Tacoma Reads
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All available tickets for A Conversation with Tommy Orange hosted by Mayor Woodards have been reserved. However, Tacoma Arts Live Box Office is keeping a waitlist. Please call the Box Office at 253.591.5894 to have your name added to the waitlist.
For patrons who have already reserved tickets: if you are unable to attend, please call the Tacoma Arts Live Box Office to release your tickets to the waitlist. Thank you.
Tacoma Public Library staff are able to answer questions about the event, but cannot assist with ticket reservations, changes to a reservation, or adding patrons to the waitlist. Thank you for your understanding.
Tacoma Reads is a local community reading program that seeks to unite the community in dialogue around contemporary themes through reading a common text.
The 2019 Tacoma Reads selection is the bestselling debut novel “There There” by Tommy Orange. On Friday, Sept. 20 at 6:30 p.m., Orange will visit Tacoma for a fireside-style chat entitled “A Conversation with Tommy Orange Hosted by Mayor Victoria Woodards” at Tacoma’s historic Rialto Theater (310 S. 9th Street). This is a free, community event with advance ticket registration opening on July 22 at 11 a.m.
Described as “groundbreaking, extraordinary” by The New York Times, “There There” is a multi-generational, relentlessly paced story of 12 urban Native Americans traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, interconnected in ways they may not yet realize.
“There There” has earned numerous accolades, including winning the the PEN/Hemingway Award, the the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and being selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It was listed as one of the Best Books of the Year in The Washington Post, NPR, Time, O, The Oprah Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Boston Globe. Entertainment Weekly called the book “the year’s most galvanizing debut novel,” while The Washington Post described it as “Masterful…White-hot…Devastating.”
Author Tommy Orange is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California, and lives in Angel’s Camp, California. For more information about Tommy Orange, please visit www.prhspeakers.com, opens a new window.
Check out your copy of There There today!
Tacoma Reads is a partnership of the City of Tacoma, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, and Tacoma Public Library, and is supported by King’s Books, Pierce County Library System, Puyallup Public Library, Tacoma Public Schools, and UW Tacoma.
