Wednesday April 6: Lit Fix

The books-and-booze-and-bands reading series, founded on the revolutionary concept that readings can and should be fun, celebrates its third anniversary with a brand-new home at Chop Suey and a killer lineup: poet Michelle Peñaloza, author Anca Szilagyi, poet Anastacia Tolbert, young adult author Sean Boudoin novelist Gint Aras, and musical act The Wild. Chop Suey, 1325 Madison St, 538-0556, litfixseattle.com $5. 21+. 7 p.m. (Full disclosure: the Seattle Review of Books is a media sponsor of this edition of Lit Fix. No money was exchanged or anything like that; we're just big fans and so we gave them ad space in the Seattle Weekly to promote their reading.)

Thursday April 7: Cheap Wine & Poetry

The long-running series pairing compelling poets with $1 wine will gather one last time on Hugo House’s stage. Readers Roberto Ascalon, Sarah Galvin, Tara Hardy, and—her again!—Michelle Peñaloza will see the series off in style. Will CW&P continue? Will it move with Hugo House or find a new venue? Stay tuned. Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, 322-7030, hugohouse.org. Free. All ages. 7 p.m.

Friday April 8: Hometown Heroes

Emerald City Comicon is this weekend, and if you haven’t already gotten tickets, you’re out of luck—the show is completely sold out. But there are a couple satellite events happening that you can attend, even if you don’t have tickets to the big show. First up, on Thursday night at 7 pm, Arcane Comics in Ballard is hosting their second annual All Star Comics party with local cartoonists alongside national comics pros like Jim Mahfood and Alex De Campi. And on Saturday night at 7 pm, Phoenix Comics on Broadway is hosting a party for the popular podcasters behind Jay & Miles X-plain the X-Men.

Even more interesting is Hometown Heroes, a new one-night comics show dedicated to showing off the best cartooning talent Seattle has to offer. Hometown Heroes was inspired in part by complaints from local cartoonists who feel abandoned outside Emerald City’s gates. The minicomics and alt-comics scene in Seattle has for some time now felt marginalized by ECCC’s increasing mass-media vibe, and this year many Seattle cartoonists were unable to even acquire tables at the show. On Facebook, local cartoonists grumble that ECCC has forgotten the local scene that helped make the convention such a big deal to begin with — though it must be noted that it’s not like the city has been locked out of its own convention entirely; Seattle cartoonists like Colleen Frakes and Peter Bagge are featured ECCC guests.

Still, the guest list for Hometown Heroes certainly does look like a who’s who in the Seattle comics underground: James The Stanton, Ben Horak, Katie Wheeler, Marc Palm, Josh Simmons, Noel Frankln, Bagge, Seth Goodkind, Gina Siciliano, and Max Clotfelter are all on the bill. The guest of honor is Stefano Gaudiano, a local inker perhaps best known for his work on The Walking Dead. Hometown Heroes is organized by 80% Studios, the local cartoonists behind the full-color local comics anthology Nemesis Enforcer, a new issue of which will be available at the event. Sponsors for the show include local comics stores Zanadu, Comics Dungeon, Fantagraphics, and Arcane Comics. It’s about as homegrown as it gets.

Hometown Heroes takes place at 1927 Events, an event space about ten minutes’ walk from the Washington State Convention Center. Attendance is free, and everyone who shows up gets a free comic. It’s another testament to Seattle’s cartooning community that our comics convention has become so successful that it needs a supplementary comics show just to showcase all the awesome stuff being created in Seattle right now. This is shaping up to be the hot-ticket Emerald City Comicon afterparty, a more relaxed space where the people who are more serious about comics and less interested in, say, meeting Nathan Fillion in person can gather to talk about the craft, gossip about the personalities, and check out the latest work from Seattle’s alt-comics scene. This is what community looks like.

1927 Events, 1927 3rd Ave, 979-7467, 80percentstudios.tumblr.com. Free. All ages. 6:30 p.m.

Saturday April 9: Encyclopedia Greenwoodia Launch Party

This is a party to celebrate the launch of a book about Greenwood written by students and professional writers (including, full disclosure, me). Come and raise a glass of milk to toast the publication of the book, and the unbreakable spirit of the neighborhood that book celebrates. We'll have more about the book and the party later on today, right here on the Seattle Review of Books.

Greenwood Senior Center, 525 N. 85th St., 297-0875, fearlessideas.org. Free. All ages. 2 p.m.

Alternate Saturday April 9: Mary Roach

All of Mary Roach’s books, about death and space travel and sex and eating, begin with a simple question: what happens next? She’s wildly curious and unashamedly willing to ask the most indelicate questions to track down answers. (Most people would call asking astronauts about their sex lives “rude.” Roach calls it “research.”) Because of this, Roach’s readings are absolute delights; the only thing she loves more than learning is sharing her findings with an audience. Everett Performing Arts Center, 2710 Wetmore Ave., 425-257-0875, Free. All ages. 7:30 p.m.

Sunday April 10: The End Is the Beginning and Other Things About Openings

How do you invite a reader into your story without over-setting the table, telegraphing the ending, or otherwise losing the audience? Donna Miscolta—author of the novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced and the upcoming story collection Hola and Goodbye—hosts this free writing class focused intently on beginnings. Seattle Public Library, Beacon Hill Branch, 2821 Beacon Ave. S, 684-4711, spl.org. Free. All ages. 2 p.m.

Monday April 11: Sonny Liew

Singapore-based cartoonist Liew debuts his dazzling new book The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, a meta-biography of an influential elderly Singaporean cartoonist who happens to have never existed. Liew will discuss comics history, Singapore, and more onstage tonight with Seattle Review of Books co-founder Martin McClellan. Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600, elliottbaybook.com. Free. All ages. 7 p.m.

Alternate Monday April 11: Bard in a Bar: Hamlet

The Seattle Public Library continues their monthlong celebration of Shakespeare’s First Folio with the Bard in a Bar series. Tonight, Hamlet is presented via drunken crowdsourcing. Many of the world’s best ideas — Wikipedia, the Constitution — are a result of drunken crowdsourcing, so this should end well. Solo Bar, 200 Roy St., 213-0800, spl.org. Free. 21+. 8 p.m..

Tuesday April 12: Jacqueline Woodson

Seattle Arts & Lectures lives up to their mission statement of bringing big-name authors to town with Jacqueline Woodson, the National Book Award-winning author of exquisite young adult novels like Brown Girl Dreaming, Beneath a Meth Moon, and Hush. Expect a conversation about the reality in her semi-autobiographical book. Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org. $15-60. All ages. 7:30 p.m.