Our music critics have already chosen the 35 best music shows this week, but now it's our arts critics' turn to pick the best events in their areas of expertise. Here are their picks in every genre—from the closing of Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas to the Very Best of HUMP! 2008-2017, and from UW Night Market: Taiwan Yes! to National Geographic Live — A Rare Look: North Korea to Cuba. See them all below, and find even more events on our complete Things To Do calendar.

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Jump to: Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday

MONDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Amaranth Borsuk
UW Bothell professor and author Amaranth Borsuk, who wrote the excellent As We Know, will speak in defense of books—their history and what they may become.

Failure Is an Option: Immigration, Memory, and the Russian Jewish Experience with Gary Shteyngart
If you enjoy clever page-turners and you have never read Gary Shteyngart’s first novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, an unbelievably funny specimen of the immigrant novel, get yourself to a bookstore ASAP. He has since published several other hilarious, globe-spanning novels and one hilarious, globe-spanning memoir, Little Failure. He was born in Russia and lived there as a young child, so he ought to have fascinating things to say about our new overlords and about the role satire plays in authoritarian societies. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

Laura Ling: Life Inside a Korean Prison
In 2009, Laura Ling was investigating North Korean sex trafficking with her colleague Euna Lee when they were arrested on suspicion of illegally entering North Korea along the Chinese border. The detainment of both journalists ended after five months when President Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang to speak with Kim Jong-il, who ultimately pardoned Ling and Lee. Following her release, Ling cowrote the 2010 memoir Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home with her (arguably more famous) sister, Lisa Ling. The acclaimed journalist shares her story of captivity and rescue during this Unique Lives and Experiences talk, “Life Inside a Korean Prison.” SOPHIA STEPHENS

Viet Thanh Nguyen
He wrote The Sympathizer, which won last year's Pulitzer Prize in fiction. Nguyen strongly believes we need to hear the story of the American invasion of Vietnam from more Vietnamese people's perspectives, and his work is certainly making headway in that direction. His latest is a book of short stories, The Refugees, about the lives of immigrants coming to America following the war. RICH SMITH

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY

FESTIVALS

Good Mourning: An Interactive Arts Festival About Grief
Grief may seem like an unusual topic for a festival, but it's an essential part of every life and neglected in popular culture. Storytellers like Danielle K. Grégoire, Claire Webber, Wryly McCutchen, and Yolanda Suarez will share emotional tales and poems, and a gallery will be open and free to the public throughout the three days.

MONDAY-SATURDAY

FILM

Translations Film Festival
Here is something that Seattle should take pride in. We have the world’s largest trans film festival. Not Berlin, not London, not New York City—but Seattle. The festival is called Translations, and this year it features a bunch of films from places that do not have the largest trans film festival. One film that caught my eye immediately is Man Made, which concerns the only transgender men bodybuilding competition in the world. Of course, this subject opens and examines a society that, for the most part, has yet to come to terms with this significant group of its family. CHARLES MUDEDE

TUESDAY

COMEDY

Kyle Kinane
The comedy world teems with schlubby, self-deprecating, bearded white guys, but Kyle Kinane ranks near the top of the heap of this species. His gruff-voiced, everydude observations are extremely relatable, which could result in eyerolls or yawns in lesser-skilled hands, but Kinane accomplishes the tough trick of turning the loser persona into a winning proposition. He also can cook up some tasty food jokes, e.g., “Phở is a Vietnamese soup that answers the question, 'What would happen if a former child soldier poured hot rainwater over fish nightmares?' ” DAVE SEGAL

READINGS & TALKS

Kit Bakke: Protest on Trial
In Protest on Trial, author and activist Kit Bakke dives into the case of the Seattle 7, the group responsible for building the Seattle Liberation Front. This group and the case against them should be at least as widely known as the WTO protests, but because it's just a little more complicated, it hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves. Tl;dr: After organizing Seattle's version of The Day After demonstration in protest of the treatment of the Chicago 8, the FBI slapped the Seattle 7 with federal rioting charges. Were the charges justified or was the FBI trying to break up a group bent on creating a "region-wide, antiwar, anti-racist community service organization?" I'll give you a few moments to think. In the meantime, here's a fun fact from the book: Jeff Dowd, who "later became the inspiration for The Dude in The Big Lebowski," counted himself among the accused. The Dowd abides. RICH SMITH

Matthew Dickman: Wonderland
Did you ever watch your childhood friend transform into a neo-Nazi right before your eyes? The speaker in Matthew Dickman's Wonderland has, and he details that transformation in a striking series of poems of the same title. The "Wonderland" poems follow a boy named Caleb, who we first meet in his front yard, hitting a stick against a tree trunk. While he's outside with his imaginary sword, Dad's inside the house, hitting Mom in the face. Caleb walks into the "weird dark" of her bedroom to comfort her, clearly powerless against his father's rage. In the next poem, Caleb's anger takes on its particularly strange and cruel character when he encounters a dog behind a fence. He starts spitting on it, "some of the phlegm / getting into the dog's eyes, / its long ears." RICH SMITH

Salon of Shame
Writing that makes you cringe ("middle school diaries, high school poetry, unsent letters") is read aloud with unapologetic hilarity at the Salon of Shame.

