Naomi Shihab Nye: Grace Notes — Poems about Families
2025-02-06 19:30 - 21:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Town Hall, 1119 8th Ave, Seattle, WA, 98101, United States
Rental Partner: Seattle Arts & Lectures presents
Naomi Shihab Nye
Grace Notes — Poems about Families
Thu Feb 6, 2025 | 7:30 pm PST
https://townhallseattle.org/event/naomi-shihab-nye/

Naomi Shihab Nye has spent more than forty years as a self-described “wandering poet,” traveling the country and the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Beloved by generations of readers and writers, Nye uses her writing with themes of love, family, and resilience to attest to our shared humanity.
National Book Award Finalist and former Young People’s Poet Laureate Naomi Shihab Nye’s Grace Notes: Poems about Families celebrates family and community. This rich collection of one hundred never-before-published poems is also the poet’s most personal work to date. With poems about her own childhood and school years, her parents and grandparents, and the people who have touched and shaped her life in so many ways, this is an emotional and sparkling collection to savor, share, and read again and again.

Virtual Conversation with Mohammed El-Kurd and Robin D.G. Kelley
2025-02-11 16:30 - 17:30 | Virtual
On Tuesday, February 11th, join Mohammed El-Kurd and Robin D.G. Kelley for a virtual conversation to mark the release of Perfect Victims.

Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.
Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.
Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.
How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.
Pre-order Perfect Victims through Bookshop or wherever good books are sold: http://www.bookshop.org/a/1039/9798888903155
***Register through Ticket Tailor to receive a link to the live-streamed video on the day of the event. This event will also be recorded and captioning will be provided.***
Speakers:
Mohammed El-Kurd is a writer, poet, journalist, and organizer from Jerusalem, occupied Palestine. He is the Nation’s first-ever Palestine Correspondent and editor-at-large at Mondoweiss, the recipient of numerous honors and awards, and the author of the highly-acclaimed poetry collection Rifqa, which has been translated into several languages.
Robin D.G. Kelley is Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. He is the author of Hammer and Hoe, Race Rebels, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, and Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, among other titles. His writing has been featured in the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Black Music Research Journal, African Studies Review, New York Times, The Crisis, The Nation, and Voice Literary Supplement.

Book: To Stand with Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the United States
2025-02-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Karam Dana
Thursday February 13th, 2025 @ 7:00PM – 8:00 PM

Professor Karam Dana discusses his new book To Stand with Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the United States. It provides a new lens on activism around Palestinian issues, demonstrating how the global Palestinian diaspora has driven transnational political movements.
In recent years, attitudes in the United States toward the Palestinian cause have shifted dramatically. Although Palestinians have long been demonized in U.S. media and politics, their struggle portrayed as illegitimate, emergent progressive voices increasingly challenge the status quo on Israel and Palestine and express solidarity with Palestinian resistance. What accounts for this change and its evolution?
Karam Dana explores the ways that exile has shaped Palestinian identity and allowed for new forms of global activism. He examines the social, political, economic, and technological forces that have created space for Palestinian voices to be heard by wider audiences worldwide. Drawing on interviews with scholars and advocates—including members of the Palestinian diaspora and Jewish American activists—as well as public opinion data and media analysis, Dana traces how global Palestinian communities have influenced American views. He addresses the backlash against pro-Palestinian advocacy but argues that solidarity with Palestinians—both in the United States and globally—will continue to strengthen. Timely and insightful, To Stand with Palestine offers an inside look at how Palestinians have shared their story with the world and why sympathy for their plight is growing, with significant implications for the global political landscape.
Karam Dana is the Alyson McGregor Distinguished Professor of Excellence and Transformative Research and the founding director of the American Muslim Research Institute at the University of Washington Bothell.

Teach Truth: Jesse Hagopian
2025-02-25 19:00 - 20:30 | Third Place Books – Seward Park, 5041 Wilson Ave S, Seattle, WA, 98118, United States
In the face of relentless attacks on antiracist education, a much-needed reckoning with the roots of this latest wave of censorship and an urgent call to action to defend education.

Third Place Books is thrilled to welcome local educator, activist, and writer Jesse Hagopian to our Seward Park store for a presentation of his new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education.
This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!
Having trouble accessing Eventbrite? Click here.

