Join us at the Phinney Center to celebrate the launch of our neighborhood author James Patrick Thomas’s memoir, Atomic Pilgrim: How Walking Thousands of Miles for Peace Led to Uncovering Some of America's Darkest Nuclear Secrets. James will be in discussion with Shannon Cram, associate professor at the University of Washington, Bothell and author of Unmaking the Bomb.

To order a signed copy of Atomic Pilgrim, either to pick up at the event or to be shipped, click here.

Atomic Pilgrim is the story of how one person's faith, actions, and persistence can impact seemingly immovable systems and hold even the most powerful bureaucracies to account. James Patrick Thomas's path toward nuclear disarmament began on Good Friday, 1982, when he and his fellow peace pilgrims started walking away from the Trident Nuclear Submarine Base near Seattle. Their Bethlehem Peace Pilgrimage would span 6,700 miles across the United States and nine other countries, each step aimed at ending the nuclear arms race. After two years on the road, Jim continued his pursuit of peace and disarmament. Back in Spokane, Washington, Jim turned his attention toward the Hanford plutonium factory—one of the original Manhattan Project sites just 110 miles from his home. Over the next two decades, Jim helped uncover stunning revelations about Hanford's toxic regional impact and its role in our nation's nuclear weapons complex.

While serving in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, James Patrick Thomas began advocating for nuclear disarmament as a member of the Bethlehem Peace Pilgrimage. He spent the next quarter century investigating radioactive pollution from the production and testing of nuclear weapons, mostly focused on the Hanford Site in south-central Washington State. He organized a national coalition that forced the federal government to close Hanford's plutonium operations in 1990, served on several federal advisory committees concerning radiation health effects, and worked for ten years as a paralegal for the plaintiffs in the Hanford downwinders litigation. Jim directed life, justice, and peace ministry for the Diocese of Spokane (1984-1987), the Archdiocese of Seattle (2007-2015), and the Washington State Catholic Conference (2015-2020). He has a master's in religious studies from Gonzaga University. He has visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki twice—in 1993 he spoke at an international conference on plutonium processing and in 2023 he accompanied Archbishops Paul Etienne and John Wester on their Pilgrimage of Peace. He lives in Seattle with his wife and daughter.

Shannon Cram is an associate professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell, where she co-directs the Science, Technology, and Society program. Her first book, Unmaking the Bomb: Environmental Cleanup and the Politics of Impossibility, was named a Best Indie Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She is currently working on a new project about genetic mutation and previvorship.

Join us to welcome back our old friend Dane Bahr to celebrate his new novel, Stag. Dane was the founder and longtime host of our Dock Street Salon reading series at Phinney Books (and the publisher of Dock Street Books), and since moving to Bellingham he has published two acclaimed literary crime novels with Counterpoint, The Houseboat and now Stag, a sequel of sorts that finds former Iowa sheriff Amos Fielding moving to the Pacific Northwest to gain some distance from the darkness he saw so much of in his earlier life. Our world being what it is, though, the darkness finds him again. Dane himself wears his own darkness lightly, and we look forward to welcoming him back and raising a toast to his new book.

Join our Greenwood neighbor, Dr. Christy Bauman, for a reading for her newest book, Her Rites, at Phinney Books. She will share insight on the six rites of passage in every female’s life—Birth, Initiation, Exile, Creation, Intuition, and Legacy—and also be playing the music from the Her Rites companion album and displaying artwork from the book. 

Christy Angelle Bauman, PhD, MDFT, LMHC, is a therapist, professor, and author specializing in Christian women's sexual and spiritual health. She supports women while they work toward self-identity, sexual healing, and hope, and she is committed to helping women come into their authentic voices. She hosts the podcast Womaneering, in which she discusses what it means to pioneer a meaningful life.