Sense of Place: Through the Lens of Al Smith
Though the MOHAI exhibition Seattle on the Spot: The Photographs of Al Smith is an essential retrospective of the local African American photographer, who documented Seattle's vibrant black community and jazz scene, there are thousands of his photos that aren't on display. Go to this talk to hear more about the artist and see some photos not exhibited, and also discover what "Black Heritage Society of Washington State does to preserve and inform the public about this important local history."

TUESDAY-WEDNESDAY

PERFORMANCE

Crewmates
In Sameer Arshad's comedy, a Muslim man from a conservative background starts dating an atheist Asian American woman, and things go swimmingly—until the supernatural, disgusted by their lovey-dovey nature, starts interfering. This play looks sweet, clever, and spooky all at once. Shahbaz Khan will direct.

TUESDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Familiar
Wedding drama abounds in Tony-nominated playwright Danai Gurira's Familiar (you also saw her in Black Panther): surprise guests, revealed secrets, and the tension that arises when a young woman wants to observe traditional Zimbabwean customs for her Minnesota wedding. Charles Isherwood of the New York Times writes, "Ms. Gurira weaves issues of cultural identity and displacement, generational frictions, and other meaty matters into dialogue that flows utterly naturally." This production will be led by acclaimed Egyptian American director Taibi Magar, and produced in association with the Guthrie Theater. JOULE ZELMAN

Love Never Dies
Love Never Dies is Andrew Lloyd Webber's sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, though Webber has stated "I really do not believe that you have to have seen Phantom of the Opera to understand Love Never Dies." It opened with mixed (poor) reviews in the West End in 2010, but was revamped and received acclaim on its Australian tour the next year.

The Wolves
Ben Brantley at the New York Times says Sarah DeLappe's debut play, The Wolves, is like a Robert Altman movie about a suburban girls indoor soccer team except in play form, and that's all I really need to hear to buy a ticket. In case you need more: Freehold Theater Lab's Christine Marie Brown will play the role of a soccer mom charged with wrangling up the likes of nine up-and-coming actors. Those include Meme GarcĂ­a, an excellent character actor and theater artist who's recently returned to the Pacific Northwest after polishing up her classical chops at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and Rachel Guyer-Mafune, whose pluck and charm brightened Book-It's production of Howl's Moving Castle and WET's Teh Internet Is Serious Business. Sheila Daniels directs. RICH SMITH

WEDNESDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Planes, Trains, and Traveling Chefs: Marc Forgione
Celebrity chef Marc Forgione became the youngest winner of the Food Network's Next Iron Chef in history when he won season three of the show in 2010. He's also received critical acclaim from the New York Times and owns a Michelin-starred restaurant. You can try his celebrated cooking for yourself at this six-course dinner, which he'll create with the Matt's in the Market kitchen based on market-fresh ingredients from Pike Place.

Puss 'N Pints
If the thought of drinking beer while helping fuzzy kittens is appealing to you, then you should consider checking out this fundraiser, where 50% of the proceeds will go to MEOW Cat Rescue, a local nonprofit dedicated to the health and welfare of cats in the Greater Seattle area. In the spirit of cats, there will be a selection of "feline-forward" beers such as the Black Raven Kitty Kat Blues Pale Ale, the Snoqualmie WildCat IPA, the Georgetown Meowsa Double IPA and the Kulshan Bastard Kat IPA. There will also be t-shirt and glassware giveaways, and the MEOW team will be on-site to answer questions and chat. We hear there may even be appearances by some actual cats, which just elevates the entire event, obvs.

PERFORMANCE

Lavish: A QTPoC Art Showcase
QTPOC student artists from UW will share their music, poetry, dance, and visual art.