Omar El Akkad with Ijeoma Oluo at Seattle Public Library
2025-02-27 19:00 - 21:00 | Central – Seattle Public Library, 1000 Fourth Avenue, Seattle, WA, 98104, United States
Award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad discusses his new book, ONE DAY EVERYONE WILL ALWAYS BE AGAINST THIS, with Ijeoma Oluo

Professor Karam Dana at Third Place Books: To Stand with Palestine
2025-03-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Third Place Books – Ravenna, 6504 20th Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98115, United States
Although Palestinians have long been demonized in U.S. media and politics, their struggle portrayed as illegitimate, emergent progressive voices increasingly challenge the status quo on Israel and Palestine and express solidarity with Palestinian resistance. What accounts for this change and its evolution?
Third Place Books is pleased to welcome University of Washington Bothell professor Dr. Karam Dana for a presentation and discussion of his new book, To Stand with Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the United States. Timely and insightful, To Stand with Palestine offers an inside look at how Palestinians have shared their story with the world and why sympathy for their plight is growing, with significant implications for the global political landscape. He will be joined in conversation by UW professor Dr. Reşat Kasaba. This event is free and open to the public.
For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!
Having trouble accessing Eventbrite? Click here.

Author Laila Lalami at Elliot Bay Bookstore
2025-03-18 19:00 - 20:00 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Laila Lalami visits the store to celebrate the release of her latest novel. The Dream Hotel is a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.
This event is free to the public. Please help us plan for audience size by RSVPing here.
Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.
The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.
Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.
Laila Lalami is the author of five books, including The Moor’s Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; was on the longlist for the Booker Prize; and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller, won the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her books have been translated into twenty languages. Lalami’s writing appears regularly in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Harper’s, The Guardian, and The New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. She lives in Los Angeles.

Laila Lalami presenting The Dream Hotel
2025-03-18 19:00 - 21:00 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
MARCH 18, 2025 @ 7:00PM
Presenting The Dream Hotel in Seattle
Elliott Bay Book Company
1521 10th Avenue
Seattle, Washington
https://lailalalami.com/events/

Alissa Walter presents 'Contested City'
2025-03-24 19:00 - 21:00 | Third Place Books – Lake Forest Park, 17171 Bothell Way NE #A101, Lake Forest Park, WA, 98155, United States
A history of state-society relations in Baghdad, exploring how city residents managed through periods of economic growth, sanctions, and war.

Palestinian Author Safa Suleiman at Brick and Mortar presenting Hilwa's Gifts
2025-04-01 18:30 - 19:30 | Brick and Mortar Bookstore, 7430 164th Ave NE - Suite B105, Redmond, WA, 98052, United States
Safa Suleiman and Anait Semirdzhyan, author and illustrator of HILWA’S GIFTS

Tuesday Apr 1st, 2025

6:30 PM

–

7:30 PM

Kids’ event

Brick & Mortar Books

Join us to welcome debut author Safa Suleiman and local illustrator Anait Semirdzhyan as we celebrate the release of their new picture book, Hilwa’s Gifts!
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Ali has arrived in Palestine for a visit just in time for the olive harvest. His grandfather, Seedo, and Hilwa—his favorite tree—greet him in the grove, where Seedo explains that Hilwa has many gifts to share. Other family members whack the trees’ branches with sticks, singing “Zaytoon, ya zaytoon” while cousins clap and dance and happily pick up fallen olives. (Luckily, a gentle whack is all it takes for Hilwa’s fruits to rain down!) The next day, at the olive press, Ali watches the drip of gold liquid into a can, another of Hilwa’s gifts. Later, they picnic under the tree’s branches with hot mint tea, pita, and delicious olive oil swirled on hummus. Tradition is the greatest gift of all: the family gathering—generation after generation—to celebrate a bountiful harvest. Dynamic illustrations and a graceful text peppered with Arabic words, plus a glossary and author’s note, make for an intimate picture-book debut about a child discovering his heritage.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Safa Suleiman is a Palestinian American educator with more than twenty years of experience in undergraduate and elementary school pedagogy. She now focuses on writing and teaching through storytelling centering the Palestinian and the American Muslim communities. Hilwa’s Gifts is her first book. She lives with her family in Colorado on the homeland of the Ute Nation.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR:
Anait Semirdzhyan is the illustrator of Just Us by Molly Beth Griffin, Bábo: A Tale of Armenian Rug-Washing Day by Astrid Kamalyan, The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale by Aya Khalil, and many other acclaimed books for children. Born in Kazakhstan and raised in Armenia, she now lives in the Seattle area with her husband and twin daughters.

