Seattle Arts & Lectures is bringing Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz

Seattle Arts & Lectures is bringing Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz (author of the amazing The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) to speak on February 24 at Benaroya Hall.
Junot Díaz
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
“When I enter that higher-order space that’s required to write, I’m a better human. For whatever my writing is, wherever it’s ranked, it definitely is the one place that I get to be beautiful.” This is Junot Díaz, winner of a Eugene McDermott Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Lila Acheson Wallace Readers Digest Award, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He came out of the gate early and emphatically with Drown, a collection of largely autobiographical short stories published to critical acclaim in 1996 when Diaz was twenty-eight. Eleven years later, his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize.

His experience as a Dominican-American has informed his work as a fiction writer and immigrant advocate. He teaches creative writing at MIT.
Díaz will speak about the themes of immigration, displacement and alienation in his work.

Junot Díaz appears at the Taper Auditorium at Benaroya Hall at 7:30 PM on February 24.

Tickets:
Patron: $50 (Includes Patron reception with Junot Díaz and front-of-the-house seating), Main Floor: $30, Balcony: $25, Student/Under 25: $10
Groups of 5 or more receive a 15% discount.
To order tickets, visit lectures.org

or call 206.621.2230

Zapotec Weavings from Oaxaca- Tuesday Sept. 30th

La Vida Nueva – Zapotec women's weaving collective visits Seattle

Tuesday, September 30^th 3pm – 9pm

Café Rozella: 9434 Delridge Way SW 206.763.5805 www.caferozella.com

La Vida Nueva is a women's weaving collective in Teotitlan del Valle , Oaxaca Mexico . These Zapotec artisans are continuing their traditional methods of dying, spinning, and weaving wool tapetes (rugs) all by hand. Their work and homeland are internationally acclaimed for the quality of weaving.

Pastora Gutierrez will be representing the 14 women of the collective on this 2008 West Coast Tour. Each stop is an opportunity to create cultural ties with the Zapotec women, as well as learning about the work and community of their cooperative. All the women of La Vida Nueva are independently supporting themselves and their children through the work of the collective.

There are two opportunities in Seattle to meet Pastora and her friend and translator Juanita Rodriguez. These are also opportunities to purchase heirloom quality traditional Zapotec tapetes. This annual selling tour is the main source of income for La Vida Nueva.

For more information: http://home.comcast.net/~vidanueva

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Friday Film: Who Killed the Electric Car

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 15TH at 7 P.M.
Cafe Rozella Presents the Celebrated Documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car"

It begins with a solemn funeral…for a car. By the end of Chris Paine's lively and informative documentary, the idea doesn't seem quite so strange. As narrator Martin Sheen notes, "They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline." Paine proceeds to show how this unique vehicle came into being and why General Motors ended up reclaiming its once-prized creation less than a decade later. He begins 100 years ago with the original electric car. By the 1920s, the internal-combustion engine had rendered it obsolete. By the 1980s, however, car companies started exploring alternative energy sources, like solar power. This, in turn, led to the late, great battery-powered EV1. Throughout, Paine deftly translates hard science and complex politics, such as California's Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate, into lay person's terms (director Alex Gibney, Oscar-nominated for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, served as consulting producer).

And everyone gets the chance to have their say: engineers, politicians, protesters, and petroleum spokespeople--even celebrity drivers, like Peter Horton, Alexandra Paul, and a wild man beard-sporting Mel Gibson. But the most persuasive participant is former Saturn employee Chelsea Sexton. Promoting the benefits of the EV1 was more than a job to her, and she continues to lobby for more environmentally friendly options. Sexton provides the small ray of hope Paine's film so desperately needs. Who Killed the Electric Car? is, otherwise, a tremendously sobering experience. --Kathleen C. Fennessy