Hello! Once again, I’m writing this newsletter a little earlier in the month in order to take a couple of weeks off from writing. So if something terrible has happened, or some news has broken that seems like the kind of thing that I might ordinarily comment on, you can rest assured I’m not ignoring […]
Read More What I’ve been reading and writing: December 2024Hi! Lots of you wrote back in response to the special newsletter I sent out right after the election. I read all of the emails and I tried to get back to everyone but there were a lot of emails in a short time, so I apologize if I missed you. Thank you for being such a […]
Read More What i’ve been reading and writing: November 2024Hi! I know I usually post once a month, and I’m sorry to bother you a second time in one week. But I feel compelled to publish an additional post because…well, frankly, I’m currently in the darkest sustained emotional state that I think I’ve ever been in, and I assume that some of you might […]
Read More Let’s talk about the electionHello! I hope to keep it brief this month because, let’s be honest, the politics are eating our collective brain. On the Friday before Thanksgiving, I’m volunteering at the Beacon Hill International School’s 2024 Read-a-Thon. It’s one of the school’s biggest annual fundraising events and also an all-day celebration of books and reading. I’ll be reading […]
Read More What i’ve been reading and writing: October 2024Hello! I have a very special appearance coming up soon that I wanted you to know about. On Wednesday, October 9th at 7 pm, I’ll be interviewing Irish novelist Paul Lynch, author of the 2023 Booker Prizewinning dystopian novel, Prophet Song, at the downtown branch of the Seattle Public Library. It’s free, and it should be a […]
Read More What i’ve been reading and writing: September 2024Lots of states have been updating their flags recently. Some of them are eliminating blatant racist iconography—shout out to Mississippi for going from the most hateful state flag to the prettiest—but lots of others are just moving away from the boring old “seal featuring a white guy or two on a field of a single color” formula. […]
Read More What I’ve Been Reading and Writing: August 2o24Hi! I like to think I know a little bit about politics. In the weeks after his disastrous debate performance, I had expected President Biden to eventually retire his presidential campaign and pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris. I figured that Biden would wait until after the Republican National Convention to make that […]
Read More What I’ve been Reading and Writing: July 2024Because it’s been such a rough week in politics, I wanted to open with a quick piece of advice from my boss at Civic Ventures, Zach Silk, that has helped me at moments like this. It’s okay to allow yourself to feel bad after a rough political loss, or an especially disappointing event. You’ve got to […]
Read More what i’ve been reading and writing: June 2024Hi there! I got an email from Seattle writer Lesley Hazleton earlier this month, which was, on its own, not an especially unusual event. I had become Lesley’s friend after I gave her a Genius Award for literature at The Stranger years ago, and she’d occasionally drop me brief emails letting me know about books or articles […]
Read More What i’ve been reading and writing: May 2024This month, my Neighborhood Reads column at the Seattle Times—in which I profile a different Seattle-area independent bookstore every month—officially turned five years old. So I worked very hard on an article sharing the things I’ve learned from Seattle’s many successful bookstores, and on a map charting every single one of the bookstores that I’ve visited or mentioned in the […]
Read More What i’ve been reading and writing: April 2024
Paul Constant 