Author Safa Suleiman: Hilwa's Gifts
2025-06-14 11:30 - 13:00 | Register for Location
Author Safa Suleiman will be doing an introduction, reading of the book and Q&A with kiddos.
In Bellevue! Please register for location

Author Event: Hala Alyan w/ Gabrielle Bates
2025-06-19 19:00 - 20:00 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Hala Alyan w/ Gabrielle Bates
Thursday June 19th, 2025 @ 7:00PM – 8:00 PM

Award-winning Palestinian American poet and novelist Hala Alyan discusses her debut memoir, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, in which Alyan’s experience of motherhood via surrogacy forces her to reckon with her own past, and the legacy of her family’s exile and displacement, all in the name of a new future. She’s joined alongside poet Gabrielle Bates.
To help us anticipate audience size, please RSVP here!
After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate. In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman—the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn—to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance.
As her baby grows in the body of another woman, in another country, Hala finds her own life unraveling—a husband who wants to leave; the cost of past traumas and addictions threatening to resurface; the city of her youth, Beirut, on the brink of crisis. She turns to family stories and communal myths: of grandmothers mapping their lives through Palestine, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon; of eradicated villages and invading armies; of places of refuge that proved only temporary; of men that left and women that stayed; of the contradictions of her own Midwestern childhood, and adolescence in various Arab cities.
Meanwhile, as the baby grows from the size of a poppyseed to a grain of rice, then a lime, and beyond, Hala gathers the stories that are her legacy, setting down the ones that confine, holding close those that liberate. It is emotionally charged, painstaking work, but now the stakes are higher: how to honor ancestors and future generations alike in the midst of displacement? How to impart love for those who are no longer here, for places one can no longer touch?
A stunningly lyrical and brutally honest quest for motherhood, selfhood, and peoplehood, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home is a powerful story of unraveling and becoming, of destruction and redemption, and of homelands lost and recreated.
Hala Alyan is the author of the novels Salt Houses—winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize—and The Arsonists’ City, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of five highly acclaimed collections of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year and The Moon That Turns You Back. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her family, where she works as a clinical psychologist and professor at New York University.
Gabrielle Bates‘s poetry collection Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023) was named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR and Electric Lit and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. In addition to freelance writing and editing, she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium; co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon; and serves occasionally as faculty for the University of Washington Rome Center, the Tin House Writers’ Workshops, and Brooklyn Poets. The recipient of support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Artist Trust, her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Believer, Kenyon Review, Sewanee Review, and elsewhere. www.gabriellebat.es

Cookbook Author Talk: Sami Tamimi - Boustany: A Celebration of Vegetables from my Palestine!
2025-07-21 18:30 - 20:00 | Book Larder, 4252 Fremont Ave N, Seattle, WA, 98103, United States
Book Larder is thrilled to welcome Sami Tamimi to celebrate his newest book, Boustany: A Celebration of Vegetables from my Palestine! In this highly anticipated book, Sami—the award winning author of Falastin, Jerusalem and co-founder of Ottolenghi—celebrates the diverse cuisine of Palestine with plant-based and vegetarian recipes for festive meals, breads, desserts, and more. Sami will join us for an author talk and book signing on Monday, July 21st at 6:30pm, and there will be bites from the book to try! Sami will be in conversation with local cooking instructor and longtime friend of the shop Nadia Tommalieh.
Reservations are non-refundable and can include a signed copy of the $37.99 book. Applicable sales tax and a $0.75 transaction fee are also included, as well as a small surcharge towards food costs.
Can’t attend but still want a signed book? Order here for shipping or in-store pickup.
About the book: The first solo cookbook from Ottolenghi co-founder Sami Tamimi, Boustany is a homage to Palestinian food and culture. “Boustany” translates from Arabic as “my garden,” which reflects Sami’s signature style and approach to food: colourful and simple vegetable- and grain-led dishes. Bold, inspiring and ever-evolving, Boustany picks up where Falastin left off, with flavour-packed vegetable-based dishes, including pantry items, midweek easy meals and special to-be-shared dishes. It’s an approach that’s strongly present in Palestinian cuisine, from building your mooneh, or pantry, by preserving seasonal vegetables and herbs to lining the dinner table with a variety of salads and condiments reflective of a love for fresh and vibrant food.
This is how Sami grew up eating – platters of eggplant and chickpeas with a spicy green lemon sauce and fragrant lentil fatteh that always tasted better the next day. These are the 100 vegan and vegetarian dishes he has known, loved, cooked, and shared with friends, including:

