Happy UNESCO Birthday to Us!

It’s been one year since Seattle was designated a UNESCO City of Literature. And what a year! 
Let’s look back over the work that Seattle City of Literature has accomplished so far:

Creative Cities Network Update

Delegates from twenty-six Cities of Literature convened in Iowa City, April 2018

Since our designation, Seattle attended the Cities of Literature Subnetwork meeting in Iowa City (April 2018) and the Creative Cities Network meeting in Kraków (June 2018).

• In Iowa City, 26 of the 28 Cities of Lit attended. Seattle was welcomed into the network with 7 other new cities. We spent time getting to know the delegates and also how the subnetwork functions.

• In Kraków, 180 cities across all 7 disciplines attended. Our time was divided into a literary study trip and the UNESCO conference. Seattle also had the opportunity to meet with delegates from the other U.S. Creative Cities.

• The literary study trip introduced delegates to the breadth of the literary community in Kraków, and included meetings with publishers as well as the Polish Book Institute; visits to area bookstores; visits to cultural nonprofits; and attendance at the OffMiłosz Festival and the Szymborska Awards.

• The theme of this year’s conference was “Creative Crossroads,” and it focused on the idea of connection and intersection. The purpose was to “strengthen ties between cities from around the world” and to “serve as a platform to define the strategic objectives of the network,” centered around UNESCO’s Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals.

• The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are targets for the Creative Cities to strive toward as we undertake our individual and collaborative work.

• Seattle presented to our literature subnetwork on our Equity Trainings, and presented as part of the full conference on a “Creative Mobilities” panel on transportation—showcasing Seattle’s Poetry on Buses.

Program Updates

Maori writer Nic Low with Jack Straw writers, October 2017. From left: D.A. Navoti, Catalina Cantú, Levi Fuller, Nic Low, Jamaica Baldwin

Seattle City of Lit has been producing and partnering on a variety of programs in the last year and a half. Here’s a bit more information about them:

• Seattle City of Lit has hosted four equity trainings for members of the literary community. These trainings have focused on cultural competency, implicit bias, unpacking privilege and hiring & retaining a diverse workforce. We have some funding to continue hosting these trainings.

• We partnered with our sister city Christchurch on an indigenous writers’ exchange. In 2016, Elissa Washuta traveled to Christchurch and took part in the WORD Christchurch Literary Festival. In 2017 Maori writer Nic Low traveled here and participated in LitCrawl Seattle. We also conducted a literary journal exchange where a journal from each city featured writers from the partner city to coincide with the writer’s visit.

• We have had ongoing partnerships with Reykjavik City of Lit, Iceland Naturally, and their “Taste of Iceland” festival. This has included a program with saga experts and a band at KEXP (2016) and a recent visit from Reykjavik writer and environmental activist Andri Snaer Magnason.

What Have We Learned?

Since Seattle originally started the designation process, UNESCO’s focus has shifted to concentrate on ways that the network can help build sustainable cities through the arts.
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals exist to help guide the overarching work that the network undertakes and give us a framework for how the arts sectors can help create more livable cities.

We’re excited about how this work can create real impact in our city and in cities around the world. The Creative Cities Network, which Seattle is now a part of, is an amazing resource for inspiration, collaboration and best practices. And the best news? 

We’re just getting started!

The United States, Literature & the World

Over the summer, Seattle University hosted participants from the Study of the U.S. Institute (SUSI) for Scholars on Contemporary American Literature. The director of the program, Charles M. Tung, invited Stesha Brandon, Board President at Seattle City of Literature, to address the participants at their closing event.

The Institute hosted eighteen scholars and educators—from eighteen different countries—who visited the United States for four weeks of academic residency at Seattle University, and two weeks of a study tour to San Francisco, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Washington DC. 

This year's participants were from Algeria, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Cote d'Ivoire, India, Indonesia, Israel, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Slovak Republic, Suriname, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, and Ukraine. 

This Fulbright-related program is funded by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the Department of State. SUSI's goals include more diverse and complex understandings of U.S. literature and culture, an enhanced set of pedagogies for teaching such complexity, stronger research and curriculum development in participants’ home countries, and the possibility of further opportunities for meaningful exchange of ideas and experiences. 

