Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series
Arts:Books
If you’re a part of the Seattle arts scene, chances are you’ve come across Tessa Hulls. She has a hand in many local creative communities, including Seattle Arts & Lectures (where you might have spotted her illustrations on the 2021 Summer Book Bingo Card!), the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and the Henry Art Museum. She’s also the lead artist in the Wing Luke Museum exhibit “Nobody Lives Here,” which explores the impacts of how the I-5 construction ran right through the Chinatown International District in the 1960s.
It’s no surprise then that Hulls is passionate about mixing art and historical research, looking at how past events echo throughout daily relationships today. She explores these themes in her debut book, Feeding Ghosts, a graphic novel memoir that tells the story of three generations of women in her family: her Chinese grandmother Sun Yi; her mother, Rose; and herself. Sun Yi, who fled Communist China for Hong Kong, published a celebrated memoir about her persecution and survival, but then later succumbed to mental illness.
Determined to face the history that shaped her family, Tessa exposes the wounds that haunt generations and the love that holds them together. Hulls is a self-proclaimed “compulsive genre-hopper,” mixing personal and political histories with travel writing and visual art. This might explain why she’s so well-intertwined in Seattle’s art scene, using her creativity to build community and create conversations about the impacts of our shared history.
Tessa Hulls is an artist, a writer, and an adventurer. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, and Adventure Journal, and her comics have been published in The Rumpus, City Arts, and SPARK. She has received grants from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture and 4Culture, and she is a fellowship recipient from the Washington Artist Trust. Feeding Ghosts is her first book.
Putsata Reang is a Cambodian-born author and a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Politico, The Guardian, Ms., The San Jose Mercury News, and The Seattle Times, among other publications. She is an alumna of residencies at Hedgebrook, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Mineral School, and she has received fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation and Jack Straw Cultural Center.
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257. Benjamin Wurgaft and Merry White with Peter Miller: Epicurean Odyssey
256. Tricia Romano with Dan Savage and Jane Levine: Voices of the Village
255. Sasha LaPointe with Dawn Barron: Poignant Reflections on Indigenous America
253. Sloane Crosley with Ben Gibbard: Grief Is for People
252. Eric Klinenberg with Margaret O’Mara: A Year Which Will Live in Infamy
251. Robots Who Paint: What’s Next with AI and Art?
250. James Miles - Gotta Stay Fresh: Transforming Learning with Hip-Hop Education
249. Alexis Devine with Sarah Stremming: How a Talking Dog Could Teach You How to Be Human
248. Misha Berson: Seattle Theatre Lives!
247. 2022 Town Hall Seattle Writer-in-Residence Sarah Salcedo and Washington State Poet Laureate Arianne True: Neurodivergence and Art
246. Behind the WHEEL: The Power of Homeless Women
245. Stephanie Land with Sara K. Runnels: Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education
244. Alva Noë: Art is All Around Us
243. Sheila Johnson with Gin Hammond: Through the Fire
242. Letters Aloud: Before They Were Famous – letters on the way up
241. Peter Boal with Jackson Cooper: From Boyhood to Ballet
240. Amy Schneider with Mimi Zima: In the Form of a Question
239. Tattoo Artist Panel: Yes It Hurts and You Will Bleed
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