Braised eggs with pita bread, tomatoes & za’atar
Smoky chickpeas with cilantro tahini
Crushed butter beans with orange & mint
Couscous fritters with preserved lemon yogurt
Jerusalem sesame bread
Pan-baked tahini, halva & coffee brownie
Labneh & pomegranate ice cream

Boustany is filled with vibrant and lively photographs of everyday meals that invite you into Sami’s home. With recipes for breads, dinner parties, fermenting your own vegetables, and more, Sami shares the cultural fabric of Palestine through his eyes.

Book Launch Event: "Gaza I Spy," by Feda Shtia
2025-07-27 09:00 - 11:00 | Virtual
Gaza I Spy is a powerful and poignant photography book in a luxurious coffee table book style, offering a rare glimpse into the lives of children in Gaza amid the ongoing Israel war. Through over 200 striking images, captured from October 2023 to the present, this book documents the resilience, innocence, and strength of Gaza’s youngest residents as they navigate life among the rubble.

Sunday, July 27 Madafeh Program: Book Launch Event: “Gaza I Spy,” by Feda Shtia
Program starts at 12:00 PM US EDT; 19:00 Palestine, 18:00 Europe, UK 17:00.
Please Click Here to register to attend this event via Zoom.

Ken Bebelle and Julia Vee with Sara Hashem ― 'Pearl City'
2025-08-14 19:00 - 20:30 | Third Place Books – Ravenna, 6504 20th Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98115, United States
Third Place Books is pleased to welcome Ken Bebelle and Julia Vee to our Ravenna store for a conversation about their new novel, Pearl City ― the dramatic conclusion to their Phoenix Hoard series. They will be joined in conversation by The Jasad Heir author Sara Hashem.
This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!

Sara Hashem grew up the eldest in her family in Orange County, California. She spent two of her formative years living in Egypt, where she consumed an ocean’s worth of sugar cane juice and wrote stories during the events of Arab Spring.

Author: Mona Awad
2025-09-29 19:00 - 21:00 | Third Place Books – Lake Forest Park, 17171 Bothell Way NE #A101, Lake Forest Park, WA, 98155, United States
The highly anticipated follow up to the viral sensation Bunny, a brilliantly written, laugh-out-loud funny, dark, and delirious novel set in the Bunny-verse
Third Place Books is proud to welcome back Mona Awad for the release of We Love You, Bunny, a prequel (and sequel) to Awad’s novel Bunny, a finalist for a New England Book Award and currently in development for film with Bad Robot Productions. Mona is joined in conversation by Katie Campbell, reporter and creator of the KUOW Book Club. Tickets are required in advance.

Mona Awad in Conversation With Jeff VanderMeer
2025-09-30 19:00 - 20:00 | Powell’s Books, 1005 W Burnside St., Portland, OR, 97209, United States
Mona Awad’s We Love You, Bunny (S&S/Marysue Rucci Books) is the highly anticipated follow-up to the viral sensation Bunny, a brilliantly written, laugh-out-loud funny, dark, and delirious novel set in the Bunny-verse — a world that Margaret Atwood declared “soooo genius.” In the cult classic novel Bunny, Samantha Heather Mackey, a lonely outsider student at a highly selective MFA program in New England, was first ostracized and then seduced by a clique of creepy-sweet rich girls who call themselves “Bunny.” An invitation to the Bunnies’ Smut Salon leads Samantha down a dark rabbit hole (pun intended) into the violently surreal world of their off-campus workshops where monstrous creations are conjured with deadly and wondrous consequences. When We Love You, Bunny opens, Sam has just published her first novel to critical acclaim. But at a New England stop on her book tour, her one-time frenemies, furious at the way they’ve been portrayed, kidnap her. Now a captive audience, it’s her (and our) turn to hear the Bunnies’ side of the story. One by one, they take turns holding the axe, and recount the birth throes of their unholy alliance, their discovery of their unusual creative powers — and the phantasmagoric adventure of conjuring their first creation. With a bound and gagged Sam, we embark on a wickedly intoxicating journey into the heart of dark academia: a fairy tale slasher that explores the wonder and horror of creation itself. Not to mention the transformative powers of love and friendship, Bunny. Frankenstein by way of Heathers, We Love You, Bunny is both a prequel and a sequel, and an unabashedly wild and totally complete stand-alone novel. Open your hearts, Bunny, to another dazzlingly original and darkly hilarious romp in the Bunny-verse from the queen of the fever-dream, Mona Awad. Awad will be joined in conversation by Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach series.