Stesha Brandon, Board President at Seattle City of Literature, addressing the SUSI Scholars (Photo by Charles Tung)

Brandon touched on this last point when she addressed the scholars at their farewell banquet. Her remarks highlighted the power of literature to bind us to one another despite the disparate circumstances of our lives:

"As you all well know, literature can act as a window. And it can act as a mirror. It can reflect our experiences or introduce us to new ones. It allows us to build empathy and understanding; to pay witness; and to grapple with difficult concepts and emotions. You come to this conference at a time when our country and our community is exploring and redefining what it means to be American, what it means to have literature of, and for the United States. While Seattle, as a UNESCO City of Literature continues to be dedicated to upholding the ideals that UNESCO stands for, it’s clear that America is currently grappling with difficult concepts. We’re asking: what is true? And who gets to define the narrative? And how can we build empathy if we’re building walls?"

Learn more about SUSI and the 2018 program here.

Let's Celebrate!

Seattle was designated a UNESCO City of Literature and it's time to celebrate! Join us for a public celebration on Tuesday, May 22, 2018 at 7pm at The Seattle Public Library. The party will take place at the Central Library, in the Reading Room on the Tenth Floor.
We hope you can join us!

UNESCO designates Seattle as City of Literature in Creative Cities Network

The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced it designated Seattle as a City of Literature in the Creative Cities Network. Seattle joins an international network of 116 member cities from 54 countries that promote socio-economic and cultural tourism in the developed and developing world through creative industries. The bid to join the Creative Cities Network was led by Seattle City of Literature, a non-profit whose aim is to foster public and private literary partnerships in the city and abroad to promote a robust creative economy.

Seattle is the top city in the United States for arts organizations per capita, and our nonprofit arts landscape is the fourth largest in the USA. The 325 nonprofit arts organizations in the greater Seattle area generated more than $207 million in revenues in 2012, according to the Seattle Office of Arts& Culture’s Creative Vitality Index (CVI) report, which tracks economic health and development in arts and culture. Employment in arts and culture in the Seattle metro area increased by more than 6 percent from 2010 to 2012, and as of 2012, nearly 31,000 people—or 3.5 percent of the population—worked in the sector.

Over the last five years, of their $10 million annual budget, the Office of Arts and Culture has dedicated an average of more than $230,000 in funding to literary and storytelling programs and artists—meaning they have invested more than $1.2 million in literature in the last five years. Additionally, according to data provided by 4Culture, the King County cultural funding arm, the county has granted more than $2.5 million to literary programs and individual writers in the last five years, from historic renovation funds to individual artist grants.

“Seattle has a wonderfully rich literary history beginning with the storytelling tradition of Native Americans in this region,” said Bob Redmond, Board President of Seattle City of Literature. “We found widespread support in the community for this successful effort. We look forward to working with partners in the arts community to participate in this global network."

The non-profit worked with the City of Seattle to establish a Civic Poet program. Claudia Castro Luna, Seattle's first Civic Poet, served as an ambassador for Seattle’s rich literary landscape and represents the city’s diverse cultural community. In addition, Seattle City of Literature has collaborated on events with Hugo House and Elliott Bay Bookstore, and arranged for artist exchanges between Seattle, New Zealand and Iceland. This month, Seattle City of Literature hosted the second half of its Indigenous Writers Exchange with Nic Low of the Ngāi Tahu tribe of New Zealand. Last year, Elissa Washuta of the Cowlitz Tribe traveled to Christchurch for a similar exchange.

Seattle’s literary resources include thriving independent bookstores, public libraries, literary arts nonprofits and writing programs that serve diverse communities, publishers and small presses, professional organizations, readers, and writers. Seattle City of Literature aims to foster a culture where local writers can stay on the West Coast and be supported by local publishing amenities.

The board and stakeholders who generously gave their time and resources to develop the bid to join the Creative Cities Network includes writers, readers, editors, publishers, teachers, and non-profit leaders.

