3:00 PM – Larry Matsuda, Tracy Lai, Kazuka Nakane, Alan Lau, & Stan Shikuma: A Celebration of Asian American History
Elliott Bay Book Co.
Poet and educator Larry Matsuda opens things with selections from his works in progress. Seattle Central Community College history professor Tracy Lai breaks important scholarly (and activist) ground in her first book, The Snake Dance of Asian American Activism: Community, Vision, and Power (Lexington Books), co-authored with Michael Liu and Kim Geron. Finally, Alan Lau, artist, poet, Uwajimaya produce worker, longtime editor of The Pacific Reader, and arts editor of The International Examiner, moderates a discussion about Japanese American farmers in the Pajaro Valley with Kazuko Nakane, author of Nothing Left in My Hands: The Issei of a Rural California Town, 1900 – 1942 (Heyday, in a new edition) and Stan Shikuma (also prominent locally as a taiko player).
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7:30 PM – Steve Lopez: Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship and the Redemptive Power of Music
Town Hall Seattle, Great Hall
If you’ve seen The Soloist, you’re familiar with Steve Lopez’s story, if not his face. For more than four years, the Los Angeles Times columnist chronicled the struggles of a gifted musician struggling with homelessness. Those columns evolved into a book, The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship and the Redemptive Power of Music, which in turn grew into a big-screen adaptation starring Robert Downey Jr. as Lopez, and Jamie Foxx as musician Nathaniel Anthony Ayers. Presented by United Way & Seattle Arts and Lectures.
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