Safa Suleiman with Hilwa's Gifts
2025-10-02 18:30 - 20:00 | Eagle Harbor Books, 157 Winslow Way E., Bainbridge Island, WA, 98110
Join us for an imaginative and enlightening evening with Children’s Author Safa Suleiman presenting her timely picture book Hilwa’s Gift.

Safa Suleiman with Hilwa's Gifts
2025-10-03 14:00 - 16:00 | Suquamish Museum, 6861 NE South St, Suquamish, WA, 98392

'We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza's Youth' — A Community Reading
2026-01-29 19:00 - 20:30 | Third Place Books – Seward Park, 5041 Wilson Ave S, Seattle, WA, 98118, United States
Third Place Books welcomes readers Ayah Abdel-Qader, Lubna Alzaroo, Yara Hassan, and Giovanna Khoury, along with We Are Not Numbers mentor Alice Rothchild, for readings from the collection We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth. Penned by young people living in Gaza, these are stories of struggle, loss, hope, resilience, and the ongoing fight to be recognized as human beings.
“We Are Not Numbers is not just a book—it’s my life, their life, and our shared story. I know some of these brave writers; I’ve walked the same streets, felt the same fear, and shared the same dreams under Gaza’s skies. These pages carry the truth of our struggle and the beauty of our humanity. This is Gaza as it truly is, written by those who live it every day.”
— Motaz Azaiza, award-winning Palestinian photojournalist
This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!

Paradiso 17 with author Hannah Lillith Assadi
2026-03-25 19:00 - 20:00 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Hannah Lillith Assadi
Wednesday March 25th, 2026 @ 7:00PM – 8:00 PM

Novelist Hannah Lillith Assadi visits the store for her latest book Paradiso 17, inspired by the life of her late Palestinian father, which follows one man’s restless search for home the world over, as the pendulum of fate swings between loss and life, grief and euphoria, regret and hope.
Registration is not required, but helps us anticipate audience size. If you’d like to RSVP, please do so here!
“There is something miraculous about Paradiso 17, about the poetry that seems to guide every sentence of this exquisite novel. With stunning intimacy, Hannah Lillith Assadi has crafted an unforgettable story about the many stunted afterlives of hyphenated belonging. In this book live some of the most complex characters I’ve read in a long time, and a deeply nuanced exploration of exile as both event and inheritance.” —Omar El Akkad, author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
“Paradiso 17 is remarkable. It’s a novel of unearthing, a story of quiet explosions, of memories lost and recovered. It’s urgent and necessary. Read it as an intimate family tale, as mythos, or as history—but read it, read it, read it.” —Rabih Alameddine, author of The Wrong End of the Telescope
All his life, exile has been the shadow stitched to the sole of Sufien’s shoe.
Born in Palestine on the precipice of 1948’s Nakba, Sufien is forced to leave the only home he’s ever known, the one on the hill with a beautiful blue door. This is the precise moment when time stops making sense. He spends the rest of his life propelled forward, always on the way—although in search of what, he is never quite sure. In the dusty, oil-rich desert of Kuwait, he meets his first love and decides he must leave his family. In a small Italian university town, he spends his youth wrapped up in the sweet promise of the West and the forgetful assurance of wine. When life takes him to a gritty New York, he discovers his true vocation and falls for a Jewish woman born into a wholly different world. Finally, he finds himself recalled to the wild, vast open skies of the desert, in Arizona.
Sufien’s life spans friendships lost and maintained, a stint selling leathers at a tanner’s stall, the ineffable company of cats, and the freedom of the open road, the glowing pride of fatherhood, Sufi myths, prophetic dreams, and visions of the afterlife—and always, always, no matter how far he chases joy, the sweet, treacherous song of a balcony urging him to fly, to fall, to fall. The lyrical pages of Paradiso 17 weave in and out of time and space, beginning at the end and ending at the beginning. They are haunting, haunted with grief, struck through, as Dante once wrote, with “the arrow that the bow of exile / shoots first,” and yet they throb with light—not just the light that Sufien sees as he approaches his own end, but the brilliant light of a life lived.
Like all of our dead, Sufien still speaks, the book begins. Listen, this is his story.
Hannah Lillith Assadi, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, teaches fiction at the Columbia University School of the Arts and the Pratt Institute. She is the author of Sonora, which received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Her second novel, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, was a New Yorker and NPR best book of 2022. Raised in Arizona, she lives in Brooklyn, New York. (Photo credit: Jordan Ledy)