READINGS & TALKS

I Alone Can Fix It: Tales from the New Dystopia with Gary Shteyngart
Says Christopher Frizzelle of Gary Shteyngart: "If you enjoy clever page-turners and you have never read Shteyngart’s first novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, an unbelievably funny specimen of the immigrant novel, get yourself to a bookstore ASAP. He has since published several other hilarious, globe-spanning novels and one hilarious, globe-spanning memoir, Little Failure. He was born in Russia and lived there as a young child, so he ought to have fascinating things to say about our new overlords, and about the role satire plays in authoritarian societies." Shteyngart will read a sneak preview from his new book Lake Success, forthcoming 2018—Seattleites will be among the very first to hear an excerpt.

WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY

ART

Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas
If you see one museum exhibition this year, Figuring History would be a good choice. It begins by dissecting the conventions of history painting, which tends to cast oppressors as heroes and ignore black experiences altogether. Figuring History aims to right this historical wrong by connecting the large-scale, satirical works of the late painter Robert Colescott with magnificent works by Kerry James Marshall and Mickalene Thomas—contemporary artists who are reframing how we think about monumental painting. It's especially exciting to see Thomas's dazzling, collage-like surfaces in real life, but the whole show is a feast for the eyes, intellect, and soul. EMILY POTHAST
Closing Sunday

PERFORMANCE

Aida
Seattle Opera's production of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida is going to be massive. We're talking more than 150 performers, 200 costumes, innovative sets from graffiti artist RETNA (Marquis Duriel Lewis), complex choreography, and a wild story about an enslaved Ethiopian princess who falls in love with her Egyptian captor, who is himself betrothed to the pharaoh's daughter. This one is shaping up to be the production of the year from Seattle's largest opera house, and it's not to be missed. RICH SMITH
No performance on Thursday

THURSDAY

ART

Capitol Hill Art Walk
Every second Thursday, rain or shine, the streets of Capitol Hill are filled with tipsy art lovers checking out galleries and special events. In May, check out Art // Action: A Fundraiser for Reproductive Rights, Sean Gallagher: Loud Seas & Warm Lands, and Kids/No Kids with Sheila Heti.

FILM

Alfred Hitchcock's Britain
Sure, with the exception of the modestly budgeted, black-and-white Psycho, Hitchcock is known for his lavishly Freudian Technicolor thrillers from the ‘50s and ‘60s. But the films he made in his native Britain are just as worthy of note—taut, intricate, their perversity more elaborately disguised. Tonight, the series will turn to Stage Fright.

READINGS & TALKS

Corey Pein: Live Work Work Work Die
Fume along with journalist Corey Pein as he explores the "greed, hubris, and retrograde politics" of Silicon Valley tech culture via his new book, Live Work Work Work Die.

Crab Creek Review Seattle Release Party
Longstanding Seattle literary journal Crab Creek Review will celebrate the publication of both their fall 2017 and spring 2018 issues with readings by local writers Donna Miscolta, Erin Malone, Keetje Kuipers, Sylvia Pollack, Margot Kahn, and Fernando PĂ©rez.

Jennifer Haupt in Conversation With Claudia Rowe: In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills
Jennifer Haupt's novel In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills traces the path of an American woman trying to regain hope after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. by working with children in Rwanda and the journey of another woman 30 years later who searches for her father in the same country after the genocide. Seattle Times reporter Claudia Rowe will engage her in conversation.

Ruth Joffre: 'Night Beast' Book Launch
Ruth Joffre and friends will fete the release of her debut collection Night Beast and Other Stories, haunted fairy tales starring queer women. Fans of Kelly Link should check her out—Link has praised her writing as "nimble, audacious, and far seeing."

Sheila Heti: Motherhood
The last time the novelist (author of How Should a Person Be?) Sheila Heti was in Seattle, she read a brand new short story commissioned by Hugo House on the theme of “death after life.” Someone in the audience encouraged her to send it to the New Yorker, which she did, and shortly thereafter it appeared in the magazine. She returns to Seattle with her best book yet. Like everything she writes, it’s hard to distill into a sentence or two, but the basic question Motherhood tries to answer is: Can a woman make books instead of making children? Can art be her output, instead of human beings? CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

THURSDAY-FRIDAY

COMEDY

8 to 6
In what will probably be a cathartic improv show, three women in the workplace take revenge on their awful chauvinist boss according to your suggestions.