Join us for the return of Boyd and Beth Morrison to celebrate the release of The Last True Templar, the second book in their Templar Knight adventure series. (Publishers Weekly called The Lawless Land, the first volume in the series, “an exceptional series launch” and gave it a starred review.) Once again in their sibling collaboration, Boyd and Beth are combining his thriller-writing skills (he’s the author of, among other things, six bestselling Oregon Files collaborations with Clive Cussler, and also a Jeopardy! champion and a Phinney Books neighbor) and her historical expertise (she’s Senior Curator of Manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum, specializing in medieval Europe). We’re glad to have them back!

Signed copies of The Last True Templar can be also be ordered in advance.

We welcome literary traveler Cynthia Newberry Martin and local favorite Joshua Mohr for an evening of reading and discussion about indie writing and indie publishing. Cynthia is in the middle of her 50 Bookstores, 50 Writers, 50 Books project, in support of her novels Tidal Flats, Love Like This, and The Art of Her Life. At every indie bookstore stop, she pairs with a local writer, and we’re delighted that she’s making her Washington State stop in our store, in conversation with her old friend, and ours, Joshua Mohr, where they’ll be talking about her novel Love Like This and his memoirs Sirens and Model Citizen. Come join us for a rare Phinney Books in-person book event!

Celebrate the dark and light sides of middle-grade fiction as two favorite local authors and friends (and friends of Phinney Books), come for what may well be our first event for middle readers at the store. K.R. Alexander writes horror and fantasy for older readers under his name Alex Kahler, but as K.R. Alexander has become one of the most popular writers for younger readers who love a scary story, with books like The Collected, Vacancy, The Fear Zone, and his latest release, Darkroom. Will Taylor debuted with the Phinney favorite Maggie and Abby’s Neverending Pillow Fort and this year has two new novels, Catch That Dog!, a big-hearted romp about a lost poodle who turns out to be the world’s most sought-after dog, The Language of Seabirds, about two boys whose friendship blossoms into something neither expected. Bring your rabid readers for what should be a fun Saturday-afternoon event!

You may know Josh Feit as the co-founder of the Seattle independent news site PubliCola, or, before that, as the longtime news editor at the Stranger, but in recent years, while working as a speechwriter at the Mayor’s Office and now at Sound Transit, he has been writing poems at a mad clip. His poems, full of giddy and sad urbanism, have been published in Spillway, Vallum, the Halcyone Literary Review, CircleShow, and other journals, and now are appearing in his first published collection, Shops Close Too Early, from Cathexis Northwest Press. He’ll be traveling—via public transport and/or e-bike—from the dense and tree-dappled neighborhood of Capitol Hill to celebrate his new book with us on Phinney Ridge. Please join us!

Join us in celebrating the release of Maya Sonenberg’s new collection of stories, Bad Mothers, Bad Daughters, which answer, or at least ask, the question, What happens when the urge to ditch your family outpaces the desire to love them? Maya is a long-time professor of creative writing in the University of Washington English Department (and a long-time friend of Phinney Books), and her long-awaited new collection is the winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize. Some early readers compare the stories to Grimm’s fairy tales, and some to Clarice Lispector; Matt Bell says, “Maya Sonenberg has given me exactly the kind of gift I want from a collection of stories: precisely made, gorgeously rendered worlds, each so inventive that it suggests there’s always even more magic waiting beyond its margins.” Come join us.

Our in-house book club, the Ridge Readers, meets to discuss Vicki Baum’s novel Grand Hotel. As always, newcomers are welcome.

Our in-house book club, the Ridge Readers, meets to discuss Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet. As always, newcomers are welcome.

Our in-house book club, the Ridge Readers, meets online to discuss Shirley Hazzard’s novel Transit of Venus. As always, newcomers are welcome.

