Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series Town Hall Seattle

Born and raised on her family’s 7-acre ranch in Auburn, Washington, African American sculptor Marita Dingus has been exhibiting her artwork locally and internationally for over 30 years. Working almost exclusively with found objects of every possible variety, Dingus’s work is a commentary on the enslavement of African people, recycling, and the politics of poverty. Her signature African-inflected figures of all sizes have become a familiar sight in the region, having been shown at galleries, museums, outdoor installations, and even on the walls of Town Hall Seattle, where her piece “Woman as the Creator” can be viewed on the 1st Floor.
Gary Faigin talks with her about her long career and where she plans to go from here.
Marita Dingus attended Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia (BFA, 1980) and San Jose State University (MFA, 1985). She has received a Visual Art Fellowship from Artist Trust (1994), a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship (1999), and the Morrie and Joan Alhadeff PONCHO Artist of the Year Award (2005).
Dingus has had solo shows at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter and The Stenersen Museum, both in Norway (2002, 2006), as well as the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA (2005 – 2006). Her work has been included in Nature/Culture organized by The Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh (2006 – 2008), Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC (2006 – 2007) and 21st Century American Women Artists at the Residence of the United States Ambassador to NATO in Brussels, Belgium (2006 – 2010). Her work is in many regional museums and corporate collections. Dingus currently lives and works in the state of Washington and is represented by Traver Gallery in Seattle.
Painter, critic, and author Gary Faigin is cofounder and Artistic Director of Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, as well as the school’s Still Life Atelier instructor. Faigin also serves as a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where he teaches facial expressions to graduate animation students and works on a research team studying the human perception of stylized facial expressions. He has taught in art schools across the country including the National Academy of Design and the Parsons School of Design. In 2001, Faigin published his first book, The Artist’s Complete Guide to Facial Expression, which has since been translated into seven languages and reprinted sixteen times.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle and the Gage Academy of Art.

You look good for your age.” “You’re too young to understand.” 
In employment decisions, family discussions, medical care, and even in birthday cards, assumptions about being “over the hill” or “a lazy kid” are common. What do you wish society would stop saying about your generation? How can we talk about age and aging in a more positive, affirming way? In this interactive and fun talk, Dori Gillam welcomes individuals from every generation to explore how we can begin valuing all ages — including our own.
Dori Gillam is a speaker and writer, inspiring older adults to age creatively. She writes for 3rd Act Magazine, is a member of the Speaker’s Bureau for Humanities Washington, Board Chair for the NW Center for Creative Aging, Charter Member of the Age Friendly Seattle Coalition, and volunteers with Habitat for Humanity building houses around the world. Dori cared for her parents for the last seven years of their lives and performs a story about them at local theaters and conferences. With a BS degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Washington, Dori has worked for Sound Generations, AARP, and the Bayview Retirement Community. She is proud to have been born and raised in Seattle, does a mean tap-dance to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” and has climbed Mt. Rainier and Mt. Kilimanjaro. Dori’s daughter, son-in-law, and grandson live in California.
Northwest Center for Creative Aging (NWCCA) advocates for the creativity, vitality, and wholeness inherent in all of us. As we age, we discover new capacities and new interests. We seek activities that expand our minds, strengthen our bodies, and open our hearts. We recognize the necessity of interdependence, humor, generosity, and gratitude to bolster us during challenging times.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle and Northwest Center for Creative Aging.

Why are mystery novels so captivating? Well, name a better way to be thrilled without ever having to leave your own home … For over 30 years, #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George has been penning page-turners for crime novel enthusiasts around the globe. This winter, the Seattle-based writer is back with the paperback release of her latest book Something to Hide. This book is #21 in George’s A Lynley Novel series, known for involving crimes that are “deeply shocking and suspenseful.”
This time, Acting Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeants Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata investigate the murder of one of their own: a police detective sergeant who was working on a special task force in North London’s Nigerian community. When an autopsy reveals the murderous act that precipitated her death, Lynley is assigned to the case, which he soon learns has far-reaching and unexpected cultural associations. Lynley, Havers, and Nkata must sort through the lies of people whose superficial cooperation masks the damage they do to one another. And just when we think we know who the killer is, George turns the tables.
With a combination of adventure, sociocultural implications, and engaging characters, Something to Hide is a world familiar to seasoned readers of George’s writing, and enrapturing to newcomers.
Elizabeth George is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-one psychological suspense novels, four young adult novels, two books of nonfiction, and two short-story collections. Her work has been honored with the Anthony and Agatha awards, two Edgar nominations, and both France’s and Germany’s first prize for crime fiction. She lives in Washington State.
Moira Macdonald is a longtime arts critic for The Seattle Times, writing primarily about books, movies and dance.