THURSDAY-SATURDAY

ART

Natalie Krick: Apocalypstick
In a capitalist economy, beauty is a marketing strategy. The science of advertising consists of a series of tricks to fool the eye into desiring a commodity, which often has little or nothing to do with what one has seen. In her photographic series Natural Deceptions and How She Got Her Body Back, artist Natalie Krick explores the relationship between desire, falsehood, and cultivated images of beauty in an era where representations of bodies are increasingly removed from their flesh-and-blood context. Krick's images are double-edged swords—they simultaneously elicit desire and encourage us to question the nature of that desire. EMILY POTHAST
Closing Saturday

FILM

The Very Best of HUMP! 2008-2017
Depending on whether you've attended Dan Savage’s amateur porn festival from its inception or haven't yet experienced the arousal/joy/laughs/vicarious embarrassment/shock/terror of watching explicit, omnisexual short films with a roomful of strangers, this screening (for which filmmakers resubmitted their movies) will resurrect your favorite sexy moments or introduce you to some kinks you've never seen before.

THURSDAY-SUNDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Seattle Beer Week 10
Seattle’s craft beer scene is always alive and bubbling with activity, but during Beer Week, that geeky enthusiasm gets kicked into high gear, with a stacked lineup of beer dinners, festivals, socials, pub crawls, and releases galore. This year, the festivities will include Cask-O-Rama (16 casks from Seattle breweries on the bar top) at Beveridge Place Pub, beer and doughnut pairings at various locations, a beer-can derby at the Pine Box, a cheddar sandwich competition at Hellbent Brewing, whole pig roasts at Rhein Haus, Naked City, and TeKu Tavern, and way more.

PERFORMANCE

Broken Bone Bathtub: Seattle Premiere
Siobhan O'Loughlin's experimental show will take place in actual bathtubs in actual homes as she acts out the story of an injured cyclist dealing with trauma and learning to ask for help. Presented by prolific Seattle clown artist Christine Longé.

Fallen Star
A trans superhero becomes disgusted with the systemic violence perpetuated by her cis peers and takes up the vigilante lifestyle. This one-woman performance by activist, writer, and Lambda-nominated anthologist Tobi Hill-Meyer will be paired with original superhero comics in an intriguing cross-genre experiment.

Jack &
We're anticipating that Jack & will use the formulas of sitcoms to criticize the prison system and the lasting damages it inflicts on released inmates. Director Kaneza Schaal and her leading actor, Cornell Alston, will make these clichés "intersect with real and imagined ceremonies for entering society."

Little Shop of Horrors at Reboot
Expect inclusive casting at this production of the witty, grim horror musical about a nerdy, lovesick plant shop clerk, his vulnerable crush, and the mean green mother from outer space that insidiously takes over their lives.

The Nether
What if there were a virtual world where men could live out their most fucked up, rapacious fantasies? Would such a world pacify violent behavior? Or would it only serve as a refinery for that violence? Those are some of the questions playwright Jennifer Haley asks in The Nether. Haley's known for incorporating into her writing the tricks of Hollywood genre flicks, and this one's billed as a thriller. We'll see if the characters and dialogue suffer as a result of that choice, as former Stranger writer Brendan Kiley said they did when WET produced Haley's Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom back in 2009. RICH SMITH

An Octoroon
This theater will continue its sharp reflections on race relations and history this season with An Octoroon, Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins's play set in the latter days of American slavery, in which a young man inherits a plantation and falls in love with the titular "octoroon"—a woman with one-eighth black heritage. Will their relationship survive the machinations of a cruel overseer?

Ride the Cyclone
In this macabre musical comedy, a teenage chamber choir is trapped in fairground purgatory after a roller coaster accident kills them all. Rachel Rockwell will direct this 5th Ave/ACT co-production, which the New York Times called "a delightfully weird and just plain delightful show."

FRIDAY

COMEDY

Samantha Demboski, Dog Mom/Con-found It!
Samantha Dembowski is hilarious as an improviser. Check her out in a one-woman comedy show. Dog Mom and Con-found It! will also perform.

READINGS & TALKS

Hugo Literary Series: Lidia Yuknavitch, Tarfia Faizullah, Ijeoma Oluo, and Nick Droz
Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Misfit's Manifesto and the scary Book of Joan, will be joined by Bangladeshi American poet Tarfia Faizullah and Establishment editor (and former Stranger contributor) Ijeoma Oluo to present new work on the theme "There Goes the Neighborhood." Singer-songwriter Nick Droz, a collaborator with Bushwick Book Club, will provide the music.

FRIDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Beautiful Carcass
Beautiful Carcass, choreographed by Maya Soto to music by Nico Tower, promises "a bewitching carnival world" that expresses aspects of life as a person in a female-assigned body.

hooked up
"Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)" Peter Donnelly has featured at local queer-focused performances and festivals like Cherdonna & Lou and Intersections, as well as SAM Remix and Northwest New Works. See him at his own show, a four-piece-band-backed play about hooking up in Seattle and coping with tattered illusions. The music ranges "from rockabilly to alternative to 2000s pop," so this evening seems like it's for all tastes.

