Books
May 14, 2025
Martha Silano, 1961–2025
Martha Silano, who died May 5 after living with A.L.S. for two years, delighted in the natural world.
March 17, 2025
Spring media
Books and podcasts to brighten your spring. Because reading is what? Fundamental.
February 28, 2025
A sweet new read
Sujin Witherspoon, UW alumna and full-time author, describes her writing process and explores her identity in a Q&A.
January 14, 2025
A snowy nod to Beverly Cleary
The renowned children's author and UW grad's name is in the running as Portland conducts a contest to name its snowplows.
January 7, 2025
Poet of resistance
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha writes with balance: violence and liberation, bias and truth, destruction and possibilities.
December 23, 2024
Cozy up with UW alumni
Need a reason to stay inside this winter? Check out our media recommendations for books, games, music and TV by UW alumni.
December 9, 2024
Don Pember, 1939–2024
Professor Don Pember was a favorite of communication students.
Books and beyond
In January 2025, University Book Store, a bastion for UW students and community, celebrates its 125th anniversary.
December 6, 2024
Winged things
The Burke Museum exhibit shares beautiful and endangered flighted species through art and interactive experiences.
Former tennis phenom Max Manthou is now pickleball’s patron saint of purple
Max Manthou contains multitudes: tennis player, pickleball champion, Purple Jesus, author, scholar.
November 27, 2024
Writing at red lights
When poet Martha Silano was diagnosed with A.L.S., she turned to writing to make sense of her experience, the way that she’s always turned towards her art.
November 8, 2024
A slice of his story
You might recognize the UW in Dr. Wilson Reed's novel, "Junebug," partly inspired by his time in Seattle in the 1970s.
October 30, 2024
Natural wonder
Ada Limón, the U.S. Poet Laureate, returned to Washington for her new project, which she hopes will "remind us of our love for the earth."
September 9, 2024
Free people read freely
‘Warrior Librarian’ Tracie D. Hall doesn't tell people to be quiet, but to speak up against censorship that threatens learning and access to information for all.
August 7, 2024
Odes to Washington
These authors write lavish fiction about the real Washington, thorns and all.
June 14, 2024
Summer reads (and more!)
Whether you need a book to dive into on your next plane ride, a podcast for a long walk or a TV show for a rainy day, UW alumni are ready to keep you company this summer.
May 24, 2024
The wild, wild world of Art Wolfe
The UW and UW Alumni Association present Art Wolfe, '75, with the Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus, the highest honor bestowed upon a UW graduate.
May 9, 2024
Claiming the narrative
Welcome to the spring 2024 issue of Viewpoint. As long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by the power of language. I was the shy kid who never spoke up in class, the weird kid pulled out of class to attend speech therapy, the lone Black kid afraid to open my mouth because...
May 3, 2024
Finding the words
UW Press celebrates "Aiiieeeee!" and a 50-year legacy of Asian American Literature.
April 30, 2024
Art under cover
In a city known for its literature, Tom Eykemans and Jayme Yen created a festival that celebrates the beauty of books.
February 24, 2024
Raves for novelist
E.J. Koh’s debut novel affirms her place among powerful American storytellers.
January 8, 2024
A new history
Ned Blackhawk's book about Native Americans in U.S. history won the National Book Award for its enlightening take on "rediscovering" America.
December 23, 2023
Boys in the Boat trivia
"The Boys in the Boat" is now a major motion picture. How well do you know your UW rowing history?
November 26, 2023
Wit and whiteout
Haidee Merritt charms readers with her droll and deprecating illustrations about Type 1 diabetes.
November 24, 2023
An exhilarating story
Author Daniel James Brown recalls writing "The Boys in the Boat": "Anxiety quickly gave way to exhilaration."
October 27, 2023
Ways of knowing
A new podcast produced in partnership with the UW is dedicated to humanities research and thought.
June 20, 2023
Historian, tour guide, archive enthusiast
Let Antoinette Wills show you around the UW's campus.
June 4, 2023
Down to earth
Blending her own story with tales of climate crisis negotiations, Brianna Craft shows us the world in her memoir.
A KKK ‘monster’ story
Timothy Egan’s latest book, “A Fever in the Heartland," centers on the rise and undoing of D.C. Stephenson, a grand dragon of the KKK
May 28, 2023
A walk down ‘Skid Road’
Nurse, professor and advocate Josephine Ensign walks readers through the history of Seattle's "Skid Road."
Creative flow
The Chihuly Workshop has produced a photo-rich book, “The Boathouse: The Artist’s Studio of Dale Chihuly,” to tell the story of a building with UW ties.
February 25, 2023
Drawn to love stories
New Yorker cartoonist Olivia de Recat captures relationships in her book ‘Drawn Together.’
February 23, 2023
Revolution to evolution
Emile Pitre captures the story of decades of activism at the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity in his new book.
Another side of the city
Peter Bacho wrote a love letter to Seattle with “Uncle Rico's Encore,” a book he says he “had to write.”
