Arts & Culture
With His New Novel, Matthew Amster-Burton Trades Food for Music
Matthew Amster-Burton’s switch from mainstream publishing to Kickstarter got him a best-seller and a movie option
Matthew Amster-Burton’s new novel, Our Secret Better Lives, returns readers to the grunge era, focusing on Northwest kids stuck in Los Angeles while the whole world is going crazy over Pearl Jam. A former Seattle magazine contributor, Amster-Burton is known for his culinary writing and Spilled Milk podcast with Orangette’s Molly Wizenberg. His Pretty Good…
Turn up the Music
Totem Star's new home expands its footprint by tenfold
“The studio was usually full,” says Totem cofounder, star singer, songwriter, and producer Daniel Pak. “And then we’d have a duo playing guitar out on the stairs, folks rapping in the hallway or practicing in the dance studios. It was a beautiful thing, but we needed more room.”
‘The Buddhist Bug’ and ‘The Red Chador’
Artist Anida Yoeu Ali’s work looks to absurdity and humor for deeper understanding
Anida Yoeu Ali draws inspiration from her personal experience as a first-generation American of mixed Malay, Cham, Khmer, and Thai ancestries. Born in 1974 in Battambang, Cambodia, she fled with her family to the U.S. and was raised in Chicago. Now, she serves as a senior artist-in-residence at University of Washington Bothell and is the co-founder of Studio Revolt, an independent media lab. Her show, on view through June at Seattle Asian Art Museum, is the first solo exhibition for an artist since the museum reopened in 2020.
Teatro ZinZanni is Seattle’s Moulin Rouge
The cabaret is celebrating 25 years
The real star of the show, though, was the tent itself. Known as “Palais Nostalgie,” the 285-seat spiegeltent is an antique cabaret tent decked out in red-velvet curtains, mirrored walls, and carved wooden booths. Originally used as a traveling pavilion in the early 1900s, it is one of the few surviving such tents in existence. Norm Langill, the creator of Teatro ZinZanni, first encountered one during a trip to the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. He was instantly transformed by the spiegeltent’s mystique, and after learning about their history and how they were being used for dinner cabarets throughout Europe, he deftly managed to acquire one and have it shipped here to Seattle.
Celebrating Seattle
Honoring the driving forces creating change in our community
Seattle magazine has consistently posited that “what happens in Seattle impacts the rest of the world.” This issue’s cover subject is one such example of the outsized influence Seattle’s thought leaders can have on our culture and shared history.
Author Daniel James Brown was someone whom I fondly remember knowing while at Microsoft during the pre-internet era. He was a quiet and contemplative thinker with a reputation for humility and hard work, and such is the very ethos that has come to define how we see ourselves in the Pacific Northwest. When very few tech retirees could reboot to wholly non-tech careers, Daniel thrived as an author of multiple best sellers.
‘We Are Groot’
Guardians of the Galaxy tops superhero genre
Imagine hanging out with Bruce Wayne. Or talking photography with Peter Parker. Perhaps brash adventurer Peter Quill is more to your taste. We love the action and spectacle of superhero movies. In Washington state, we particularly enjoy Guardians of the Galaxy — the state’s top superhero movie of all time. A recent study combed through…
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