arts

Beyonce is a feminist - she made that clear by dancing in front of a giant set of letters spelling out the word. 

Or did she? 

Not clear enough for bell hooks, or Megyn Kelly, or a host of others who have questioned her feminist street cred over the years.

This week, people who want to save Seattle's Showbox theater came to City Hall.

They don't want a developer to turn the 80 year old downtown concert venue into a high rise apartment building.

One of those testifiers was a man who's played the Showbox dozens of times, Ben Gibbard of the platinum-selling band Death Cab For Cutie.

Denver poet Diana Khoi Nguyen's family is haunted by bees. 

It's easier for them to speak about the bees than it is to speak about her brother's suicide. But in her new book of poems, "Ghost Of," Diana is talking.

Many ballet dancers are women, but far fewer women actually create the dances we see onstage.

Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet school wants to help change that paradigm.

The shame and violence around sexuality in North America isn't an accident—it's inextricably linked to settler colonialism, says University of Alberta professor Kim TallBear. And what better way to celebrate and reclaim sexuality than with a burlesque show? Enter the cabaret seating and condom fairies (!) of Tipi Confessions.

Kim Malcolm talks with Monica Guzman, editor of the Seattle daily newsletter The Evergrey, about some events to check out in Seattle this weekend.

Guzman recommends:

It’s no secret that Seattle’s hot housing market is driving up property values and squeezing out affordable places to live. But for thousands of Seattle artists, high rent on light industrial spaces is squeezing out affordable places to work.

"In a second I'll tell you how little writing rescues." That promise, from the opening poem of Terrance Hayes' "American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin", is only partially kept. 

The poems in the book are in constant motion. They shuttle back and forth between Emmett Till and Maxine Waters, slavery and hip hop, the nation's future and the past it can't bear to look at. 

Now more than ever, many people's relationship with America is... complicated.

Three Seattle artists want to hear more about your relationship status with America. How would you describe it to your friends? (How do you describe it to yourself?)

In honor of the summer solstice, we asked listeners about their favorite summer songs. You came through with the nostalgic, the playful, and some truly excellent 80s throwbacks. 

"In America, freedom is like air," said Czech daredevil Mira Slovak. That air was his element - he used it for work, for play, and to make his escape across the Iron Curtain to freedom.

Here we are in balmy June-uary, still clad in waterproof — and arguably unstylish — garb. With our tendency to dress like a "hiking emergency" could break out at any moment (as one listener put it): Is Seattle a fashionable city?

Wellll... it depends on how you define fashionable, said our panel. But Seattle does have something special that's all its own. 

When Seattle writer Angela Garbes first became a mom, she wrote a piece on breastfeeding that went viral. It remains the most-read article The Stranger has ever published. The hunger for knowledge behind that response was part of what fueled Garbes to write the new book "Like a Mother." She joined Bill Radke in the studio to discuss it, along with her mom Josie Garbes and three-month-old daughter Ligaya.

Ignite Seattle is an unusual event. The organizers like to surprise the audience when they can — like that time a couple got married on stage. Thrills like that aside, there’s something thoughtful and genuine in every talk. More often than not, we learn something new. 

After 9/11, Vishavjit Singh experienced an uptick in discrimination. "Al Qaeda," people hissed as he passed them on the street.

"Terrorist."

"Go back to your country."

News stories can be disturbing sometimes, but KUOW has a way to help process these stories.

We call it #NewsPoet — and it involves a Pacific Northwest poet writing an original piece inspired by one of our stories.

Today we revisit the story about the last man to be put to death by Washington state.

The complex and ever-changing time signatures of Sama Dams' new song “Pockets” almost feels more appropriate for a jazz trio.

“But it’s still pop [music] and they never forget that,” says Jerad Walker, music director of OPB Music.

We've heard the jokes on late night about President Donald Trump taking on dictator-like qualities. But what is comedy really like under an authoritarian regime?

The Seattle Symphony will perform five original lullabies at a free Mother's Day concert this weekend. And each lullaby was composed with help from a parent staying at a local homeless shelter.

It's part of the symphony's effort to address homelessness in its own way. 

Imani Sims is KUOW’s inaugural #NewsPoet – a program in which Pacific Northwest poets respond in verse to what the station airs. Below is an excerpt of her poem "Better than Captivity."

Each Friday, Morning Edition host Emily Fox checks in on new music in the Pacific Northwest.

This week she talks with Grant Lawrence, host and producer with CBC Music about the debut record by the Vancouver-based band, The Long War.

Drive south on Highway 99 and you’ll go straight through the middle of Seattle’s South Park neighborhood.

When you see wood smoke and naked people in Ballard, you’ll know the new Nordic Museum is finally complete. 

Bill Radke talks to actor Alan Cumming about home, becoming American, identity and learning to let go.