November 26, 2022
Treasure in feces
Bryn Nelson followed his love for animals and science to become both a microbiologist and the writer of a book on human feces.
September 9, 2022
Story of Black Seattle
Quintard Taylor tells the stories of Seattle’s small, but influential Black community.
August 31, 2022
The Poet Laureate
Ada Limón, the 24th poet laureate of the United States, gives UW Magazine a glimpse into her process.
July 22, 2022
Ada Limón, ’98, named 24th U.S. Poet Laureate
The 1998 drama graduate received the nation's highest honor in poetry.
March 5, 2022
The voice of Yakima Valley
While working on her doctorate, Monica De La Torre, ’16, studied the Yakima Valley's Radio Cadena. She shares their stories in “Feminista Frequencies."
March 4, 2022
Autism in the spotlight
Actor Mickey Rowe's book chronicles his journey from a legally blind self-described outcast to the hero of his own story.
January 31, 2022
From puck steals to book deals
Player-turned-agent Ryan Minkoff’s second book, “Nora’s Hockey Dream,” pays homage to his sister and all the girls who love hockey.
December 4, 2021
The midcentury view
A new book finally shines a spotlight on Paul Hayden Kirk, ’37, who set the standard for Northwest modernist architecture.
November 19, 2021
From pain to poetry
Poet Jane Wong isn’t afraid to lay her emotions bare as she explores ways beyond the written page to reach audiences.
September 4, 2021
The Nisei story
‘Boys in the Boat’ author Daniel James Brown’s new book depicts the heroism of World War II-era Japanese Americans.
Meals & memories
Two decades after Tom Stockley and his wife, Peggy, perished in a plane crash, their daughters curate a new book of his eating pleasures.
August 31, 2021
Unbeatable, unforgettable
The national champion ’91 football team inspires the first UW Press book on Husky sports.
June 10, 2021
Less can be more
Compared to changes that add, those that subtract are harder to think of. The removal of a bridge in the Bay Area illustrates how sometimes, less is more.
June 3, 2021
Reliving ’91
The story of the greatest coach in Husky football history and how he led the 1991 team to the national championship is the subject of a new book.
May 11, 2021
High-flying professor
Cecilia Aragon’s memoir, “Flying Free,” is for “anybody who has been discouraged all their life,” she says.
March 4, 2021
Private-eye inspiration
Instead, Thoft uses the P.I. skills she learned to write her award-winning detective novels featuring hard-nosed private eye Fina Ludlow.
March 3, 2021
Soul of Seattle
With the city changing rapidly, Ron Chew set out to write about one of its beloved communities. It’s a story only he could tell.
January 11, 2021
Books and conversation
To date, more than 1,600 readers have joined the UW Alumni Book Club, representing alumni from every college and school across all three campuses.
December 16, 2020
Emerging from pain
Britt East’s book “A Gay Man’s Guide to Life” provides realistic ways for gay men to deal with homophobia and live a good life.
Whitman revisited
In “Unsettled Ground: The Whitman Massacre and Its Shifting Legacy in The American West,” historian Cassandra Tate, ’86, ’88, ’95, revisits a conflict that left 13 settlers dead.
December 9, 2020
Healing words
Norman B. Rice’s timing couldn’t have been better for his new book, “Gaining Public Trust: A Profile of Civic Engagement.”
September 16, 2020
Book takes honors
A book by UW Tacoma Assistant Professor Emily Thuma won the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Studies.
August 4, 2020
Stars in her eyes
Astronomer Emily Levesque’s new book shares the wonder of stargazing—and the adventures it’s taken her on.
June 10, 2020
Stranger than fiction
A writer faces frustration with the release of her first work of fiction during a pandemic.
Seafood stories
In "Salmon Sisters," Emma Teal Laukitis, ’18, and Claire Neaton share stories from their father's fishing vessel and their clean, elegant approach to food.
June 4, 2020
The joy of rereading
Like a good friendship, your relationship with a book can become richer as you get to know it better.
March 10, 2020
After the ashes
Scientists knew Mount St. Helens would come back to life after the 1980 eruption, but as a new book shows, its resilience still blew them away.
December 26, 2019
Inside the peace
No one else could have written "Surviving the Peace," a new book by Peter Lippman, ’95, after decades of grassroots connections to the people of the Balkans.
September 28, 2019
Bedtime reading
Charles Johnson rounded up 11 of his “Bedtime Stories” from more than a decade—and added a new one—for a collection titled “Night Hawks: Stories.”
June 2, 2019
World of worry
A new book by UW faculty explores anxiety-provoking topics ranging from food safety to mobile phones and bedbugs.
March 29, 2019
‘Citizen Jean’
A new book about Seattle is an engaging history lesson for newcomers to the region and a juicy replay for old timers.
March 1, 2019
Master of the tearjerker
Tearjerkers and epic female-driven novels have earned Kristin Hannah, '83, an international following.
July 2, 2018
Books: Understanding PTSD—and how to help
Secret Charles-Ford's experience of having a loved one dealing with PTSD inspired her to write the book “Vietnam, PTSD, and Therapy: Survived All That!”
