Screenwriter, author of two short story collections (including the sublimely titled The Anarchists' Convention), and iconoclastic guerrilla filmmaker John Sayles will be in Seattle Friday to promote the publication of his fifth novel, Yellow Earth.

Sayles has a remarkable talent for zeroing in on the competing interests in political situations, and with Yellow Earth he looks at land rights, treaties, and the politics when shale oil is discovered beneath the town Yellow Earth, which abuts the Three Nations reservation.

Evoking indigenous fights over land rights, a current topic with the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Mauna Kea protests from Native Hawaiians, the topic is a ripe topic for the focus of someone as concerned with inequity politics as Sayles.

From Matewan, exploring the Battle of Matewan, when West Virginian miners attempted to hold their own against a detective agency hired by mine owners, to Sunshine State, which explored racial dynamics in Florida and how we treat African American boys, Sayles has always had a keen knack for turning his camera and focus on the absurd injustices in (mostly, but not always) the United States.

He's also notable as a Hollywood film consultant, and talks often about taking the payouts from working on wide-release feature films, and turning them into funding for his unique and vibrant indie films, a real-world narrative Robin Hood.

Sayles has been in Seattle before, but this is a pretty rare appearance. Yellow Earth is his first novel since 2011's A Moment in the Sun (his last film was 2013's, Go for Sisters), and given the pace of his writing and directing, who knows when the next opportunity will be.