Paradiso 17 with Hannah Lillith Assadi
2026-03-26 19:00 - 20:30 | Third Place Books – Ravenna, 6504 20th Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98115, United States
“There is something miraculous about Paradiso 17, about the poetry that seems to guide every sentence of this exquisite novel.” —Omar El Akkad
Third Place Books welcomes Hannah Lillith Assadi to our Ravenna store for a conversation about her novel, Paradiso 17. Following a Palestinian man forced to leave his home as a child during the 1948 Nakba, this visionary book explores calamity, connection, human complexity, and the lifelong aftermath of exile.
“Paradiso 17 is a masterclass in diasporic storytelling—gorgeously written and devastatingly necessary.” —Rafe Posey, Third Place Books Ravenna
This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!
Having trouble accessing Eventbrite? Click here.

Amal El-Mohtar in Conversation With Kelly Sue DeConnick - TICKETED EVENT
2026-03-29 19:00 - 21:00 | Powell’s Books, 1005 W Burnside St., Portland, OR, 97209, United States
Full of glimpses into gleaming worlds and fairy tales with teeth, Seasons of Glass and Iron (Tordotcom) is an enchanting short story collection by Amal El-Mohtar — the bestselling, award-winning co-author of This Is How You Lose the Time War.

With confidence and style, El-Mohtar guides us through exquisitely told and sharply observed tales about life as it is, was, and could be. Like miscellany from other worlds, these stories are told in letters, diary entries, reference materials, folktales, and lyrical prose.

Full of Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Hugo Award-winning and nominated stories, Seasons of Glass and Iron includes “Seasons of Glass and Iron,” “The Green Book,” “Madeleine,” “The Lonely Sea in the Sky,” “And Their Lips Rang with the Sun,” “The Truth About Owls,” “A Hollow Play,” “Anabasis,” “To Follow the Waves,” “John Hollowback and the Witch,” “Florilegia, or, Some Lies About Flowers,” “Pockets,” and more.

El-Mohtar will be joined in conversation by comics writer Kelly Sue DeConnick.

Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar
2026-03-30 17:30 - 18:30 | Central Library [Spokane], 906 W Main, Spokane, WA, 99201
Full of glimpses into gleaming worlds and fairy tales with teeth, Seasons of Glass and Iron (Tordotcom) is an enchanting short story collection by Amal El-Mohtar — the bestselling, award-winning co-author of This Is How You Lose the Time War.

With confidence and style, El-Mohtar guides us through exquisitely told and sharply observed tales about life as it is, was, and could be. Like miscellany from other worlds, these stories are told in letters, diary entries, reference materials, folktales, and lyrical prose.

Full of Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Hugo Award-winning and nominated stories, Seasons of Glass and Iron includes “Seasons of Glass and Iron,” “The Green Book,” “Madeleine,” “The Lonely Sea in the Sky,” “And Their Lips Rang with the Sun,” “The Truth About Owls,” “A Hollow Play,” “Anabasis,” “To Follow the Waves,” “John Hollowback and the Witch,” “Florilegia, or, Some Lies About Flowers,” “Pockets,” and more.
