Book News Roundup: The writer at the bridge, a world without Barnes & Noble, and a hip-hop residency at EMP

  • Last month, Elissa Washuta become one of the most-envied writers in the Seattle area when she became the Fremont Bridge's very first writer-in-residence. UW Today interviewed Washuta about how that's going:
I’ll be spending many summer afternoons in a small, beautiful office in the northwest tower of the Fremont Bridge. The office is mine alone this summer, and it looks out over the Lake Washington Ship Canal. I watch the bridge open and close while I write. I listen to cars, passersby, boats and the yells of coxswains when the rowers come by in the late afternoons. While I’m in the office, I work on research and writing for a project about the bridge — its history, its metaphorical meaning and my relationship with it.
  • Alex Shephard at The New Republic has written a great piece about why everyone should hope that Barnes & Noble doesn't go away forever. Here's a taste, but it's much more nuanced than this, and you should read the whole thing:
In a world without Barnes & Noble, risk-averse publishers will double down on celebrity authors and surefire hits. Literary writers without proven sales records will have difficulty getting published, as will young, debut novelists. The most literary of novels will be shunted to smaller publishers. Some will probably never be published at all. And rigorous nonfiction books, which often require extensive research and travel, will have a tough time finding a publisher with the capital to fund such efforts.
  • Do you know any young spoken word poets? You should encourage them to apply for a hip-hop artist residency sponsored by the EMP and some local rapper guy:

EMP Museum is proud to partner with Arts Corps and Grammy Award-winning duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis to offer a three-week intensive Hip-Hop Artist Residency focusing on creative songwriting, performance techniques, and beat production.

The Hip-Hop Artist Residency seeks aspiring teen hip-hop artists who want to get paid to learn from and work alongside professional teaching artists and a virtual who’s who from Seattle’s vast hip-hop and creative arts community.

All participants will record an EP of original music at a professional studio, and put on a final performance inside of EMP Museum’s Sky Church.

  • If you have an Amazon account, you might have just picked up some free e-book credits from that very long and very uncomfortable e-book lawsuit between Amazon and Apple. I have nothing to add to this, so I'll let our own Martin McClellan have the final word: