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Rental Partner: Seattle Arts & Lectures presents

Percival Everett

"James" — Reimagining and American Classic

Date:
Thu Jan 23, 2025
Time:
7:30 pm PST
Cost:
$7 – $115

Venue

The Great Hall
1119 Eighth Avenue (enter on Eighth Avenue)
Seattle, 98101 United States
+ Google Map

Organizer

Seattle Arts & Lectures

Email
grajendran@lectures.org
View Organizer Website

Note: A livestream for this event will be available.

Presented by Seattle Arts & Lectures. For questions about this event, please contact grajendran@lectures.org or call (206) 621-2230.

Black and white headshot of Percival Everett (with short textured hair and beard)
Rentals

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, and 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.

Read More

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.

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