Something to Hide: A Lynley Novel (Hardcover)
Third Place Books

The Billboard Hot 100 began in 1958, and for many, that little countdown list provokes some strong feelings of nostalgia. Did you listen in while gathered around a family-room radio? A walkman? Blasted through a car stereo, waiting in the driveway until you heard the #1 song of the week? The way we access music might have changed drastically over the decades, but the Billboard Hot 100 still reigns supreme as the industry-standard record chart. And it has a story to tell.
Beloved music critic Tom Breihan started to tell some of that story when he launched his Stereogum column, “The Number Ones,” in early 2018. With the goal to write about every #1 hit in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, in chronological order, he’s still in the early aughts after four years. And the column has taken on a life of its own, sparking online debate and occasional death threats, and now, its own book.
In The Number Ones, Breihan explores twenty pivotal #1s throughout chart history to tell a remarkably fluid and connected story of music, from the Brill Building songwriters to the Beatles and the Beach Boys; from Motown to Michael Jackson, Prince, and Mariah Carey; and from the digital revolution to the K-pop system. He also illuminates what makes indelible ear candy across the decades—including dance crazes, recording innovations, television phenomena, disco, AOR, MTV, rap, compact discs, mp3s, social media, memes, and much more — leaving us to wonder what future eras of music will hold.
Tom Breihan is the senior editor at the music website Stereogum, where he writes “The Number Ones,” a column where he reviews every #1 hit in the history of the Billboard Hot 100. He’s written for Pitchfork, the Village Voice, the AV Club, GQ, and the Ringer, among others. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife and kids. He is seven feet tall.
Tom Nissley is the owner of Phinney Books and Madison Books in Seattle, and the author of A Reader’s Book of Days. He has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington and in 2010 won eight games on Jeopardy!.

The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music
Phinney Books

As an art critic and a museum staffer, Erin Langner was skeptical of what she would find when she visited the Las Vegas Strip for the first time in the mid-2000s. To her surprise, she returned whenever the opportunity arose, seeking to understand her attraction to this “escape” destination — and the personal histories it conjured.
The architecture of the Mirage casino surfaced the vacations to Florida that bandaged her grieving family together in the wake of her mother’s death. An encounter with a fake Venus de Milo during a bachelorette party shed light on her identity construction as a woman. An impersonator show evoked the rituals we create as we navigate loss. Together, the essays of Souvenirs from Paradise become a guide to holding fantasy and reality together in one glimpse, in order to better understand our impulses and ourselves.
Souvenirs from Paradise was selected as the winner of Zone 3 Press’s Creative Nonfiction Book Award by Wendy S. Walters.
Erin Langner writes about art, architecture and identity. She is a regular contributor to Hyperallergic and METROPOLIS magazines. Her writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Fourth Genre, december, The Offing, The Normal School, Hobart, The Brooklyn Rail and Pidgeonholes. Langner is the recipient of a Jack Straw Writers fellowship (2022) and the Good Hart Artist Residency (2023). She earned her M.A. in Museology from the University of Washington and her B.A. in Humanities from the University of Colorado. She lives in Seattle with her husband and daughter and works on exhibitions and publications at the Frye Art Museum. Souvenirs is her debut essay collection.
Jen Graves is a stepmother, a mother, a dog mother, a couples and family therapist, sometimes adjunct faculty, and — back when she had the honor of publishing Erin Langner’s writing at The Stranger — a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism.

Souvenirs from Paradise
Phinney Books

For years, consumers have been promised a simple, carefree digital future. We could live, work, learn, and play from the comforts of our homes, and have whatever we desire brought to our door with the flick of a finger. Instant communication would bring us together. All this technological convenience would give us more time to focus on what really mattered.
When the pandemic hit, for many, that future transformed into the present almost overnight. But the reviews aren’t great. It turns out that people like leaving the house, instant communication can spread more anger than joy, and convenience seems to take away time rather than giving it to us. Oops.
But as David Sax argues in his new book The Future is Analog, we’ve also had our eyes opened. There is nothing about the future that has to be digital, and embracing the reality of human experience doesn’t mean resisting change. Sax explores work, school, leisure, and more, asking perceptive and pointed questions: what happens to struggling students when they’re not in a classroom? If software is built for productivity, who tends to the social and cultural aspects of our jobs? Can you have religion without community?
For many people, the best parts of quarantine were the least digital ones: baking bread, playing board games, going hiking; using our hands, hugging our children and breathing fresh air. Sax suggests that if we want a healthy future, we need to choose community over convenience and humanity over technology.
David Sax is a writer, reporter, and speaker who specializes in business and culture. His book The Revenge of Analog was a #1 Washington Post bestseller, was selected as one of Michiko Kakutani’s Top Ten books of 2016 for The New York Times, and has been translated into six languages. He is also the author of three other books: Save the Deli, which won a James Beard award, The Soul of an Entrepreneur, and The Tastemakers. He lives in Toronto.

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World (Hardcover)
Third Place Books