Seattle joins a group of 20 outstanding UNESCO City of Literature members including Iowa City (the first US city to gain recognition); as well as Edinburgh Scotland, Krakow, Poland; Baghdad, Iraq; Dublin, Ireland; Montevideo, Uruguay; and others.

EMAIL: hanady.kader@gmail.com

PHONE: 206-786-571

Frequently Asked Questions about My Trip to New Zealand

by Elissa Washuta Q: You were in New Zealand? How was it? A: Great. / Amazing. / Exceptional. / It changed my life.

Q: Vacation? Or like a book thing? A: Officially, the WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival, to which I was invited as a panelist, workshop co-leader, and reader. Unofficially, it was, in a way, a vacation, or the closest thing I’ll get to taking a vacation in New Zealand in the foreseeable future (starving artist, workaholic, unable to relax and suspend productivity, et cetera).

The question makes me realize that I may not even know what a vacation is, so I looked up the word in the dictionary. An extended period of recreation, especially one spent away from home or in traveling. Or: The action of leaving something one previously occupied.

The second fits. When I stepped into the Auckland airport before dawn after twelve hours on an airplane maybe eight times the size of my apartment, I began to cry. I felt the enormity of this gift, and I felt some hard block of pain dislodged by the knowledge that my body had just traveled to the other side of the world.

I can’t talk about this trip without mentioning that I had been heartbroken for weeks when I made the trip. I tucked my wounded heart into a winter jacket and took it to a place it had never seen.

After a few minutes of dreamlike wandering through the Auckland airport, I realized I didn’t have much time to get onto my connection to Christchurch. I rushed through immigration and biosecurity and, on the other side, headed for the next terminal, I found myself in the middle of a group of people in pristine black tracksuits with the Olympic rings emblazoned on their luggage. Together, we stepped into the public meeting area, and the people gathered there cheered, and I let myself absorb stray beams of their love.

And then I stepped into the late-winter dawn, waiting for the bus, looking at trees I didn’t recognize, and my whole body knew that it was making itself new.

Q: Sounds like a great opportunity. How’d you make that happen? A: I don’t make anything happen—anything that works out well, anyway.

Q: So what kind of stuff did they have you doing? A:  It’s impossible for me to fit all of it in a blog post, but I’ll attempt highlights. I co-lead a workshop for Ngāi Tahu writers with Ali Cobby Eckermann, Hana O’Regan, and Ivan Coyote, where we maintained a space in which we could freely talk about writing and Indigeneity. With the other international writers, I traveled to Tuahiwi Marae to participate in a pōwhiri, a Māori welcome, where I was able to introduce myself and my family and share a song and a story.

I participated in a powerful Sister Cities/First Nations panel with Ali and wonderful moderator Nic Low (great write-up here), which unexpectedly turned into a magical discussion about anger, violation, self-destruction, and healing.

Every day, I had a lovely, celiac-friendly breakfast at the bed & breakfast. I met writers who became family for a few days and shared special meals with good people. New friends showed me around town, walked with me, department store shopped with me, went to panels with me (and came to mine), and raved, in detail, about the plot of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights (stopping at spoilers).

Q: Is it as beautiful as they say?

A: Yes, but not in the way they say. Not like Lord of the Rings—not Christchurch, a city leveled, loved, and rebuilt. Exquisite street art is everywhere. The tenderness for beloved buildings is evident in their reconstruction. And the people—their warmth is the most beautiful thing about Christchurch.

Q: It must have been a good time for you to get away, right?  I mean, how are you feeling? Better? A: Better, yes. In Seattle, I’ve learned over and over that it’s easy to infuse a place with hurt. Before I moved here, I listened over and over to my favorite Pearl Jam song, “All Those Yesterdays,” and tucked one of the lines into myself: “It’s no crime to escape.” It makes sense that I would need to board a plane, fall into slumber, and wake up in a new place, a new season, smelling winter, as though I’d performed the tesseract I always hoped I would when I read A Wrinkle in Time as a kid. I traveled through space and time the short way, and even disoriented and dislocated, I had everything I needed the whole time.