’t miss John Grade’s largest sculpture to date: an enormous wooden structure in the shape of a tree, over a hundred feet long and hanging from the lobby ceiling. Grade has made his mark on the Pacific Northwest with art that recreates—and coexists with—the natural world. He has assembled large teams of helpers to build structures that are then intended to degrade and return to the environment, such as his wooden tower at MOHAI which is taller than the...

Many consider sprouts, tofu, yogurt, brown rice, and whole-grain bread to be health-food standbys, but how did these foods gain their reputation as such ubiquitous healthy choices? In his book Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat, food writer Jonathan Kauffman traces the colorful origins of once unconventional foods—and the diverse fringe movements, charismatic gurus, and counterculture elements that brought them to the mainstream. He...

A generation on the move, a country on the brink, and a young author’s search to find out how we got here. Shaun Scott presented a cultural history of the United States in his book Millennials and the Moments That Made Us: A Cultural History of the U.S. from 1982-Present, lending us insight into the factors that have shaped the development of the Millennial image and outlook. He was joined onstage by freelance writer and curator of exhibitions Minh Nguyen to share a relatable pop culture...

Every day we face a growing epidemic of stress that is damaging to our physical and emotional health. While there is no one single cure, a simple practice dramatically changes how we respond to stress and life’s challenges: the Transcendental Meditation technique. Bob Roth, a world authority on Transcendental Meditation for forty-five years, joined us to present wisdom from his book 'Strength In Stillness: The Power of Transcendental Meditation'. He was joined onstage by Oscar-nominated...

The 2016 demolition and relocation of Seattle’s beloved literary center, The Richard Hugo House, inspired comments and musings from local luminaries on the future of our city’s cultural and physical landscape. Among them are recent mayoral candidate Cary Moon and Hugo House founding director Frances McCue, who take our stage for a conversation on McCue’s latest poetry collection Timber Curtain. The pair offered a mediation on the intersection of poetry and urban planning, and the ethics of...