UPCOMING CLASSES
> Abraham Verghese Book Club
> SA&L: Abraham Verghese
> Robin Wall Kimmerer Book Club
> SA&L: Robin Wall Kimmerer
> Percival Everett Book Club
> SA&L: Percival Everett
> Naomi Shihab Nye Book Club
> SA&L: Naomi Shihab Nye
> Merlin Sheldrake Book Club
> SA&L: Merlin Sheldrake
Click a class name to learn more — and to register!
If you have any questions about classes, please email us: silhseducation@gmail.com
Click here to see PAST CLASSES.
Book Club for The Covenant of Water
Saturday, November 16th, at the library, 3pm
facilitated by Lorrie Harrison
Click here to register for this Book Club.
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Abraham Verghese
Sunday, November 24th, 7:30pm
A free, online event for members of the Shaw Island Library & Historical Society
The newest book from Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water, reminds audiences of why he is hailed as one of the modern era’s greatest epic novelists. At once a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, this story is a humbling testament to generational connection and a shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself.
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. The family is part of a Christian community that traces itself to the time of the apostles, but times are shifting, and the matriarch of this family, known as Big Ammachi—literally “Big Mother”—will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life.
All of Verghese’s great gifts are on display in this new work: there are astonishing scenes of medical ingenuity, fantastic moments of humor, a surprising and deeply moving story, and characters imbued with the essence of life. The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.
Dr. Abraham Verghese is a bestselling author and prominent voice in medicine with a uniquely humanistic view of the future of healthcare. He received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama “for reminding us that the patient is the center of the medical enterprise.”
Trained in infectious diseases and pulmonary medicine, Dr. Verghese has long been a top thinker in healthcare. His TED talk “A Doctor’s Touch” has been viewed almost two million times, and is as meaningful now as the day he delivered it. He is co-host with Dr. Eric Topol of the Medicine and the Machine podcast, and he has long been a top thinker on how we marry cutting-edge technology to advance medicine with a focus on the physical patient. Dr. Verghese leads PRESENCE, a multidisciplinary center that studies the human experience of patients, physicians and caregivers.
Click here to register for this event.
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Book Club for Robin Wall Kimmerer
Wednesday, December 4, at the library, 1pm
facilitated by Tina Echeverria
Because The Serviceberry is not scheduled to be released until late November, this book club will discuss Kimmerer’s earlier two books — Gathering Moss and Braiding Sweetgrass — so you can read either or both.
Click here to register for this Book Club.
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Robin Wall Kimmerer
Monday, December 9th, 7:30pm
A free, online event for members of the Shaw Island Library & Historical Society
Author of the sensational Braiding Sweetgrass—a book that forever changed nature writing—Robin Wall Kimmerer returns with The Serviceberry. A bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world, The Serviceberryis an antidote to the broken relationships and misguided goals of our times, and a reminder that “hoarding won’t save us; all flourishing is mutual.”
As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.
Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”
Robin Wall Kimmereris a mother, scientist, professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants as well as Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Kimmerer is a 2022 MacArthur Fellow. She lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.
Click here to register for this event.
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Book Club for James
Thursday, January 16th, at the library, 7pm
facilitated by Nancy Zakes
Click here to register for this Book Club.
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Percival Everett
Thursday, January 23rd, 7:30pm
A free, online event for members of the Shaw Island Library & Historical Society
Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Percival Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James—his powerful retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.
When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.
Percival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. His most recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and winner of the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award), The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), So Much Blue, Erasure, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award and The Windham Campbell Prize from Yale University. American Fiction, the feature film based on his novel Erasure, was released in 2023 and was awarded the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the writer Danzy Senna, and their children.
Click here to register for this event.
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Book Club for Naomi Shihab Nye
Saturday, February 1st, at the library, noon
facilitated by Anne Wysocki
If you sign up for this discussion, you will be sent ahead of time an assortment of Nye’s poetry to read.
Click here to register for this Book Club.
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Naomi Shihab Nye
Thursday, February 6th, 7:30pm
A free, online event for members of the Shaw Island Library & Historical Society
Naomi Shihab Nye has spent more than forty years as a self-described “wandering poet,” traveling the country and the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Beloved by generations of readers and writers, Nye uses her writing with themes of love, family, and resilience to attest to our shared humanity.
National Book Award Finalist and former Young People’s Poet Laureate Naomi Shihab Nye’s Grace Notes: Poems about Families celebrates family and community. This rich collection of one hundred never-before-published poems is also the poet’s most personal work to date. With poems about her own childhood and school years, her parents and grandparents, and the people who have touched and shaped her life in so many ways, this is an emotional and sparkling collection to savor, share, and read again and again.
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and she spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than thirty books.
Click here to register for this event.
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Book Club for Entangled Life
Date/time to be determined
facilitated by Kath Melville & Jan Chamberlin
We will announce registration for this Book Club as we get closer to the connected SA&L event.
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Merlin Sheldrake
Wednesday, May 21st, 7:30pm
A free, online event for members of the Shaw Island Library & Historical Society
A plant scientist, microbiologist, and ecologist, Merlin Sheldrake has dedicated his scientific career to the relationship between humans and “more-than-human” organisms. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, has been recognized by BBC, TIME, and more, and has been heralded as dazzling, eye-opening, inspiring, and a ground-breaking account of the extraordinarily strange world of mushrooms.
When we think of fungi, we probably think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that support and sustain nearly all living systems. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.
Sheldrake’s mind-bending journey into this hidden world ranges from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that sprawl for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that make all plant life possible, to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.
Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms – and our relationships with them – are changing our understanding of how life works.
Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize. Sheldrake is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam and works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks and the Fungi Foundation. A keen brewer and fermenter, he is fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms.
Click here to register for this event.
PAST CLASSES
Ballad of the Broom… and the Stories behind it!
Saturday, September 7
1 pm
Community Building
FREE
Come meet Hilary Horder, author of a new children’s book set on Blind Island.
Hilary will talk — for grownups — about stories of historical interest behind the creation of the Ballard of the Broom, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, human smuggling in the islands, and the known history of Blind Island.
Seattle Arts & Lectures: Ketanji Brown Jackson
Monday, September 9th
meet 7:15 pm at the library
As with other SA&L events, we’ll gather in the library’s comfy back room (with tea and snacks) to watch this streaming event together. (Some watch-at-home links are available.)
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to ever be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, chronicles her life story and her extraordinary path to becoming a jurist on America’s highest court in an inspiring, intimate memoir that she’ll discuss during this interview. With this unflinching account, Lovely One: A Memoir invites readers into her life and world, tracing her family’s ascent from segregation to her confirmation on America’s highest court within the span of one generation.
We’ve reached our limit on the number of people we can support for this event, so registration is closed. Thanks for the interest!
A presentation by Loma Pendergraft, PhD
Saturday, September 21
2–3 pm at the Community Building
FREE
The antics of crows, ravens, and other members of the Corvid family have captivated our imaginations throughout history. Many of our myths, legends, and stories revolve around the astonishing brainpower these birds possess. But what is fact and what is fiction? In this talk, we will cover fun facts about crows, the capabilities (and limits) of their intelligence, and the research that scientists at the University of Washington have conducted on these fascinating birds.
Loma Pendergraft earned a PhD at the UW studying crow intelligence and behavior. He also teaches classes on animal behavior and animal communication at UW.
There’s no need to register for this event.
CLASSES that have already happened this year
Ellen Bass: Mutual Awe — Science and Poetry
A SMALL WORKSHOP
Saturday, July 13, at noon in the library
FREE
This will be a classroom-format discussion designed for those who love poetry, to explore the harmonious relationship between poetry and science, emphasizing their shared curiosity, rigor, and capacity for wonder.
(At 4pm on the same day, Ellen Bass will give a reading/talk — “A Life of Poetry” — at the Community Building. All are welcome.)
This is a small group — with a limit of 14 people — and registration is required. REGISTRATION HAS CLOSED FOR THIS CLASS.
(Images above: Blue Morpho butterfly by William Warby, used under a Flickr Creative Commons license; “Cosmic Cliffs” in the Carina Nebula produced by NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute.)
Intertidal Zone Exploration at Cedar Rock Preserve
July 20th, 9 am – 11am (low-tide time!)
FREE!
This intertidal walk will introduce participants to the many fish, invertebrates, and algae that call rocky shores home. Participants will learn about:
- the challenges these ocean critters face spending part of their time out of the water
- the strategies these critters have developed to stay alive
- how scientists have been using all sorts of clever (and crazy) methods to study these ecosystems for over a hundred years
- what makes the San Juans an extra-special place to study the intertidal zone!
Exploration leader: Rebecca Hansen is a marine ecologist and a lifelong resident of the Salish Sea. Growing up on Vancouver Island, she fell in love with temperate oceans at a young age, and she began working as a marine educator in her teens. Rebecca went on to complete both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in marine biology, with her Master’s research examining the effects of climate change on the intertidal communities of Juan de Fuca Strait. Currently she is a scientific diver and researcher at Friday Harbor Laboratories, where she studies bull kelp and the challenges facing kelp forests along Washington’s coast.
Limited to 15 participants.
Registration has filled for this class — but PLEASE CLICK HERE if you are interested in a repeat of this class. When you click, please fill out the form so we can learn if there is enough interest to schedule another Intertidal Zone Exploration. We hope to offer additional explorations, based on feedback we receive from you. THANK YOU!
Kids are welcome, if accompanied by an adult.
R/V Kittiwake Expedition to search for Pacific Spotted Ratfish nesting sites
Monday, August 19th
9:30 am – 12:30 pm
$40 / person
(Minimum age for this trip is 18.)
We will gather in the parking lot at the Ellis Preserve and then walk down together to the dock to board the R/V Kittiwake and head out!
You’ll be out on the water for approximately two hours, helping characterize the biodiversity of potential ratfish sites with two net deployments. Each haul will bring up fish, invertebrates, and kelps that we’ll identify — and you’ll help contribute to groundbreaking research.
This expedition is led by Karly Cohen, PhD. Karly is a research scientist at Friday Harbor Labs and is excited to have Shaw community members aboard the R/V Kittiwake for an exciting expedition in search of the lost nursery sites of the Pacific spotted ratfish! Known for their distinctive rat-like beak, these fascinating creatures are abundant throughout the Pacific Northwest waters. Over the past five years, Karly and her team have discovered that these fish migrate through the San Juan Channel, leaving eggs along the way.
Karly is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Florida in the Fraser lab looking at the evolution and development of teeth, denticles and odontodes. These are some of the earliest vertebrate traits (over 500 million years old)! Using an arsenal of bioimaging techniques, she asks questions about fundamental laws acting on phenotypic evolution through the tools and adaptations of fishes; she asks how different lineages have solved common mechanical and ecological problems. Karly received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington and Friday Harbor Labs in 2022 and graduated from The George Washington University with a Masters in Science in Biology in 2019.