KUOW, Seattle Public Library Book Talks continue with 'Coast Salish punk' Sasha LaPointe

The KUOW Book Club is continuing our series of live author talks in partnership with the Seattle Public Library with writer and artist Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe.

We'll be reading her celebrated essay collection "Thunder Song."

And LaPointe will join us for a live interview at the Seattle Central Library on March 23. Register for free here.

RELATED: Cozy reader winter: Join KUOW Book Club, Seattle Public Library for live author talks

LaPointe first made waves in the local literary scene with her 2022 memoir, "Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk." It won the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Award and the Washington State Book Award for Creative Nonfiction/Memoir, and it was among NPR's Books We Love in 2022.

In many ways, "Thunder Song" continues LaPointe's work in "Red Paint," drawing from her family history and reflecting on what it means to be a proudly queer Indigenous woman. A member of the Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribes, LaPointe writes about Indigenous identity, resilience, and community. While she explores trauma, she also calls for healing, all in her uniquely PNW punk way.

I saved "Thunder Song" for a time when LaPointe could join us for a live interview with an engaged audience, and I'm so glad that time has come now.

Read along with the KUOW Book Club by signing up for our newsletter, and join LaPointe and me at the Seattle Central Library on March 23 at 6:30 p.m.

If you can't make it, don't worry: I'll share the interview and my thoughts on March 30. (We'll also share the interview on the Meet Me Here podcast feed.)

RELATED: Author Coll Thrush interprets PNW history through the wreckage of colonialism

If my word isn't good enough to get you hyped for this pick, consider this review of "Thunder Song" from Elissa Washuta, author of "White Magic," another essay collection I highly recommend: "LaPointe's essays are the songs that twine us together, the stories that teach us how to live, and the directions through the deep forest where our medicines grow. For everyone who keeps singing and telling and listening, 'Thunder Song' is a heart-balm and a gift."

"A heart-balm." Grab a copy, let it get into your bones, and join us to talk about how it makes you feel, soothed or empowered or ticked off, whatever.

Then, come back in April for what's been described as a "queer garden of love, grief, and longing" in Molly Olguín, author of "The Sea Gives Up the Dead."

Get the full winter lineup here.