Join us for an in-store book-release event for Boyd and Beth Morrison for The Lawless Land, the first book in their new Templar Knight adventure series, which Publishers Weekly has called (in a starred review) “an exceptional series launch” and about which Lee Child has said, “Gerard Fox could be Jack Reacher's ancestor, 700 years ago.” Boyd and Beth will discuss their brother-and-sister collaboration, combining Boyd’s thriller-writing skills (he’s the author of twelve books, including six bestselling Oregon Files collaborations with Clive Cussler) and Beth’s historical expertise (she’s Senior Curator of Manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum, specializing in medieval Europe). Boyd’s also a Phinney Books neighbor and a Jeopardy! champion, so he has plenty of expertise of his own.

Signed copies of The Lawless Land can be also be ordered in advance.

Our in-house book club, the Ridge Readers, meets online to discuss Ben Goldfarb’s Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. As always, newcomers to the book club are welcome!

Our in-house book club, the Ridge Readers, meets online to discuss Lulu Miller’s book of memoir and science, Why Fish Don’t Exist. As always, newcomers to the book club are welcome!

We are delighted to welcome Dane Bahr, who hosted the Dock Street reading series at Phinney Books for years before moving to Bellingham, back to Seattle with his debut novel, The Houseboat. Featuring a city lawman brought to small-town Iowa to solve a disturbing crime and a feral outcast living in his own mostly-invented world, The Houseboat has already been compared by Booklist to Cormac McCarthy and Eudora Welty, and the Wall Street Journal says, “Bahr writes like a demon, with a range from deadpan humor to living horror.” Come help us welcome Dane back to town and celebrate his fiction debut!

Our in-house book club, the Ridge Readers, meets online to discuss Christian Wolmar’s world history of the railroad, Blood, Iron, and Gold. As always, newcomers to the book club are welcome!

Our in-house book club, the Ridge Readers, meets online to discuss Laura Bates’s memoir of teaching Shakespeare in a maximum security prison, Shakespeare Saved My Life. Newcomers are always welcome!

[This edition of the Process has been postponed (again!)—we hope to reschedule to later in the year.] Our in-house reading series, the Process, welcomes three Seattle poets for January. Alex Gallo-Brown is a writer and labor organizer and the author of The Language of Grief, a collection of poems, and Variations of Labor (Chin Music Press), a collection of poems and stories. Billie Swift is the author of the chapbook Everything Here (Sibling Rivalry Press) and is the owner and operator of Open Books: A Poem Emporium. Bill Carty is the author of Huge Cloudy (Octopus Books) and the chapbook Refugium, was awarded the 2017 Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, and is Senior Editor at Poetry Northwest. Come join us for fresh poetry and an open discussion of the writing process.

[Sorry, this month’s book club meeting has been canceled.] Our in-house book club, the Ridge Readers, meets to discuss Craig Childs’s history of the Anasazi people in the Southwest, House of Rain. Newcomers are always welcome!

Our monthly in-house reading series, the Process, returns with three Seattle writers reading from and discussing their work. Anne Liu Kellor is a multiracial Chinese American writer, coach, editor, mother, and teacher at the Hugo House whose essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Longreads, The New England Review, Normal School, Fourth Genre, Vela, and Witness Magazine. Her memoir, Heart Radical: A Search for Language, Love and Belonging, was chosen by Cheryl Strayed as first runner-up in Kore Press’s 2018 contest and is forthcoming in 2021. Adrienne Matthews is a Seattle-based writer and creator. Her current project is a collection of creative nonfiction that incorporates memoir, personal essay, and prose poetry. She will be a 2020 Artist-in-Residence at Arteles Creative Center in Finland. Kathryn Thurber-Smith is a social worker at Seattle Children’s Hospital, mindful-self compassion facilitator for parents of children with health issues, and a writer, whose recent work has appeared in Suisun Review as well as in Susan Landgraf’s The Inspired Poet, published by Two Sylvias Press. Join us for fresh new writing and a discussion of the writing process.

Our in-house book club, the Ridge Readers, meets to discuss Oliver Sacks’s memoir, Uncle Tungsten. Newcomers are always welcome!

