* 5:00 PM: Draw-a-Thon and Contest!!! SPL University Branch presents another event in the Comixtravaganza series, celebrating comics, manga, graphic novels, and artists. Local artist Justin Norman will give tips and advice while aspiring artists create their own comic book. Submit your comic for a chance to win a prize. Oooooooh! Ahhhhhh! Ohhhhhh!
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* 6:30 PM: Go to SPL Ballard branch to hear local author and adventuress, Helen Thayer, read and discuss Walking the Gobi, the astounding story of how she and her husband walked 1600 miles across the Gobi Desert. She was 63 years old when she made that trek, back in 2001. Can you believe it? Amazing at any age, but hot diggity dog, what a role model! Thayer made history in 1988 by skiing to the North Pole, alone but for her dog, Charlie. That adventure is chronicled in her book Polar Dream. This event is a really good reason to visit Ballard. (Too bad Cafe Besalu isn’t open evenings.)
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* 7:00 PM: East West Bookshop hosts Dr. James Weldon (also known as Rishi Yogadhi Pragya), author of The Secret Journey to the Enlightened Mind, for Creating Sustainable Communities for the 21st Century. Dr. Weldon is founder of Santosha Village, described as “a spiritual eco-community and conference and retreat center” in Colorado, and practices age-management medicine. I have no idea what any of that means. Obviously, I am not enlightened.
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* 7:00 PM: Author Jon Raymond will read and sign Livibility: Stories at the U-District UW Bookstore. Raymond is a screenwriter, as well as an author, which explains why stories in this collection have been made into movies: both Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy are based on Raymond’s work. His spare, crisp style seems to translate well to motion pictures.
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* 7:30 PM: SPL doesn’t have Pugetopolis in stock, yet, but you can buy a copy and have Knute Berger sign it at Elliott Bay Books, tonight. From the book jacket: “Knute “Skip” Berger is a Northwest original. And he is on constant watch for what’s authentic and what’s fake and foolish in the life of greater Pugetopolis-from cruise ships fouling the waters of Elliott Bay to the myth of Seattle nice to our vanishing sense of regional identity. Berger’s “Mossback” writings, the best of which are gathered in this volume, amply demonstrate that this sharp-tongued curmudgeon with a conscience is required reading for people who call themselves Northwesterners.”
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