409. Coll Thrush with Joshua L. Reid: Wrecked — Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific
Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series
Release Date: 07/01/2025
410. Caroline Fraser with Bruce Lanphear: Murderland—Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series
Ted Bundy, arguably the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, committed many of his crimes in the landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid a large number of serial and violent acts across the region. Why were there so many, and so particularly gruesome? What caused the rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing? In Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, nonfiction author and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Fraser maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous...
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409. Coll Thrush with Joshua L. Reid: Wrecked — Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific
Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series
A fur-trading schooner beached in 1811. A passenger liner lost in 1906. An almost-empty tanker broken on the shore in 1999. These shipwrecks, and thousands more, are why the northwest coast of North America is sometimes called the “Graveyard of the Pacific.” Drawing from his book, Wrecked, history professor and author Coll Thrush tells the stories of many vessels that met their fate along this rugged coast and how they open up conversations about colonialism, Indigenous persistence, and place-based history. Shipwrecks are commemorated in museums, historical markers, folklore, place...
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408. Dave Barry with Brett Hamil: Class Clown: A Memoir
Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series
You could argue that Dave Barry is the country’s class clown, but did you know that he actually was elected class clown in high school? It’s no wonder, then, that he’s made a career out of making fun of pretty much everything. So how in the world does the son of a Presbyterian minister wind up winning a Pulitzer Prize for writing a wildly inaccurate newspaper column read by millions of people? Dave Barry will explain. Barry draws from his latest book, Class Clown, to take us on a ride through his life so far, starting with a childhood largely spent throwing rocks for...
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407. Steve Oney with Steve Scher: On Air: The History of NPR
Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series
Founded in 1970, NPR is America’s most powerful broadcast news network. Despite being overshadowed by the larger and more glamorous PBS, public radio has long been home to shows such as All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and This American Life that captivate millions of listeners in homes, cars, and workplaces across the nation. In On Air, a book fourteen years in the making, journalist Steve Oney tells the history of this institution, tracing the comings and goings of legendary on-air talents (Bob Edwards, Susan Stamberg, Ira Glass, Cokie Roberts, and many others)...
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406. Karen Polinsky and Ian Mackay with Kenny Salvini: Ian's Ride: A Long-Distance Journey to Joy
Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series
At 26, Ian Mackay loved the outdoors, natural sciences, and cycling. While studying as a biology undergrad at UC Santa Cruz, he crashed his bike into a tree on campus and forever changed his relationship with how he – and others like him – experienced nature. After sustaining a spinal cord injury that would leave him paralyzed from the shoulders down, Mackay was challenged with rehabilitating his body, his mental wellness, and his adventurous lifestyle. In Ian’s Ride: A Long-Distance Journey to Joy, author Karen Polinsky traverses both Ian’s personal journey to recovery...
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405. Susan Lieu with Quynh Pham: The Manicurist’s Daughter
Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series
In commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, join Town Hall Seattle to hear Vietnamese author Susan Lieu discuss her memoir, The Manicurist’s Daughter. Susan will be in conversation with Executive Director of Friends of Little Saigon (FLS), Quynh Pham. Together, Susan and Quynh will discuss the impact of war with regards to trauma, memory, loss, and healing — as individuals and as a collective. You may have already seen the work of Seattle author and performer Susan Lieu at Bumbershoot, Wing Luke Museum, or the Seattle Library. Her sold-out solo theatre performance...
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404. Juliette Aristides in conversation with Mike Magrath: The Inner Life of the Artist: Conversations from the Atelier
Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series
From bestselling author Juliette Aristides comes an inspirational guide to thinking, making, and embodying the mind of a creative person. The third Monacelli Studio title from Juliette Aristides, The Inner Life of the Artist, is an inspirational guide to thinking, making, and embodying the mind of a creative person. The book contains a series of short, insightful essays and significant, meaningful quotes by contemporary and historical artists, each accompanied by a moving and inspiring selection of nearly 100 past and present artworks to help enlarge our capacity for wonder. For those...
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403. Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour with Kim Thayil and Mike Squires: Lollapalooza — The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival
Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series
These days, large-scale high-production music festivals take over major cities and regularly attract crowds of every genre — including the current version of Lollapalooza that draws a casual 400,000 people to its resident Chicago stomping grounds. But kick it back a few decades and this kind of maximalist mega-show wasn’t quite the norm it is now, especially for musical tastes outside of the mainstream. In their second collaborative book, Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival, music journalists Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour flash back to when...
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402. Daryl Gregory with Matt Dinniman: When Simulations Search for Meaning: A Novelist Explores Human Truths Within Illusion
Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series
What if none of this were real, but instead we were in a simulation? What would that mean about life, about the notion of reality, and about our own existence? From award-winning, Seattle-based author Daryl Gregory comes a story following two friends on a cross-country bus tour through glitches as they grapple with secrets, love, and family — issues that are not uncommon, except these take place in a simulated world. When We Were Real follows longtime best friends JP and Dulin. When JP finds out his cancer has aggressively returned, Dulin decides it’s the perfect time for one...
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401. Torrey Peters: In Conversation with Aster Olsen, Ebo Barton, Corinne Manning, and Amber Flame
Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series
Trans stories are not confined to political rhetoric and headlines. The world of creative writing is replete with narratives that explore complex worlds of gender and how identity intersects with people’s lives and relationships. In a new collection of one novel and three stories, bestselling author Torrey Peters’s keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing. In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will attend as women. When the most unlikely of...
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A fur-trading schooner beached in 1811. A passenger liner lost in 1906. An almost-empty tanker broken on the shore in 1999. These shipwrecks, and thousands more, are why the northwest coast of North America is sometimes called the “Graveyard of the Pacific.” Drawing from his book, Wrecked, history professor and author Coll Thrush tells the stories of many vessels that met their fate along this rugged coast and how they open up conversations about colonialism, Indigenous persistence, and place-based history.
Shipwrecks are commemorated in museums, historical markers, folklore, place names, and the remains of the ships themselves. They’ve become a rich regional archive that has inspired Indigenous and settler survivors and observers to create meaning for these events. Thrush examines the ways in which shipwreck tales highlight––and debunk––myths of settler colonialism: the disappearance of Indigenous people, the control of an endlessly abundant nature, and the idea that the past would stay past.
There’s no doubt that shipwrecks capture our imagination. Thrush also shows that these disasters are passageways to deeper stories. Through a cultural history of this notorious part of the Northwest, Thrush demonstrates how the tales of shipwrecks reveal the fraught and unfinished business of colonization.
Coll Thrush is a professor of history at the University of British Columbia and founding co-editor of the Indigenous Confluences book series at the University of Washington Press. He is the author previously of Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place and Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire.
Joshua L. Reid (citizen of the Snohomish Indian Nation) is an associate professor of American Indian Studies and the John Calhoun Smith Memorial Endowed Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington, where he directs the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest. He is the author of The Sea Is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle and University of Washington Press.
