Hugo House

The Hugo House is a crusty, inside-voices old house in Capitol Hill that teaches writing courses—flash fiction, poetry, journalism, etc. Last week I took a class called “Going Under: Successful Sumbersion in Journalism and Beyond.” Next week I’m taking “The Art of Interviewing.” You should too.

One-day courses cost about $94; 4-week courses are about $360.

http://hugohouse.org

School of Visual Concepts

If you want to learn anything about writing, designing or developing for the web (or print) and you’ve got limited time and budget, SVC is the place to go. All classes are taught by practicing pros, and the material is very practical and hands-on. I took a course called “Writing for the Web” a few years ago; I may be teaching a course this winter.

Prices range from $100 for a half-day workshop to $495 for a 10-wk course.

http://www.svcseattle.com/

Town Hall Seattle

I go to Town Hall for inspiration, and I regularly go by myself. I’ve seen Jonathon Saffron Foer, Ingrid Betancourt, Margaret Atwood, Gloria Steinem and more—at least one of these has cried on stage. One-hour lectures are held around 7pm in a grande roman-revival hall.

Lectures are 5 DOLLARS. Go support this awesome place.

http://www.townhallseattle.org/

Elliot Bay Books Events

The Elliot Bay Books Cafe is the only one in Seattle where I can work done, but I mostly go for the books and lectures. Famous writers are always giving intimate book readings in the basement.

FREE.

http://www.elliottbaybook.com/node/events/current

AIGA Seattle

The American Institute of Graphic Arts hosts studio tours, schmoozing parties, design contests, lectures by industry peeps, and more—all the time. I was a member for a while, and I liked the discounts and publications I got.

http://www.aigaseattle.org/

Seattle Arts & Lectures

I’ve never been, but their mission is to connect ‘people and ideas’ and folks like Jonathon Franzen and Wendell Berry show up there.

$15-70 for single tickets; much more than that for a subscription.

http://www.lectures.org/about_us/

Northwest Film Forum

I think I saw Art & Copy, Objectified and a handful of other internety movies there, but NWFF offers the best independent films and documentaries I have ever found in one place—the one where thousands of people get plastered on Willie Nelson’s lawn, for example.

Tickets are $9 and there’s cumin for your popcorn.

http://www.nwfilmforum.org/

Been on a tear. Here’s the wheat of what’s been read and what seems to good to read.

How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte

Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis

Freedom by Jonathon Franzen

Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

Fraud by David Rakoff

The Best of Creative Nonfiction: Vol 3, edited by Lee Gutkind

Short, memoir-inspired essays about life. Check out “The Face of Seung-Hui Cho” by Wesley Yang, “An Insider’s Guide to Jailhouse Cuisine: Dining In” by Sean Rowe, “What Comes Out” by Dawnelle Wilkie and “Community College” by Tim Bascom. Bring a Kleenex.

Corpus Christi: Stories, by Bret Anthony Johnston

Only halfway through, but I have a soft spot for morose-but-revealing-and-hopeful short stories about love and loss. Check out “Anything That Floats” on Bret’s blog, too.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs

If Margaret Mead, Steven Levitt, and Miss Manners had a baby, it might have written like Jane Jacobs: intelligent, just artsy enough, frank, polite and pragmatic. Learn the uses of sidewalks, why neighborhood parks aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, and how unslumming and slumming happen.

Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, by Yamamato Tsunetomo

A book of anecdotes and samurai wisdom that I remembered after watching Ghostdog again. You’ll have to overlook the extreme violence and disturbing sexism (it was written pre-1700!).

The Help, by Kathyrn Stockett

Fiction, about a ambitious young writer from Jackson, Mississippi who wants to help black maids in town tell their stories. A compassionate and nuanced—if not a little romanticized—look at race relations and growing up in the civil rights-era South. Written by a super blonde southern lady who knows how to tell a story.

A Little History of the World, by EH Gombrich

I’ve already written about this one, but I can’t say enough about it. Read it if you want to actually remember the history of the world.

The Sleepwalkers: a History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe, by Arthur Koestler

A brainy, epic journey through the history of ideas about religion, cosmology, and science. Like Gombrich, Koestler is excited. He inserts his opinion, too, which is wonderful (check his dis on Plato, page 59). This book is carrot juice and bran muffins, though, so take it easy.

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature, by Steven Pinker

Been reading this one for a while. It’s another carrot juice and bran muffins book. Actually, carrot-ginger-beet-juice and wheat germ salad book. It’s a lot to digest, but digest you must. Pinker describes how words and minds work together. How every time we speak, we reveal something fundamental about how we think.

I think this advice applies all kinds of story-telling–even writing for your website.

When I was a kid I had one of these Hot Wheels devices designed to look like a little gas station. Inside the gas station were two spinning rubber wheels. One’s little car would weakly approach the gas station, then be sent forth by the spinning rubber wheels to take another lap around the track, or more often, fly out and hit one’s sister in the face.

A story can be thought of as a series of these little gas stations. The main point is to get the reader around the track; that is, to the end of the story. Any other pleasures a story may offer (theme, character, moral uplift) are dependent on this…

So if the writer can put together enough gas stations, of sufficient power, distributed at just the right places around the track, he wins: the reader works his way through the full execution of the pattern, and is ready to receive the end of the story.

All fine and good, but I still believe in cooling it indoors, despite the sun (I know, blaspheme!).  If you decide to relax, read one of these incredible books, which I’ve chosen based on one criterion alone: that at some point during my reading of them, I cried.

Short Stories

• Anything by George Saunders, but especially Pastoralia, In Persuasion Nation, and The Braindead Megaphone
• The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley
• A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Conner
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

Newer Fiction

• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
  
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
  

Older Fiction

• Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence
• The Heart is  a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
  

Total Non-Fiction

• On Toleration by Michael Walzer

Other

• Olgilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy.  Oh my god! I’m just kidding.

Better to cry in summer than winter.