Meet the beetles
Biology professor Jim Kenagy takes in the surprising beauty of ordinary life in wild places.
March 3, 2018
Perfectly Claire
Best-selling feminist author Claire Dederer, ’93, on growing up grunge, creating a literary canon for the Northwest, and bad men who create great art.
September 27, 2017
Life-changing documents
A quirky and thought-provoking new book from an iSchool professor.
September 20, 2017
Books: UW pediatrics resident pens compelling coming-of-age memoir
“No Apparent Distress” by Rachel Pearson is a terrifying, compelling and excellent book about the American health care system.
March 1, 2016
War is sexy. Huh?
David Shields, author, essayist and UW English professor, takes the New York Times to task in his book, "War Is Beautiful."
September 1, 2015
UW Press at 100
The University of Washington's press dates back to Edmond Meany's 1915 book on the governors of the state and territory.
September 1, 2014
Book store lifer
Louise Little is a University Book Store icon. She started 34 years ago as a cashier and is now CEO. But it all started when she read Nancy Drew as a kid.
March 1, 2014
'Silence is a coping mechanism'
Teresa Tamura captures poignant stories of hardship from a World War II relocation center in her book "Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp."
Conquering Everest
The first time I tried to climb Mount Everest was in the spring of 1987. It was a very different mountain then from the swarmed-over scene it’s become today.
December 1, 2013
Montana mindscape
Ivan Doig's tales of the West have made him one of America's top authors.
December 1, 2012
Poetry priestess
Catching up with Kathleen Flenniken, ’88, a civil engineer turned poet. Recently she was appointed Washington State Poet Laureate for 2012–2014.
September 1, 2011
Common Book
To commemorate the University of Washington’s 150 years of discovery and inquiry, the 2011-12 Common Book is The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist by Richard Feynman.
June 1, 2011
Uncloaked
Books such as "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" are part of a crime novel tradition dating back to at least 1965 in Scandinavia—a tradition Andrew Nestingen, associate professor of Scandinavian Studies, has followed for years.
December 1, 2010
Special collection
The Henry Art Gallery, UW Libraries and UW Press are teaming up to bring the beauty of the Seattle Camera Club to the public.
'What Work Is'
“What Work Is” was featured in the 2010 UW Common Book, You Are Never Where You Are. Since 2006 the UW has chosen one book for all freshmen to read.
September 1, 2009
Books of revelation
Marilynne Robinson, ’68, ’77, has authored three novels, each of which is regarded as a major contribution to American letters.
March 1, 2009
Haunted hallways
When Kevin Rupprecht, '06, accepted the job of principal at Forks High School, he didn't realize he was signing on to be a minor celebrity as well.
Just call her a scholar
Ellen Dissanayake is working in a field she invented: evolutionary aesthetics, the study of art-making as an innate human behavior that helps us survive.
Evolution of art
Ellen Dissanayake came up with a paradigm-changing theory: Art-making evolved as a behavior that contained advantages for human survival-and those advantages went far beyond what Charles Darwin ever imagined.
December 1, 2006
100 books by Huskies
To celebrate the literary achievements of our UW community, the editors of Columns asked 15 faculty, alumni and book publishing professionals to help choose 100 outstanding books by 100 UW authors.
The black TV book
Kathleen Fearn-Banks once worked in TV, and now has written the dictionary on an important part of its history.
Book report
For a long time we’ve wanted to celebrate the creative power of the University of Washington by presenting 100 top books by 100 UW authors. While the idea sounds great on paper, coming up with the final list was no easy task. What follows is an editor’s diary of the selection process.
June 1, 2006
‘Common book’
“Mountains Beyond Mountains” was named the UW's first-ever "common book." Every member of the incoming freshman class will be reading the book this summer, and thinking, talking and writing about it this fall.
December 1, 2003
Author's inspiration
Michele Torrey, '88, was having trouble finding books for her three teen-age sons. She decided to fix that problem by writing one herself.
June 1, 2002
Reversal of fortune
For more and more workers, the American Dream is just a mirage, say the authors of a new book.
June 1, 2001
She has answers
Taking the “if you want something done, do it yourself” mentality her parents instilled in her, Carol Bolt, ’94, a Seattle artist, wrote The Book of Answers.
December 1, 1998
Martyrs and myths
The early Christians weren't all martyrs and they weren't all poor, says a UW sociologist whose book sheds new light on the rise of the Christianity.
June 1, 1993
Tales of ‘Solidarity’
UW alumnus and retired UW lecturer Richard (Dick) Carbray, '44, '51, has written a new book titled "Prophets of Human Solidarity."
March 1, 1993
Insights on race
"The challenge for America is how to live in peace with its different people. If that's not solved, the country is really in trouble."
September 1, 1991
Ann Rule, ’53
A former policewoman, Ann Rule began writing true-detective crime in 1968, after a divorce left her with four children to support.
June 1, 1991
Literary fame
UW English Professor Charles Johnson, is holding steady through the months of accolades that have followed winning the 1990 National Book Award in fiction.