SATURDAY

ART

Georgetown Art Attack
Once a month, the art that resides in the tiny airport hamlet of Georgetown ATTACKS all passersby. In more literal terms, it's the day of art openings and street wonderment.

. FILM

The Apology
The Seattle Asian American Film Festival, along with Sahngnoksoo and KD Hall Foundation, will screen a documentary about three former "comfort women"—Chinese, Filipino, and Korean forced into prostitution by the Japanese army during WWII—seeking an apology for the travesties against them. The Apology won an Audience Choice Award at the SAAFF earlier this year.

FOOD & DRINK

Annual Seattle Pierogi Fest
To know pierogi, the absurdly comforting and starchy Polish dumplings, is to love them. This wildly popular yearly event from the Polish Cultural Center offers an opportunity to shovel the petite pockets of dough into your face by the plateful, with fillings like potato and cheese, meat, sauerkraut and mushrooms, blueberries, and more, at a modest sum ($10 nets you 10 dumplings). Plus, check out workshops, performances, costumes, pottery, cutout art, beer gardens, homemade desserts, and other entertainment. JULIANNE BELL

Reviving the Rustic
Don’t call it a comeback: The ancient Korean libation makgeolli, which translates loosely as "roughly strained" and is known as the "drink of peasants," has been here for more than a thousand years, since the Goguryeo Dynasty. However, it’s currently enjoying a resurgence due to its high probiotic content, compatibility with food, and popularity with Korean celebrities and rappers (who’ve affectionately rebranded it as “mack gully”). It’s also nearly impossible to find fresh in the United States—Pioneer Square’s Girin Korean Ssam Bar is one of the only places in the country making it. Brewer Cody Burns experimented with recipes for six months and fought through a two-year-long process of working with the government to classify and permit the brewing process. You can revel in his triumph at this event hosted by Atlas Obscura, where he'll guide an informal tasting alongside light appetizers and give a talk on the love for the liquor worldwide. JULIANNE BELL

Sparkling Stroll Wine & Prosecco Walk
Amble from shop to shop in quaint Country Village sampling sparklers at this event with over 20 Italian wines.

UW Night Market: Taiwan Yes!
Taiwan is known for its colorful night markets, where scores of vendors and shops gather to hawk food and other wares. At this UW event, more than 20 Taiwanese and other Asian food vendors will assemble in one convenient place. Highlights include the rave-worthy hand-pulled biang biang noodles and dumplings from Qin Xi'an Noodle, “puffle cones” (wacky inflated waffle cones filled with ice cream and fruit) from Puffle Up, pork belly- and vegetable-stuffed steamed buns from It's Bao Time, taiyaki (fish-shaped waffles) from BeanFish, and more. JULIANNE BELL

SATURDAY-SUNDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Wine on the Rock: Wine & Cheese
Partake in the time-honored pairing of vino and fromage at all seven wineries on Bainbridge Island this weekend.

SUNDAY

COMEDY

Musical: Stephen Sondheim Improvised
Using audience suggestions, the cast will improvise a brand-new musical based on the work of Stephen Sondheim, the genius responsible for Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, Company, Sunday in the Park with George, and more. It's an almost insanely ambitious concept to try to match Sondheim off-the-cuff, so check out UP performers using every ounce of their wits and skills.

READINGS & TALKS

Capital and the Carceral State: Political Economy of Policing & Prisons
Jordan Camp, Christina Heatherton, Dan Berger, Dean Spade, and Angelica Chazaro will discuss the political economy of the prison industry and systems and how to resist it.

National Geographic Live — A Rare Look: North Korea to Cuba
David Guttenfelder is an AP photographer who, along with his colleagues, helped show the world what North Korea actually looked like for the first time in 2011. His photographs reveal the bleak surrealism of the country's urban spaces and the extreme poverty of its rural areas. According to press materials, Guttenfelder "broke through another wall when he boarded the first cruise ship in decades to travel from the United States to Cuba, and returned to the island to cover Fidel Castro’s four-day funeral procession." The warmth and vibrancy of his Cuban photos contrast sharply with the drab olives and cold tones of NK's fascistic state, though there are a few surprising aesthetic overlaps between the two countries. He'll have more to say about all that at Benaroya, but, in the meantime, you should definitely be following this guy on Instagram. RICH SMITH

Red May Resist! Poetics in the Service of Revolution
During this "month-long vacation from Capitalism," be sure to set some time Sunday to hear local poets declaim. Readers will include David Lau, Rae Armantrout, and many others, and the last evening is a "mass reading" with a great number of poets and writers, including the Stranger's Charles Mudede.