• This is pretty neat: The opening night film at the Seattle International Film Festival will be The Bookshop, which is an adaptation of Penelope Fitzgerald's popular novel about a widow who opens a bookshop and teaches a town to love literature. It's directed by Isabel Coixet and it stars Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, and Patricia Clarkson. The film will screen at McCaw Hall in Seattle Center on the first day of the festival, May 17th. Here's a trailer:

• Seattle Transit Blog is hiring a reporter.

• Hallie Golden writes at Crosscut about an American Sign Language production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at 12th Avenue Arts.

• We live in 2018, and Pen America has to condemn threats against left-leaning bookstores.

“Political disagreements are one thing. Threatening to burn down a bookstore is another, and is unacceptable,” said Summer Lopez, Senior Director of Free Expression at PEN America. “While protests and calls to boycott are of course free and protected speech, that is no excuse for threats, violence, or sustained harassment. Now more than ever, we need to recognize and cherish the right of bookstores to offer books with diverse points of view from across the political spectrum.”