Our in-house reading series, the Process, takes a turn toward romance in February with a visit from two Seattle authors. Olivia Waite writes historical romance, fantasy, and science fiction, and is the author of The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics. She reviews romance monthly in the Seattle Review of Books, and lives on top of a hill with her husband and their adorable mini-dachshund. Kitty Cook is a book chef based out of Seattle, specializing in salty heroines, spicy plotlines, and semisweet endings that hit the spot. Her first novel, Sleeping Together, won a 2019 Silver IPPY for best first book and a 2019 IndieReader Discovery Award for best romance. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and Salon.com under a different, less ridiculous name. Join us for romantic readings and, as always, a lively discussion of the writing process!

Join us for a book signing with local author Laura Jacob for her new memoir, Light Sleeper, a story of resilience, strength, and the unleashing of secrets no one likes to talk about.

Our in-house book club, the Ridge Readers, meets to discuss RIchard Powers’s novel, The Overstory. Newcomers are always welcome!

Our reading series, the Process, returns for December with three Seattle poets and essayists. Dianne Aprile is on the faculty at Spalding University’s low-residency MFA in Writing program and was selected for the 2019 Jack Straw Writers Program. Her current project is a family memoir, two excerpts from which were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Debby Bacharach is the author of After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015), and her poems and essays have been published in the Antigonish Review, Arts & Letters, Calyx, Cimarron Review, New Letters and Poet Lore. And Kelly Boyker is a founding editor of Menacing Hedge, and is the author of a poetry chapbook, Zoonosis (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in many places, including PANK, Prick of the Spindle, Arsenic Lobster, Opium Magazine and FRiGG, and won the Richard Hugo House “Power of Place Annual Inquiry.” Come join us for fresh writing and an open discussion of the writing process.

Our in-house book club, the Ridge Readers, discusses Russell Hoban’s novel Turtle Diary. As always, newcomers are welcome!

Join one of our neighborhood writers, Sharon Mentyka, at the launch of her new book, Think Smart, Be Fearless: A Biography of Bill Gates. Her previous book, Chasing at the Surface, inspired by the real-life visit of orca pod L-25 to Dyes Inlet, has been a middle-reader favorite in our store since it came out in 2016. Her new book features another local celebrity: Bill Gates. An oversized kids' nonfiction book aimed at early elementary-school readers, it's the second in Sasquatch Books' new biography series on notable Northwesterners (the first was on Beverly Cleary). We're delighted to have Sharon at the store to discuss these local notables, as well as writing fiction and nonfiction for kids, and whatever else you'd like to ask her about.

Our monthly reading series, the Process, returns with four local writers of short fiction and a particular focus on literary journals. We'll be joined by Juan Carlos Reyes, a previous visitor who is the author of A Summer's Lynching and Elements of a Bystander, an associate professor at Seattle University, and the editor of Big Fiction magazine, and by three members of the editorial staff of Orca: A Literary Journal, all fiction writers themselves: Joe Ponepinto, David Anderson, and Zachary Killian. Come join us for talk about the process of fiction writing and a behind-the-scenes discussion of the editing of literary journals.

Our Fremont neighbor, Caroline Sayre, presents Civic Saturday, a non-partisan community gathering in celebration of shared civic purpose. Started in 2016 by Citizen University in Seattle, Civic Saturday is a civic analogue to church, a gathering of friends and strangers in a common place to explore a deeper sense of community and shared civic identity. Caroline discusses “Fremont, After the Vote, Practicing Hope.” Fremont and much of District 6 is in a state of fast-paced change and challenge. We’re also in a unique state of politics, both locally and nationally. This calls for a new kind of civic partnership with our soon-to-be elected council member. What might a revitalized relationship look like that reflects our common values for the betterment of our community? Caroline will be joined by two poets and one musician, along with small group conversation and refreshments to round out the gathering.