Article published on the Yakima Hearld-Republic website, written by Paul Constant from The Seattle Times.
Next month, the Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds is partnering with Edmonds Bookshop to launch Writers-in-Conversation, a new monthly reading series that will explore the past and future of Northwest literature.
“There really is no other museum in our region that focuses on historical Northwest art and artists,” Sally Ralston, executive director at CAM said.
CAM already has a full slate of events, from lectures to curator Q&As to a monthly movie series. But when Seattle author Michael N. McGregor brought Ralston the idea of a monthly conversation series with Northwest authors, the concept felt like a natural fit.
CAM, Ralston said, “focuses on artists from between 1870 to about 1970.” Until recently, she added, “perhaps a Black artist or a woman artist [from that time] just wouldn’t be recognized for their abilities and their talents as much as a white male might.” That edict of highlighting the underserved voices in Cascadian art informs Writers-in-Conversation.
For the series’ first edition on Thursday, Aug. 8, CAM is welcoming Spokane novelist Sharma Shields, whose work explores under-examined aspects of Northwest history. Her debut novel, “The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac,” delved deep into the history and impact of local cryptid lore, and her follow-up, “The Cassandra,” is set in the early days of Washington’s Hanford Research Center, which secretly created nuclear materials essential for the World War II-era Manhattan Project.
Ralston is excited that Shields’ event shares so many themes with CAM’s current Z. Vanessa Helder exhibit. Helder “was a WPA artist who did some work with the building of the Grand Coulee Dam,” Ralston explained, and her watercolors focus, like Shields’ work, on depicting the prickly majesty of Spokane and Eastern Washington.
Tickets for the first Writers-In-Conversation event are available online now. Edmonds Bookshop will be selling books on-site for all Writers-in-Conversation events.
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