Bumbershoot Literary Voices To Come

Voices from Africa and the Middle East - as well as the home-grown voices of writers from the Pacific Northwest - highlight the jam-packed offerings of Bumbershoot's literary program.

Events range from solo and group readings to panel discussions, poetry "slams," open-mike performances and video presentations. In addition, the annual small-press Bookfair has attracted 79 exhibitors, including 22 publishers and literary journals displaying their work at Bumbershoot for the first time.

Visiting writers include Terry McMillan, whose novel "Waiting to Exhale" hit the bestseller lists last year during an explosion of new books by African-American authors; Kofi Awoonor, the poet, novelist and diplomat who is Ghana's ambassador to the United Nations; Nawal el Sadaawi, an Egyptian feminist who is a psychiatrist, novelist and longtime chronicler of women's roles in Arab society; and Abdelrahman Munif, a Syrian-born novelist whose "Variations on Night and Day," the concluding volume in his "Cities of Salt" trilogy, has just been released.

Local writers

Northwest and Seattle-area writers taking part in Bumbershoot include bestselling author Robert Fulghum; British-born travel writer Jonathan Raban; Native American poet and fiction writer Sherman Alexie; fiction writers Charlotte Watson Sherman, Jack Cady and Barbara Wilson; and poets Don Wilsun, Tamara Madison-Shaw, Sibyl James and Fatima Lim-Wilson.

A popular performance-poetry group from New York, Nuyorican Poets Live!, will be showcased in a workshop (8 p.m. tomorrow, Mercer Forum) and two appearances (5:30 p.m. Saturday and 5:30 p.m. Sunday, both in Bagley Wright Theatre).

Another reading (8:45 p.m. Sunday, Bagley Wright) will feature British Columbia writer Carol Windley, whose collection of short stories, "Visible Light," was winner of the 1993 Bumbershoot/Weyerhaeuser Publication Award with Oolichan Press.

A Bumbershoot first this year will be "Telepoetics" (5 p.m. Monday, Bookfair Pavilion Stage), in which six Seattle poets will be broadcast live to a simultaneous poetry reading in Los Angeles - followed by six L.A. poets beamed back to Bumbershoot.

Most literary events will take place in the Bagley Wright Theatre, the Intiman Playhouse or the Bookfair Pavilion (the old Seattle Art Museum Pavilion). A selection of daily highlights includes:

Tomorrow

-- Young Writers program, featuring a dozen writers from grades 6 through 12 (12:45 p.m. Friday, Bookfair Pavilion stage);

-- Storyteller Pleasant De Spain, 2 p.m., and children's author Omar S. Castaneda, 5 p.m. (Bookfair Pavilion stage);

-- Richard Peck, author of young-adult books (2:30 p.m., Bagley Wright);

-- Readings with Northwest writers Howard Robertson, Lisa Choi, Annie Reid and Arthur Tulee, 4 to 5 p.m., and headliners Sherman Alexie, Charlotte Watson Sherman, Jonathan Raban and Oregon's Tom Spanbauer, 5 to 7 p.m. (Bagley Wright).

Saturday

-- Poetry Slam, competitive performance poetry to determine a Seattle champ, 12:45 p.m. (Bookfair Pavilion stage);

-- Writers Forum: a panel discussion contrasting support systems for Canadian and American writers, 2 p.m. (Bookfair Pavilion stage);

-- Writers Forum: Terry McMillan, Kofi Awoonor, Omar Castaneda and poet Bob Holman discuss traditional and non-traditional literature, 4 p.m. (Intiman);

-- James Broughton, a long-influential poet and filmmaker who now lives at Port Townsend, 5 p.m. (Bookfair Pavilion stage);

-- Readings with Northwest writers Jerah Chadwick, J.A. Hamilton, Don Wilsun, and Tamara Madison-Shaw, 8 to 9 p.m., and headliner Terry McMillan, 9 p.m. (Bagley Wright).

Sunday

-- Literary Open Mike, sign up one hour in advance, 12:45 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. (Bookfair Pavilion stage);

-- Barbara Wilson, Seal Press founder and author of the Pam Nilsen mystery series, 3 p.m. (Bookfair Pavilion stage);

-- "The Sonnet Dialogues," excerpts from the play by Seattle writer Joseph Keppler, 4 p.m. (Intiman);

-- Writer, editor and professor Lawson Fusao Inada, 4 p.m. (Bookfair Pavilion stage);

-- Poet Luis J. Rodriguez, 5 p.m. (Intiman);

-- Robert Fulghum, 5:15 p.m. (Opera House);

-- Readings with Northwest writers Jill Kronstadt, L.E. Bryan, Margery Snyder, and Carol Windley, 8 to 9 p.m., and headliner Kofi Awoonor, 9 p.m. (Bagley Wright).

Monday

-- Writers Forum, panel discussion on the relationship between Canadian and American publishing, 12:45 p.m. (Bookfair Pavilion stage);

-- Canadian performance poets Kendrick James and John Sobol, 2 p.m. (Bookfair Pavilion stage);

-- Writers Forum, panel discussion of censorship, exile and imprisonment, with Nawal el Saadawi, Abdelrahman Munif, translator Peter Theroux, women's studies professor Susan Jeffords and Arab-American novelist Diana Abu-Jabar, 4 p.m. (Intiman);

-- Readings with Northwest writers Nico Vassilakis, Fatima Lim-Wilson, Sibyl James and Jack Cady, 7:30 to 8:30 p.m., and headliners Abdelrahman Munif, 8:30 p.m., and Nawal el Saadawi, 9:15 p.m. (Bagley Wright).