Join us on December 28th 2020 and January 4th 2021 as we learn about Tacoma cultural identity through a book from Richard Wiley.
In exciting news, we have just confirmed that the author of Tacoma Stories will be present for both planned Zoom meetings! This will be a great opportunity to hear about the author’s writing process and literary craft, as well as his thoughts about Tacoma as the setting for the stories. We often find ourselves asking questions along the lines of “Why did the author choose to portray the character this way?” or “Why did the author make the character do this and not that?” Here is your chance to ask!
Tentatively we have two planned book club sessions, to allow for additional flexibility given this busy time. I will be sure to keep you updated with any changes.
- December 28th, 2020, 6:30 PM
- January 4th, 2021, 6:30 PM
This month book:
Tacoma Stories by Richard Wiley
Description:
On St. Patrick’s Day in 1968, sixteen people sit in Pat’s Tavern, drink green beer, flirt, rib each other, and eventually go home in (mostly) different directions. In the stories that follow, which span 1958 to the present, Richard Wiley pops back into the lives of this colorful cast of characters–sometimes into their pasts, sometimes into their futures–and explores the ways in which their individual narratives indelibly weave together. At the heart of it all lies Tacoma, Washington, a town full of eccentricities and citizens as unique as they are universal. The Tacoma of Tacoma Stories might be harboring paranoid former CIA operatives and wax replicas of dead husbands, but it is also a place with all the joys and pains one could find in any town, anytime and anywhere.
About the author:
Richard Wiley is the author of eight novels including Bob Stevenson; Soldiers in Hiding, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Washington State Book Award; and Ahmed’s Revenge, winner of the Maria Thomas Fiction Award. Professor emeritus at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he divides his time between Los Angeles, California, and Tacoma, Washington. Author website
Please consider gifting the book for the Holiday to help a local author!
Animator of the Book Club: Hunter White. Learn more about Hunter here