• Samantha Pak at the Seattle Globalist has written a great report on diversity in Seattle's bookstore scene. It's a must-read.

• Seattle cartoonist Seth Goodkind discovered that someone plagiarized his artwork in order to win a contest put on by a music festival. When confronted, the artist apologized, but Goodkind wrote a wonderful letter explaining why plagiarism and contests for "exposure" harm artists. It's publicly posted on his Facebook wall and it's worth your time to read the whole thing. A taste:

Try asking several car dealerships if they will let you drive their vehicles around for a couple of weeks, and, if you like one, you might pay them for the mileage, and in the meantime, it’ll be “great exposure.” Considered this way, spec-work is simply a way of taking an artists work for little or nothing. In essence, theft.

• I recently interviewed the author Mary Roach about her wonderful book Grunt at Town Hall Seattle. If you couldn't attend, the audio of that interview is now available over at KUOW.

• "It is nearly impossible to be a writer and not be complicit in white supremacy," writes Zinzi Clemmons in an essay titled "What It Means to Be an Inclusive Literary Journal" published at Literary Hub.

• Don't listen to USA Today: Cormac McCarthy is still alive.