Books

On April 12, Seattle writer Daniel Tam-Claiborne read an excerpt from his debut novel, “Transplants,” to a packed crowd at People’s Waffle, which was open for the reading after hours. Tam-Claiborne was one of the artists performing for the Foray for the Arts event, which closed out the in-person events for the 2025 Get Lit Festival.

Where have all the torsos gone? The photorealistic “clinch cover,” featuring lovers mid-embrace, is a critically endangered species. Fabio? Hasn’t been seen around these parts in years. But he hasn’t been traded in for a younger model; models generally have vanished from the romance shelves. They’ve been deposed by a new breed: the vector couple.

Seattle author Tessa Hulls, who confronted her family’s complex, continent-spanning history in her graphic novel “Feeding Ghosts,” has won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for memoir or autobiography. It is her first book.

When Percival Everett’s novel “James” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction Monday, it seemed like an obvious choice. Everett’s subversive reimagining of “Huckleberry Finn” had already landed critical acclaim and a string of literary honors, including the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize.

Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month celebrations are underway for the month of May, and the Spokane community has something particularly special planned.

The role of Spokane poet laureate asks laureates to, putting it plainly, bring poetry to one and all. To do this, laureates host classes and workshops, among other projects, which give members of the community the opportunity to listen to, read, write and, above all, appreciate poetry.

Fiction

Matthew Sullivan knew there was a story in Soap Lake before he and his wife even moved there. They had been living in Boston, but Sullivan, author of “Midnight in Soap Lake,” had spent a lot of time in the Inland Northwest, including attending University of Idaho to get a master of fine arts in creative writing. Sullivan and his wife had a child, so living in Boston became more difficult. Sullivan took a job with Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake.

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, April 19, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2025 Circana. (Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2025, PWxyz LLC.) HARDCOVER FICTION 1. "The Perfect Divorce" by Jeneva Rose (Blackstone) Last week: — 2. ...

Clarice Wilsey remembers very clearly the first moment she learned her father David was keeping a secret.

Travel expert Rick Steves doesn’t want you to have a safe trip, he wants you to have a “bon voyage.”

Not far into “Midnight in Soap Lake” by Matthew Sullivan, I had to stop and research if this place was real.

In a May 2000 essay for Essence magazine, Octavia Butler wrote that “to try to foretell the future without studying history is like trying to learn to read without bothering to learn the alphabet.” History clearly inspires Kevin Nguyen’s dystopian second novel, “My Documents,” which imagines a near-future in which, following coordinated terrorist attacks by Vietnamese perpetrators, 1 million Vietnamese Americans are imprisoned in the same way Japanese Americans were during World War II.

Early in motherhood, author Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum would note her child’s language acquisition in a journal, combining her sensitivities as a writer and an educator – Sundberg Lunstrum teaches seventh-grade English.

Some people get tennis elbow; John Green has bestseller shoulder. His doctor said – no joke – that Green, 47, was developing arthritis from signing so many books: more than 700,000, he estimates, over the past 10 years. For his latest, Green signed more than 100,000 sheets of paper, to be bound into copies from the first printing. When we met at the D.C. stop of his tour, he was looking at – what, another thousand? “Easy peasy,” he said. He propped his phone against a stack of hardcovers to take a time-lapse video for his socials, and uncapped his Sharpie.

“Blazing Eye Sees All,” the second book by investigative journalist Leah Sottile, opens with tectonic shift and continental drift, mistaken as a continent disappeared. Because of the presence of lemurs in Madagascar, lemur fossils in India, but no lemurs elsewhere in Africa, British zoologist Phillip Lutley Sclater dubbed this hypothetical land “Lemuria.”

Leah Sottile likes to follow the fringes of American life.